Meg McKinlay

Every girl dreams of being part of the line - the chosen seven who tunnel deep into the mountain to find the harvest. No work is more important. Jena is the leader of the line - strong, respected, reliable. And - as all girls must be - she is small; her years of training have seen to that. It is not always easy but it is the way of things. And so a girl must wrap her limbs, lie still, deny herself a second bowl of stew. Or a first. But what happens when one tiny discovery makes Jena question everything she has ever known? What happens when moving a single stone changes everything?

A Single Stone

Nadine 

Very unusual book - chosen for our older readers (upper elementary) but I'd put it more towards YA. What do we do when we make assumptions about how the world is and how it will be. What do we do with dissenters and free thinkers. How do we bind ourselves to beliefs.

Originally published: Newtown, NSW, Australia: Walker Books Australia Pty Ltd, 2015.

Jessica Nottingham

What first drew me to A Single Stone was the fact that this is essentially a younger version of the YA and Adult dystopian novels that I love. I was so excited to see how Meg McKinlay would bring Jena's sheltered world to life, and how she would address the society as a whole. I won't lie, I had pretty high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, it failed to reach quite as high as my expectations were set.

To start with the positives, I can say that Jena's society is fairly well laid out in this book. The reader quickly understands that the mountain, and the harvest, are the focal point of life in this small society. Status in Jena's world is based on how much one is able to contribute to the community, and that means that the girls who can descend into the mountain are the elite. I loved this concept, and especially loved the fact that Jena's backstory didn't allow her to be too proud. Her life hasn't been an easy one, and so Jena takes nothing for granted. Which is important in this story.

What I missed, mainly the further I got into the book, was real character development. Although Jena definitely learns the dark secrets that her society hides, she never really grows as a person. I think, and this is completely my opinion, that the lack of real dialogue in this book is really what sets it back. We see what Jena thinks. We see what she does. We never see her really stand up for herself, or her beliefs, though. It made really falling in love with her as a character, and therefore with the characters around her, a lot more difficult.

In fact, I think what this book really needed was just more time. More pages to bring Jena into her own. More opportunity for interactions with her fellow community members and, especially, more time for adventure in the mountain. The book flew by, but I was left at the end feeling like something was missing. I loved the concepts presented in this book, but I feel like they weren't as fleshed out as they could be. So I'm sitting at a three star rating.

A Single Stone

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