Middle Grade Book Review: A Stitch In Time by Daphne Kalmar

Hope and Heartache Interweave in "A Stitch in Time" 

In Daphne Kalmar’s A Stitch In Time it’s 1927. Three weeks after her beloved Pop’s death, 11-year old Donut’s cozy Vermont life is overturned by the arrival of her city-dwelling spinster Aunt-- her sole living relative. Dead set on uprooting Donut from her rural Vermont village and enrolling her in a prestigious girl’s academy in Boston it’s only a matter of time before Aunt Agnes shatters life as Donut knows it.


Still reeling and grieving from the loss of her Pops, Donut seeks solace in the homes and words of her friends and friends who were close with Pops. Especially Sam, a giant-hearted taxidermist, Pop’s best friend, and Donut’s mentor; and Marcel, a French-Canadian expat, and trapper.

When Donut's not with Sam she pals around with eccentric kids her own age; like the rascally Ducharme brothers Pete and Wally, and her best friend Tiny, a sweet and loyal farm boy who is strongly bonded with his cow. Each of these three boys are so colourful and they dash off the pages of A Stitch in Time with all the force of a freight train. Like Donut, they are more than just words on a page.

In a last ditch effort to escape Aunt Agnes, Donut flees to Cabin Chanticleer, (Marcel’s unused cabin) planted deep in the Vermont woods. The cobwebby, chilly and vacant abode may not be the most welcoming, but it’s still a space for Donut to stay in Vermont. Along with her Pop’s last invention, a metal folding boat dubbed Nehi, Donut sets out to carve out her own life in the wilderness.

I’ve never been to Vermont, but after reading A Stitch in Time I can visualize the woodsy state to the point where I can practically smell the pine trees and feel the scratchy wet wool of Donut’s blanket after getting caught in the rain. I could hear the calls of the bears at night, the crackling of branches and the brush around the cabin, and feel the heat radiating from the fireplace. I could see the kindling catching sparks and fending off the chill from dark and wild woods beyond.

One of my favourite things about A Stitch In Time is the message that people aren’t always as they first seem. Once Donut takes a moment to talk to her Auntie, actually face-to-face talk to her and listen to what she has to say, she learns about Agnes’s progressive beliefs, staunch feminism and her not-so-secret suffragette days. Agnes isn’t setting out to destroy Dorothy’s (as she insists on calling her niece by her full name) life. She isn’t just an oatmeal making, lumpy knitting, sour-puss spinster. Just like Donut is not all anger and defiance. In her grieving Donut does come across in some moments as petulant. I see it as a clenched fists, grit teeth way of coping with the hand she’s dealt.

The way she stares down the world may possibly make older readers label her bratty, moody, or ungrateful. My stance is that Donut is none of the above. She’s an eleven-year-old girl who’s hurting, hurting, hurting. She’s a fearlessly self-reliant spitfire with a fierce love for her friends and a sneaky taxidermy hobby. Maybe it’s my own heritage as a born and bred New Englander but Donut has the kind of resolve, quiet strength, and hardiness that many of us have-- even more so at such an early time period in such a rural village! Survival, survival, survival. Ultimately Donut is a survivor and a fighter. Being maple syrup sweet and adorable isn’t in her nature.

I LOVED A Stitch In Time. Donut’s story won me over two chapters in. I breezed through the novel far more quickly than I wanted to. I just could not put it down. The prose stayed sharp and focused, and there were no bumpy fillers or disjointed side plots. The sense of time, both in terms of the days and season, as well as the year, are so so so prominent. It’s distinctive and accompanied by a rich tapestry of...details! YES. My favourite thing! 

When authors opt to immerse us in the world of their making with their words, they spin a sort of magical connection between the reader and the book.

A Stitch In Time is that kind of book.

There’s no ‘telling’ or dumbed down stating the obvious here. This is the kind of middle-grade book that proves a well-told story revolving around realistic and complex characters can be universally loved by ANYONE of any age.

I’m convinced that younger me, at age ten, twelve, or even sixteen, would love this book a much as I do now at twenty-six. 10-year old me would especially gravitate towards this book, because at that age, I’d lost my Grandpa, who was a gigantic part of my life, to stomach cancer. Losing him shook my entire universe and flooded me with emotions.

Grieving as a kid isn’t always easy to understand, or to write. Nor is it a one-size-fits-all experience. Debut author Daphne Kalmar NAILS one perspective of grieving with how she writes Donut.

Penned with evocative prose that flows addictively from page to page, A Stitch In Time is a glimpse back at a bygone era fronted by a brave young girl who models self-reliance and vulnerability in a tale of grief and loss tempered by comfort, hope, and healing.


Highly Recommended.





Graphic created by me on Canva.
Lyanna Mormont (aka if Donut had a "TV show" counterpart) gif from Giphy