Greenglass House, by Kate Milford

I just re-read this one for a couple of reasons: First, because I picked it for the library’s most recent Tween Book Club. And second, because Josh has been re-reading the whole series, and sometimes just being around someone revisiting a beloved favorite can be weirdly contagious?

If you haven’t read it: It’s about Milo, who lives in the Greenglass House—which is also a smugglers’ inn, HOW COOL IS THAT—with his parents. He’s looking forward to a quiet winter break and Christmas with just him and his parents… when a whole bunch of unexpected guests arrive.

And then they all get snowed in.

And then they realize there’s a thief in their midst.

So Milo and Meddy, the cook’s daughter, decide to catch the thief and reclaim the stolen items.

It’s a beautifully plotted mystery AND it’s a lovely, warm story about family and friendship and belonging. Milo is a transracial adoptee—he’s of Chinese descent and his parents are white—and has a lot of curiosity about his birth family, but feels guilt about that curiosity and works his way through that over the course of the book, and Meddy has a family history of her own that she’s working her way through as well.

It deals with grief and disappointment, but also love and joy and forgiveness and generosity. It’s a Christmas story, and like all of my favorite Christmas stories, it’s simultaneously happy and kinda sad.

The worldbuilding is amazing, in terms of the descriptions and feel of the house itself, but also the stories and mythology surrounding the town and the town’s history and the smugglers and their culture and on and on and on and on. The scenes with Milo and Meddy searching the house delight me in the same way as the scenes in The Secret Garden that feature Mary Lennox exploring all of the long-closed rooms in Misselthwaite Manor. I think that delight has a lot to do with it being the sort of exploration that I, the world’s most dedicated Indoor Kid, can get behind, but there’s also something profoundly appealing about figuring out the history of a place and its residents via the objects and ephemera that they leave behind? (Profoundly appealing TO ME, anyway.)

I love it, I love it, I love it.

It’s one of those books that I finish reading only to want to turn to the beginning and start again.

PS. If it ever gets made into a miniseries, I would like Ted Danson to play Mr. Vinge, because of the snazzy socks—we know from The Good Place that he can certainly pull those off—but also because Ted Danson would totally nail the various shades of the character.

PPS. Meddy’s rage, when she fully embraces it, is brilliant and somewhat terrifying and entirely earned. I do love middle grade novels that deal with children and anger. Gorgeous. *chef’s kiss*