The Robber Girl

August 2, 2021
Five years before the events of Billingsley’s (Chime) fantasy-tinged western, ivory-skinned Robber Girl, 10, who can’t speak unless spoken to, was abandoned by her mother. She doesn’t remember her name or past—just that Gentleman Jack Royal rescued her and gave her the dagger with which she psychically converses. Per Jack, once they stick up a gold-laden stagecoach, he’ll give her a new name and a home; as it turns out, however, their intended target is a trap for Jack, who is wanted for murder. After Jack is arrested, Robber Girl moves in with Judge and Mrs. del Salto in Blue Roses—a town favored by the boon-granting celestial goddess for which it is named. Mrs. del Salto balks at Robber Girl’s arrival—the woman still grieves the two children she lost to smallpox, and Robber Girl doesn’t want to betray Jack by becoming “tame”—but both come to realize that the town’s patron deity works in mysterious ways. Robber Girl’s lively, lyrical first-person narration lightens Billingsley’s plot, which sensitively explores topics such as trauma, healing, and gratitude. Arguments with the hyper-literal dagger inject humor, the poignant mystery surrounding Robber Girl’s pre-Jack life imparts drive, and a subplot involving an enchanted dollhouse adds heart. All characters are cued white. Ages 10–14.

Starred review from September 1, 2021
Robber Girl only remembers the life she's lived with outlaw Gentleman Jack, who rescued her when she was abandoned at age four. Or so he says. Now she's eleven, a "wild" britches-wearing girl with a coarse voice that doesn't work properly and a constant dialogue with her beloved dagger running through her mind. Then, in a failed robbery, Gentleman Jack lands in jail, and she's taken to live with the very judge who caught him. Robber Girl now becomes Starling, surprised by but adapting to the "tame" ways of affection, respect, comfort, and domestic order that she finds with the judge and his wife. Always, though, she remains compelled to free Gentleman Jack; when she does, she finds not just herself but also her past. This novel fairly glitters with the intelligent intricacy of its plot, language, and themes, all of which are intimately joined, refracted, and intensified through Billingsley's imagery -- the dagger, a dollhouse, a songbird. Starling's narrative voice is direct yet full of wonder; the depth of her confusion and pain (as we ultimately realize) revealed with gentleness and compassion. Bringing together elements of magic, religion, and the Wild West frontier, Billingsley's (The Folk Keeper, rev. 11/99; Chime, rev. 3/11) story allows Starling, hidden even from her own self, to speak her perceptions, the lucidity of her inner life, with startling, poetic force. Deirdre F. Baker

(Copyright 2021 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

September 1, 2021
Robber Girl only remembers the life she's lived with outlaw Gentleman Jack, who rescued her when she was abandoned at age four. Or so he says. Now she's eleven, a "wild" britches-wearing girl with a coarse voice that doesn't work properly and a constant dialogue with her beloved dagger running through her mind. Then, in a failed robbery, Gentleman Jack lands in jail, and she's taken to live with the very judge who caught him. Robber Girl now becomes Starling, surprised by but adapting to the "tame" ways of affection, respect, comfort, and domestic order that she finds with the judge and his wife. Always, though, she remains compelled to free Gentleman Jack; when she does, she finds not just herself but also her past. This novel fairly glitters with the intelligent intricacy of its plot, language, and themes, all of which are intimately joined, refracted, and intensified through Billingsley's imagery -- the dagger, a dollhouse, a songbird. Starling's narrative voice is direct yet full of wonder; the depth of her confusion and pain (as we ultimately realize) revealed with gentleness and compassion. Bringing together elements of magic, religion, and the Wild West frontier, Billingsley's (The Folk Keeper, rev. 11/99; Chime, rev. 3/11) story allows Starling, hidden even from her own self, to speak her perceptions, the lucidity of her inner life, with startling, poetic force. Deirdre F. Baker

(Copyright 2021 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Starred review from August 15, 2021
Robber Girl, raised by the thieving Gentlemen, knows better than to become tame. When Gentleman Jack is arrested, the Judge takes the girl into his home. She's wild: She bites, she can't read, and she doesn't know how to eat properly. And though the girl has an Affliction making it harder for her to speak to humans, she talks with her dagger, which scolds her endlessly. The Judge insists that she go to school ("school is a taming thing," says the dagger). The Judge encourages her to name herself, and she chooses Starling ("what a terrible name," says the dagger). The Judge has an astonishing dollhouse that was built for his recently deceased daughter, and Starling gets a quest from the affectionate dolls ("stop talking to the dolls!" yells the dagger). In a setting just slightly sideways from the 19th-century American frontier, it's never entirely clear what's the imagination of an almost-feral robber girl and what are the workings of a world where allegory and reality intertwine. Though the prose is symbolically laden, it's never purple, and as Starling learns about good, kind people, her growing empathy is drawn in the gaps. The fantastical touches lend a beautiful unreality, although they also create an unfortunate connection between disfigurement and sin. All characters are White or light skinned. Gorgeously written, with ferocious emotion in the caesuras of a sparse, unreliable narrative. (Fabulism. 11-14)

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July 1, 2021
Robber Girl only remembers the life she's lived with outlaw Gentleman Jack, who rescued her when she was abandoned at age four. Or so he says. Now she's eleven, a "wild" britches-wearing girl with a coarse voice that doesn't work properly and a constant dialogue with her beloved dagger running through her mind. Then, in a failed robbery, Gentleman Jack lands in jail, and she's taken to live with the very judge who caught him. Robber Girl now becomes Starling, surprised by but adapting to the "tame" ways of affection, respect, comfort, and domestic order that she finds with the judge and his wife. Always, though, she remains compelled to free Gentleman Jack; when she does, she finds not just herself but also her past. This novel fairly glitters with the intelligent intricacy of its plot, language, and themes, all of which are intimately joined, refracted, and intensified through Billingsley's imagery -- the dagger, a dollhouse, a songbird. Starling's narrative voice is direct yet full of wonder; the depth of her confusion and pain (as we ultimately realize) revealed with gentleness and compassion. Bringing together elements of magic, religion, and the Wild West frontier, Billingsley's (The Folk Keeper, rev. 11/99; Chime, rev. 3/11) story allows Starling, hidden even from her own self, to speak her perceptions, the lucidity of her inner life, with startling, poetic force.

(Copyright 2021 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)