Karen Moroughan (Children's Literature)
Elspet Mary is a child whose life is fraught with loss. When her mother dies suddenly, her father sends her to live with her mother's sister. She learns that with some people and in some places, she is welcome, but in other places she is not. Eventually her restabilized life is again upset when her new family decides to move from Scotland to Canada. As she and others from the family prepare for travel, there are some who plan to stay behind, refusing to leave their "belonging place." As Elspet Mary leaves hers, her trip becomes bittersweet. Once in Canada, she must share her new home with strangers. In doing so, she learns that there will always be a place where she belongs. Although the story is a good one, its dialogue is set in thick Scottish brogue, making this a difficult book for younger readers. 1997, Viking Books, $13.99. Ages 13 up.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, 1997)
A young Scottish orphan suffers doubts about the completeness of her acceptance into her adopted family in this pointed but comforting novel, set in the middle of the 19th century. After her mother dies in a street accident, four-year-old Elspet is taken in by the Gordons, the large family of her mother's childhood friend, and formally adopted two years later when her sailor father dies at sea. Having lost her only daughter to diphtheria, Ailsa Gordon welcomes Elspet lovingly, but the worm of doubt planted by Elspet's grandfather when he coldly suggests that she be sent to her father's people prevents her from feeling fully secure in the household. Elspet feels bereft again when the Gordons emigrate to the Canadian woods, leaving her cat and beloved matriarch Granny Ross behind, but gains a measure of solace from a new cat, and better yet, a new friend. Elspet's uncertainty years later suggests that she may never be completely free of it--but as long as she never has to look far for evidence that she is loved, her doubts can be allayed. The plot is predictable, and, except for a dreadful sea voyage, Little (His Banner Over Me, 1995, etc.) barely notes the daily details of pioneer life, but Elspet's character is conveyed by a distinct, individual voice, and the manner in which her security is repeatedly shaken by minor remarks or incidents drives home the fragility of her sense of belonging. 1997, Viking, $13.99. © 1997 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jessica Higgs (Resource Links, August 1997 (Vol. 2, No. 6))
Jean Little's newest book follows her familiar theme of children facing emotional conflicts and learning how to look inward to find their resolution. The Belonging Place is the story of Elspet Mary who travels with her Scottish family to become a settler in the wilderness of Upper Canada. For Elspet, more upsetting even than the long sea voyage and the overland trek to the family's isolated cottage is the internal journey she must take as she struggles to create her own "belonging place" in her new wild surroundings. Little allows Elspet to tell her own story. On the very first page we hear how she falls off the haywagon and breaks her leg. Since she cannot work or move much, Elspet has plenty of time on her hands and to relieve her boredom, her Granny Ross suggests she write a story to amuse the family in the evenings. To Elspet's even greater surprise, Granny suggests that she write about her own life since "she has done a mickle lot of living for a maid in her 16th year." So Elspet begins to recount her life, starting from the "day Mam did not come." She leaves out nothing, creating a literary quilt like the cloth ones her Granny makes, with "lots of strong colours, not just pretty pinks and whites." This narrative framework wraps around the book and keeps Elspet's story both visual and well contained. When she was four, Elspet's mother was killed in a street accident. Elspet is estranged from her father who has been away at sea for most of her life but upon hearing of his wife's death, he returns to her, and takes Elspet Mary to live with her mother's brother and his wife. After a long night journey under the full moon and a fierce, welcoming hug from her newly found aunt, Elspet feels she has found a "belonging place." With a new family to love, the awful memories of the loss of her mother fade. At age six, Elspet learns that her father's ship has gone down, and now being a orphan, she is legally adopted by her aunt and uncle, and Glen Buchan becomes her true home. Elspet Mary's contentment does not last. Her adopted father announces plans to go to Upper Canada and homestead and that he will send for the family in a year's time. Everyone else is thrilled at the thought of the new opportunites, but Elspet is horrified. Suddenly all her old fears