I found The Girl with the Glass Bird through my library network’s search engine. I’ve been on a boarding school kick lately, and so I have several books checked out from the library and in my reading queue from that genre.

The Girl with the Glass Bird is a middle grade novel by Esme Kerr. As the story begins, a young English girl named Edie has been sent to live with her cruel cousins after her beloved grandmother is sent to a nursing home. She hates her cousins, and they torment her mercilessly. When a distant relative offer to pay her tuition at a prestigious boarding school, she is grateful for the opportunity.

But the offer is not the magnanimous gesture it might appear to be. Edie is being sent to Knight’s Haddon to monitor one of the other students. Anastasia is the daughter of a Russian oligarch, and she is absolutely miserable at boarding school. She complains to her father that her things are being stolen, but the headmistress seems to think that Anastasia is fabricating these incidents since her missing things always turn up.

Ostensibly, Edie is supposed to determine whether Anastasia’s claims are legitimate or if she is creating the problems for attention. Of course, this is a top-secret operation, and Edie cannot say anything to anyone about her true purpose at the school.

If I told you whether or not Anastasia was telling the truth about her missing things, it would give away the whole story. You’ll have to read for yourself if you want to find out. Needless to say, I did not things to progress is quite that direction, and it was very dramatic.

Edie wants to believe that someone is bullying her friend by hiding her things, but all evidence seems to point to the contrary. Edie must also confront her own feelings; she misses her grandmother very much, and she finds her assignment to be very frustrating and stressful.

I would absolutely recommend The Girl with the Glass Bird. There’s plenty of “rah rah boarding school” going on. King’s Haddon is a proper school, with sports and lessons and dormitories; this is a great setting for such a junior psychological thriller. I am looking forward to reading more from Esme Kerr, especially the sequel to this book!