The Painting

Gr 5–8—A time-traveling twist is used to explore mother-daughter relationships and family secrets. Annie Jarvis doesn't understand her mother. Annie lives for art and doesn't like school, while her mother has always been studious and serious. A painting Annie finds in the attic and her mother's lapse into a coma after a car accident set the scene for discovery. Quotes from Alice in Wonderland open each section of this novel. Instead of Alice's rabbit hole, Annie from Toronto falls into paintings from the past by the famous Newfoundland artist Maisie King soon after her mother's accident. While in the paintings, Annie meets Claire, a girl mourning the death of her younger sister, coincidentally (or not) named Annie. Claire believes Annie is the ghost of her deceased sibling. Claire blames herself for her sister's death and thinks her mother blames her as well. Readers will intentionally be ahead of the plot, surmising that Claire must be Annie's mother, Cathleen, before it is disclosed. Once Annie discovers that Maisie King is her grandmother and that little Annie's death has torn the family apart, she believes repairing her mother and grandmother's relationship is the key to her mother's recovery. Claire and Annie alternate narrating chapters, revealing the family saga in the past and present and ultimately resulting in a happy ending.