The Woman in the Wall is about a young girl named Anna who is so shy that she escapes from her family and the real world by living in the walls of her antebellum home. Anna's two sisters, Kirsty and Andrea, her mom and her friend "F", are the main characters in the story. The story takes place in their antebellum home located in Washington. Before the age of seven, Anna lives a normal life with her family but always feels small and invisible to them. Then the day comes when her mom wants her to attend school and this is when Anna escapes. Anna escapes into the walls of her house and this is where she creates her new life and remains there for seven years. Anna is unseen from anyone until she receives a letter from "F". "F" becomes her friend and talks her into coming out of her hiding place. Anna decides to come out for the first time and attend a Halloween party that her sister, Andrea, is having. She realizes that she is still scared by all of the people. She tries to escape again after everyone realizes who she is but this time her family finds her before she can go back into the wall. This book would be appropriate for seventh grade girls. With all of the things that Anna deals while she grows up relates well with young girls. The book is definitely a page-turner and will always keep the reader interested.

Anna is shy. Actually, she is profoundly shy, immensely shy, Olympian shy. "Shy" doesn't even do justice to how awful it is for her to be around other people, even her own family. So, for much of her early life, she hides.

Hiding is the theme of this book where young Anna, terrified at the thought of being enrolled in school, first makes a secret room for herself under the master staircase, then slowly but surely remodels first rooms, then the whole house, constructing labyrinthine secret passageways to hide herself away in. Her family, who had difficulty seeing her in the first place, at first seems happy for the gifts she cleverly makes--food, cookies, clothing--but gradually, so gradually, seem to forget she ever even existed.

Anna grows up within the walls of this huge house, squeezing through narrow passages, emerging only at night to bathe and eat. Her family goes on without her, filling the house with friends and even a suitor for her mother. When the prospect arises that Anna's mother may marry and even move, leaving her there, unknown inside the walls, she must begin to face the most terrifying choice of her life: to stay hidden, or to emerge from the very walls of the house.

"The Woman in the Wall" has been described as a 'not-quite-fantasy' and it is that very mood that stays with you throughout the book. It's told from Anna's perspective as she builds and creeps through the house, peeping in on her family and family's friends and living vicariously through them. The concept may seem outlandish at first--a young woman so afraid of other people that she constructs secret passages in her own house without anyone noticing--but it quickly becomes believable to the reader. We've all had times where we wish we could disappear for some reason or another, and Anna has successfully done it. Many readers will find themselves reminded of childhood hideaways they may have constructed: behind the couch, in the cellar, a corner of the attic. Secret places that we could hide in and not be found until we wanted to be found. This is what speaks to us about Anna's story: the power to be hidden at will, to exert some control in an uncontrolled world. To be a calm observer instead of a frightened participant.

I found it to be a very moving novel, sticking like burrs to my mental socks (to borrow a phrase from Robert Fulghum) and hard to forget even after I had finished with it. I may have put the book down, but it's not put ME down, yet. Anna's is a story very worth reading, and this book is highly recommended.

It's been some time since I read this book, but the feeling lingers that the story is a gem. Anna is shy beyond shy. She feels invisible, unloved and uncared for. She hides behind the walls of her house, until everyone just about forgets about her.

What a wonderful metaphor for those awkward years when we wish someone would notice us, and yet, we feel so shy or embarrassed or ugly, that we want to hide.

Anna's encounters with the outside world grow more and more alluring until she begins to feel it's impossible to continue hiding. Her awakening is triumphant.

I highly recommend this book.

The story of a goose girl who seems to be living in a fairy tale. An old hag gives her special gifts of great beauty, bewitched hair, and the ability to cry diamonds. All this wealth attracts a cruel King and a young Prince who seems to be a little simple. She has to come up with a way to hold off the two suitors, and plan an escape from her tower.

Her geese help her escape the tower, but then she gets caught by three ogresses. The Prince comes after her, gets caught too, so together they have to save each other. Together they go from peril to peril.

It is fun to pick out all the plot twists based on familiar old fairy tales. Even the geese are enchanted. I got so involved with the great characters that I didn't want the story to end.

