The Curse of Madame Petrova
by Marjolijn Hof; illus. by Annette Fienieg; trans. from Dutch by Bill Nagelkerke
Middle School    Em Querido/Levine Querido    272 pp.
9/24    9781646144532    $18.99

Silke and her twin brother, Janis, are fated to cause each other’s demise, or so predicted Madame Petrova when she read the cards for Papa and Mama before the children’s birth. Now orphaned and afraid their grasping cousins will make them fulfill this terrible destiny, Silke and Janis flee. With only a handwritten volume of their mother’s juvenile poems as a guide, Silke tries to lead Janis through an uncertain world, but to where? A spell with a traveling fortuneteller entangles them in debt; a rural innkeeper is happy to enlist their help cleaning up after rowdy soldier guests, but she can’t keep them forever. Then Silke thinks to send a letter to the grandparents whose names conclude their mother’s book of verse. The story’s preindustrial rural setting, with its wandering orphans, fortunetellers, and snowy forests, hints at the magic of a fairy tale, but Hof’s Silke is the work of realism—in her burden of anxious responsibility, her intermittent fractiousness, and especially her yearning for care. “Never to have to think about anything again,” is her desire when she finally finds a home. The disassembling of Madame Petrova’s curse is skillfully rendered and surprising, but no more so than the dismantling and reassembling of Silke’s understanding of her very being. Hof entices us with the winsomeness of folklore and offers canny humor and a valiant, persistent love that emerges from loneliness and neglect.

From the ">January/February 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.