The Time of the Fireflies by Kimberley Griffiths Little-Review

 

 

 

Product Details

 

• Title: The Time of the Fireflies
• Author:  Kimberley Griffiths Little
• Age Range: 8 – 12 years
• Grade Level: 3 – 7
• Lexile Measure: 720L (What’s this?)
• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Press (July 29, 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0545165636
• FTC, FYI: I received a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Description:
Critically acclaimed author Kimberley Griffiths Little spins a thrilling story of one girl’s race to unravel the curse that has haunted her family for generations.

When Larissa Renaud starts receiving eerie phone calls on a disconnected old phone in her family’s antique shop, she knows she’s in for a strange summer. A series of clues leads her to the muddy river banks, where clouds of fireflies dance among the cypress knees and cattails each evening at twilight. The fireflies are beautiful and mysterious, and they take her on a magical journey through time, where Larissa learns secrets about her family’s tragic past — deadly, curse-ridden secrets that could harm the future of her family as she knows it. It soon becomes clear that it is up to Larissa to prevent history from repeating itself and a fatal tragedy from striking the people she loves.
With her signature lyricism, Kimberley Griffiths Little weaves a thrilling tale filled with family secrets, haunting mystery, and dangerous adventure.
 
My Review:
Even though this series of books are Middle-grade books written for children ages 8-12, I can’t help but be pulled into the mystery and magic found in Kimberley’s writing and her stories. The Time of the Fireflies takes the reader back to the world that first started in The Healing Spell and continuedin Circle of Secrets and When the Butterflies Came. Though I’ve never really been to the bayou or anywhere close to Louisiana, I feel like I have through the lush, descriptive writing found in Kimberley’s books. 

The Time of the Fireflies is Larissa’s story about her family and the past. There is an element of time travel, but I’m not giving away the secret of how that happens. I do love how she time travels and who she meets, and how this changes her life and her parent’s lives. Larissa had some hard things that happened to her in the past when she almost drowned in the Bayou Teche. The year before, she fell from the broken bridge that she crossed over on a dare.Now she has a large scar running down the side of her face. Years earlier,her Aunt Gwen drowned the same way. Now she struggles to fit in and deal with the lot that life has handed her. A mysterious, creepy antique doll adds spooky parts to the story, but not too scary for the intended age group. I loved how the history of the town, Bayou Bridge, is shared from Larissa’s trips to the past.

This is another beautiful “coming of age” story for a young girl who learns to let her past anger go, and embrace the wonder of new beginnings. Young people reading this book will be in for a ride of chills, thrills, mystery and learning to love and let go of the past. I would highly recommend this book to my students and my own kids. You too will be swept away with the mystery of the Fireflies and the secrets to be found in the bayou.

Meet Author: Kimberley Griffiths Little:
Kimberley Griffiths Little was born in San Francisco, but now lives in New Mexico with her husband and their three sons.
For such award-winning middle grade novels as When the Butterflies Came, The Last Snake Runner, The Healing Spell, and Circle of Secrets, her writing has been praised as “fast-paced and dramatic,” with “characters painted in memorable detail” and “beautifully realized settings.”
Kimberley adores anything old and musty with a secret story to tell and makes way too many cookies while writing.
She’s stayed in the haunted tower room at Borthwick Castle in Scotland; sailed on the Seine in Paris; ridden a camel in Petra, Jordan; shopped the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul; and spent the night in an old Communist hotel in Bulgaria.

Her amazing, filmed-on-location book trailers can be found on Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/videos/list…

Awards: Southwest Book Award, Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel, Bank Street College Best Books of 2011 & 2014, Crystal Kite Finalist, and New Mexico Book Award Finalist.

Learn more about Kimberley and her other wonderful books here at… http://www.kimberleygriffithslittle.com