A Single Stone

March 13, 2017
This gripping story, first published in Australia, unearths the sinister underpinnings of an isolated matriarchal society. A catastrophic event known as “Rockfall” created a sealed community ruled by “the Mothers” and dependent on the harvest of mica to survive the winters. Jena, a steely 14-year-old, holds elevated status as the gifted leader of the line of tiny girls who tunnel into the rock’s crevices to locate the precious mineral. The claustrophobia inherent in this walled-off world is further heightened as Jena awakens to the gruesome practices that the Mothers employ to breed ever more waiflike miners, including those that are already out in the open (“In the mountain, in the dark, it didn’t matter what you looked like. It didn’t matter whether you had been more into your smallness or helped along by the knife, by the careful breaking and compression of your bones”). McKinlay (Below) believably evokes the dangers inherent in Jena’s burgeoning autonomous thoughts and actions in a tightly controlled dystopian environment where her grace and power ultimately prevail. Ages 10–up.

January 1, 2017

Gr 6 Up-In a compelling and poignant dystopian novel, McKinlay tells the story of young Jena, bred through generations to be as small as possible. Jena is part of a team of impossibly petite, malnourished girls who spelunk through the tight tunnels and crevices of the large mountain near their village, harvesting a lifesaving heat source-mica. They live in a matriarchal society run exclusively by a team of elder women called the "Mothers." When Jena begins to notice that the Mothers are inducing pregnancies months early in order to deliver diminutive babies, she questions everything her village has done and will do. Her disbelief, however, does not stop her from continuing to lead new recruits through the mountain in search of mica: dangerous, exhausting work upon which lives depend. On the other side of the mountain, a young girl named Lia lives in a more balanced, equal society that is not teetering on the edge of extinction. When Lia discovers a passageway through the jagged crevices, she cannot resist following it through. What ensues is a meeting of two girls from very different worlds that prompts them to doubt everything they know and believe. McKinlay's stark yet effective prose and layered world-building, reminiscent of the dystopian societies created by Margaret Atwood, combine in a haunting novel that will stay with readers. VERDICT Younger readers ready to tackle the heavy subject matter will join older YAs in delving into this unusual, evocative title recommended for both middle and high school collections.-Amanda C. Buschmann, Carroll Elementary School, Houston

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2017
In an isolated mountain village, seven girls tunnel deep into the earth in order to provide for the well-being of all.Fourteen-year-old Jena is the leader of the line, a group of seven carefully trained girls who harvest mica from deep within the mountain. For their village, heat- and light-giving mica is life-sustaining, and if not collected with reverence for the mountain, terrible things can happen, such as the Rockfall that took many villagers' lives generations ago. The Mothers, wise women who govern the village, carefully select the tiniest baby girls to be prepared for their futures as tunnelers. From birth, the chosen ones are wrapped tightly and fed very little in order to prevent them from becoming too large to fit the tight spaces that weave through the mountain. When Jena discovers the Mothers are inducing labor months early in order to birth smaller babies for training, she questions everything she was raised to believe. The novel simultaneously takes on dystopian and time-slip qualities, but it is of neither genre, and readers will appreciate being left to figure it out for themselves. Similarly, the villagers seem to be pale-skinned but are otherwise racially indeterminate. The prose flows gracefully, like rivulets down a mountainside. Like its classic predecessors, Nan Chauncy's Tangara (1960) and Patricia Wrightson's The Nargun and the Stars (1974), this Australian novel explores the ways in which identity is tied to the land one inhabits. A beautiful, sparkling gem. (Fiction. 10-14)

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January 1, 2017
Grades 5-8 Jena is the leader of her line of seven girls primed since birth to navigate natural mountain passageways and harvest the mica that fuels their community. The mountain is revered, and the Mothers lead the isolated village nestled in its basin. Digging passages is forbidden, so slim-framed girls are bound tightly from infancy to create lithe figures that might easily slip through rock crevices to gather the harvests. McKinlay's middle-grade dystopia quietly builds a peaceful society, in which Jena is proud of her position and honors the word of the Mothers. When her adoptive mother goes into labor far too early, however, Jena suspects a plot to produce smaller girls to work the line. As she investigates her suspicions and recalls events from her childhood, cracks begin to appear in the Mothers' stories. Tension twists through the narrative in the claustrophobic mountain passages, the polite yet oppressively controlled society, and Jena's risky rebellion. Action is minimal, but detail-oriented readers who like stepping into a carefully crafted world will find plenty to ponder in this book's pages.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2018
In an isolated settlement governed by "The Mothers," the only source of fuel is mica harvested by pre-adolescent girls starved to keep them thin enough to slip into mountain crevices. At fourteen, Jena makes a discovery that causes her to question her society's rules and her own memories. This tense, original dystopia contains resonances to our world (fracking, female mutilation, anorexia) but no easy, reductive message.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

September 1, 2017
Jena lives in a completely isolated mountain valley settlement, in a dreary, hardscrabble world governed by the matriarchal group "The Mothers." During bitter winters, the only source of fuel is mica, which is harvested from inside the mountains by "the line," a group of seven pre-adolescent girls. (The nature of mica is the only "magic" detail in the story.) The girls are bound from birth and chronically starved to keep them thin enough to slip into the mountain's stone crevices. When Jena, at fourteen, discovers that the Mothers are secretly giving pregnant women drugs to bring about premature births, to produce smaller and smaller daughters, she suffers a crisis of faith and begins to question the rules and assumptions of her society as well as her own memories. This is an elaborate piece of world-building, complete with a parallel plot involving Jena's long-lost sister and the backstory of an earthquake that explains how the settlement came to be--but what keeps the narrative dynamic are the characters, limned in spare prose but completely convincing, and an original setting that is specific in its every detail and mythic in its effect. The first sentence induces claustrophobia, and it never lets up as tension builds. This dystopia contains resonances to our world (fracking, female mutilation, anorexia) but no easy, reductive message. sarah ellis

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

January 30, 2015