Miraculous Miranda by Siobhán Parkinson (review)

Miranda is a sassy, precocious tween with a love of words and a flair for essay writing. However, her sixteen-year-old sister, Gemma, is very sick with an unspecified but potentially fatal disease; since no one will give Miranda any details, she's mostly just annoyed when her parents leave Miranda in the care of her eccentric grandmother to stay near Gemma in the hospital. When one of Miranda's essays convinces Gran to quit smoking, she wonders if her words could work other miracles, so she experiments and keeps a chart of everyday miracles and their possible origins. Irish author Parkinson keeps the seriousness of Gemma's illness in the background, instead focusing on what Miranda knows and how she deals with the sense that she is being neglected as her sister gets all of her parents' attention. While Miranda's chatty, blithe narration of her everyday woes (enhanced by occasional black-and white spot art) keeps the story moving, her character as a gifted, selfish, mercurial, and wordy teacher's pet is something of a preteen cliché, and the overly quick, overly tidy ending lessens the book's credibility and heft. That said, Miranda's exuberant voice makes this a readable, upbeat story, and the vagueness of Gemma's illness renders the novel broad enough to cover many a scary situation that readers may face. KC