The knock is three quick taps, a code the two sisters have used since they were small. Behind the door of the all-gender restroom at Salem Middle, Jo March is sitting on the floor with tears in her eyes and a brand-new tail poking out of the top of her jeans. Her older sister Meg spreads a sweatshirt on the tiles, because Jo hates bathroom germs, and sits beside her. Neither of them says anything. They just breathe, together, until the fur on Jo’s hands begins to fall out onto the sweatshirt. Little Monsters by Máire Roche is full of scenes like this: funny, a little gross, and quietly heartbreaking.
Four Sisters and a Very Tall Foster Mother
The March girls are foster kids in Salem, Massachusetts, and each of them is a monster of some kind. Jo gets furry, Beth grows bat wings and Amy sprouts a tail in salt water. Meg, the eldest at thirteen, grows claws and fangs whenever her feelings become too much, which she hides at all costs, because in her experience foster parents send you away the minute you become hard work.
Their current foster mother, Marmee, works two jobs, makes pancakes every morning, ducks under every doorway and asks questions Meg does not know how to answer. Next door lives Laurie, Jo’s barefoot best friend, his gruff grandfather and a newly arrived boy named John Brooke. And in the woods, in the week before Halloween, something is tearing apart henhouses.
Little Monsters by Máire Roche turns that setup into a neat middle-grade mystery. Meg keeps waking up outside with no memory of the night, and she begins to fear that the monster everyone is hunting might be her.
The Eldest Child’s Burden, as Máire Roche Sees It
The heart of the book is Meg’s exhaustion. She cleans a neighbour’s chicken coop every day to afford her sisters’ Halloween costumes. She knows everyone’s breakfast order, their sensory needs, their emergencies. And she has made herself so useful that she has no idea what she likes.
A reading group made up of parents and children will find a great deal to talk about here, because Roche is honest about what it costs a child to be the grown-up. She is also honest about anger. As the week goes on, Meg stops being polite. She snaps at her sisters, at a teacher, at her foster mother and at the one boy who has been kind to her. Little Monsters by Máire Roche does not treat this as a fall from grace. It treats it as the moment a child who has buried every feeling finally lets some of them out.
Brooks, the new boy, is the other person who sees her clearly. He has no parents around either, and he is staying with the neighbours as a favour until someone decides where he belongs. The first time Meg nearly panics in front of him, he simply looks away into the trees and breathes slowly until she copies him. It is a small, precise piece of kindness, and it tells young readers something useful about how to help a friend without making a fuss.
The book is careful, too, about how children in care are seen. Two police officers make a point of questioning the girls’ family and no one else’s, and Marmee’s quiet, pointed response is one of the most satisfying scenes in the story.
Little Women, Roughed Up by Máire Roche
Adults will notice at once how many names have survived from Little Women. Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy and Marmee; Laurie and Mr Laurence; John Brooke; Annie Moffat and Sally Gardiner; the Hummels; even a Farmer Bhaer, offering the reward. Jo cycles through Halloween costumes of famous writers and, in a lovely wink, finally settles on a certain author from nearby Concord.
What Roche keeps from Alcott is less the plot than the spirit: four very different sisters who squabble constantly and would do anything for one another. What she adds is claws, a secret neighbourhood, and a Salem where the old legends are closer to the truth than anyone admits. Little Monsters by Máire Roche works for children who have never heard of the original, and it may send some of them to find it.
Not everything works. A few reservations for anyone choosing it for a group:
- The middle chapters repeat the same cycle of hiding, lying and being found out.
- The cruellest adults are drawn without much nuance.
- The explanation of Salem’s hidden community comes in one long conversation near the end.
As for the scares, they are pitched for roughly eight to twelve: torn henhouses, a shadow in the moonlight and a mob with torches, but nothing gruesome on the page. Some darker material, including a parent who mistreats her child, is handled with care but may need a conversation with younger readers.
Questions Worth Arguing About
Start with Meg’s job. Little Monsters by Máire Roche shows a thirteen-year-old doing almost all the caring in her family. Ask children and parents alike whether Meg’s sisters should have helped more, whether she would have let them, and what the book suggests she should have done differently.
Then ask about secrets. Meg’s rule is that nobody must ever find out what the sisters are. Jo thinks the rule is making things worse. Ask who is right, and whether keeping a secret to protect someone can end up hurting them.
Finally, ask about the monster. Without giving anything away, the book makes clear that the scariest people in it are not the ones with claws. Ask the group which characters behave most monstrously, and why the book might have chosen to make that point on Halloween.
For young readers who want more, The Wish Switch by Lynn Painter is another warm middle-grade story about family and wanting things to be different. The Wondrous Tale of Lavender Wolfe by Karen Foxlee offers a spirited heroine and a curse. Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions by Ahmad Saber will suit readers who liked Meg’s journey towards accepting herself. And Small Spaces by Katherine Arden is the natural next step for anyone who wants a creepier autumn read.
What It Leaves Behind
The last image is a Halloween night in Salem with the porch lights on. Meg is in a pink satin dress, her sisters beside her in costumes that are not quite costumes, and for once she is not hiding anything. Little Monsters by Máire Roche takes a while to get there, and its villains could be more complicated. But it is a generous story about a girl who learns that asking for help is not the same as failing, and it gives families a gentle, spooky way into a conversation about who does the caring at home. That alone makes it worth a place on a Halloween reading list.