Ever since her mother's death five years ago, Alexandria Aurora Fortunato has lived in a small cottage and tended the geese her family has always owned. Now fifteen, Alexandria would be happy enough to continue living her simple life. But everything changes on the day Alexandria is kind enough to feed a beggar, who rewards Alexandria with three gifts - to be as lovely as the dawn, to have tears that turn to diamonds, and to have gold dust fall from her hair. At first, Alexandria tries to continue on with her normal life, but it soon becomes clear that isn't possible. Two powerful men want her hand in marriage - the despicable King Claudio the Cruel and his rival, the dimwitted Prince Edmund. For her safety, Prince Edmund forces Alexandria to live in a tower. With the help of her faithful geese, Alexandria escapes, but soon she is forced to team up with Prince Edmund. Along their journey, they face many perils, and Alexandria discovers her secret heritage. This was a wonderful, lighthearted fantasy with a fairy-tale plot. Alexandria was an entertaining, funny narrator. I highly reccomend this book.

A young goose girl named Alexandria Aurora Fortunato lives a simple life all alone with her twelve geese as companions in a small cottage. Well, at least she did for a while until one unexcpected event when she met up with an old hag, her Fairy Godmother, who made her as lovely as the dawn, gold dust flows from her hair when brushed, and diamonds when she cries. But thats just the beginning. What seemed like the perfect gift turned out to be a horrible curse. First, because of her surpassing beauty she is locked up in a tower and is forced to choose from two suitors whom she must marry. One is a greedy King and the other a dumbwitted prince. From there on she and her companions meet up with many more adventures. I don't want to spoil the story so I won't say anything else. You'll have to read it yourself to find out.

This is a very entertaining and a fast read book. The book seems to go by so fast you wish their was more. The author adds humor throughout the whole book and adds a suprise twist at the end. So, make sure you have batteries in your flashlight because this will keep you up all night! If you liked this book check out "Ella Enchanted" by Gail Carson Levine.

Owl is different. Her name is strange, her facial shape is strange, her food is strange (i mean, it consists of mice and rodents!) She's just plain different. And as much as she tries to hide it, either by secretly squeezing mice into her sandwiches or by making no contact with regular human children, she knows she is a wereowl, not human. A shape shifter. Different. And what makes it all worse is that she's in love. That's the real way to complicate a young adolescent's life still more, and Owl for one takes hers very seriously. Her infatuated crush may seem a little stange to readers, but Owl is plainly smitten with her thirty-something-year-old science teacher, Mr. Linstrom. And to tie the plot through, Owl finds that there is a strange lunatic boy hanging around her darling Mr. Linstrom's house. And the plot thickens.

Overall, Owl's uncanny strangeness, cool descriptions, and overall imaginative plot, you'll find this book and interesting read, despite the fact that the book is cute, fun, and interesting, rather than interllectually stimulating.

You've seen them around. Those weird kids, as a lot of people would call them. The ones who don't act "normal", don't dress "normal", or is "just plain freaky" because they aren't something you are. My friend Bobby would call them freaks of nature, but let's not get into that.

Well, what if that weird kid was more than meets the eye? Sure, Owl, at 14, eats real (albeit dead) rats in her sandwiches, but who would have thought that she lived up to her namesake as a were-owl? And we thought her parents were just down-and-out hippies. Well, they are, sort of. Anyways, her eating rats in public don't go over too well with that elite popular crowd, but she doesn't care because she found her mate: her science teacher. Every night, she stalks-er, watches- her-harumph!-love from a tree. In her owl form, of course, or else she'd look like an idiot perched on that thingy. But all that changes when the new owl in town flies over the cuckoo's nest...

A really good story for the kid who always didn't feel "normal" or "didn't fit in". Try being the kid who REALLY didn't fit in or ISN'T normal.

Owl Tycho, 14, is in love with her science teacher, Mr. Lindstrom. Nothing strange about that, right? Wrong. Owl IS an owl, or at least a wereowl. She perches every night outside of Mr. Lindstorm's window, and watches him sleep. But when a strange, violent boy appears in the woods just outside of her beloved one's house, and a stranger mad owl in the woods as well, Owl may be in danger...And Mr. Lindstorm! In this funny, heartwarming, romance/mystery, you'll learn about Owl's strange ways, and how-or IF-she saves herself and her one-way lover. Charming, mystical, a wonderfully good read