surface. Why would they want to leave Glen Buchan for the unknown? In strange lands anything could happen--mothers could be killed on the street or fathers lost at sea. In strange lands you have to leave your pet cat and beloved Granny behind. Could she ever belong there? But the Gordon family do leave and survive a horrible sea crossing and an exhausting trek to their cottage. Little supplies rich historical detail about the hardship for the settlers, discussing what they ate and wore, and how hard they worked as they struggled to make homes in the wild. Almost as soon as she gets off the boat, Elspet finds a stray kitten, and after gaining her mother's grudging permission to keep it, she calls it Purrkin in memory of Furkin left back in Scotland. This is an important moment for Elspet as she realizes that if she can provide a "belonging place" for the kitten, she must be able to provide one for herself. As the family adjusts to their new life, Elspet and her mother long for company. Elspet especially would like to have a girl to play with to counter-balance all her brothers. One day, the crowing of a rooster signals that new people must be close by and soon the Gordons meet their neighbours. The new family, the Mackays, do have a little girl about Elspet's age and also a baby boy, but an adpopted boy named Jamie whose real parents have died of cholera. The Mackays lost their real son also, but although she looks after the baby, Mrs. Mackay will not accept Jamie and and calls him a "changeling" as she grieves for the loss of her own child. When Elspet hears that Jamie is an orphan like herself, her old fears return and she wonders if her adopted parents ever wanted to give her away as Mrs. Mackay does Jamie. She wonders if they were only acting out of duty when they took her in. Elspet is overwhelmed by her own insecurities and the plight of the orphan baby with whom she identifies. This does not go unnoticed by Elspet's mother, who devises a plan to assuage Elspet's fears and help Mrs Mackay come to appreciate what she has instead of being ruled by what she has lost. And both the orphans will discover that they have "belonged" all along. Elspet Mary comes to know that although she is in a new world, it is indeed a world where she belongs. Like her pet kitten, she must learn to trust her feelings and her family and to not let her fears of loss and the unknown trick her into doubting who she is and to whom she is connected. This is a lesson that Elspet can hold within her and empowers her to create belonging places for others as well as herself. And so, at 16 as she writes the story of her life, Elspet Mary can look back at her journey and know that she has truly come home at last. Thematic links include: Historical fiction; Immigration--fiction; Orphans--fiction; Families--fiction. Resource Links Rating: G (Good, great at times, generally useful!), Grade 4-7. 1997, Viking, Hdbk, $19.99. Ages 9 to 12.

Pat Mathews (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, January 1998 (Vol. 51, No. 5))
In the tragic opening of this short novel, the tiny Elspet Mary loses her mother: "She was knocked down by a runaway horse. Her head struck a paving stone. She was dead when they took her up." Her Mam's untimely death, followed by her seafaring father's demise shortly after he leaves her with her Aunt Ailsa and Uncle Will Gordon, creates the emotional background for this first-person narration set in Scotland and Canada in the 1830s. The young child's voice resonates with an immediacy and integrity as she tells her story. We follow her from Aberdeen to her new home in Glen Buchan, where she struggles to belong with the help of a reassuringly normal family and the feisty Granny Ross. Her child view filters events with a gentle poignancy as Elspet comes to terms with her origins and her new place ("'She's not like us,' Grandmother Gordon had said. Mother almost erased those words by telling me, over and over, that I was not only like them; I was theirs"). While the plot is often driven by the simple dynamics of a happy, bustling, and sometimes stressful family life, there are just enough exciting episodes to pick up the pace: the death of Elspet's mother; the Gordons' harrowing journey to their new homestead in Canada; the fate of Jamie, a homely orphan baby. Young readers will appreciate this quiet but strong little page-turner with a protagonist learning to belong against the backdrop of one family's abounding love, simple faith, and pioneering spirit. R--Recommended. (c) Copyright 1998, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1997, Viking, 124p, $13.99. Grades 4-6.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, 1997)
In a tale set in early-nineteenth-century Scotland, Elspet Mary must live with her uncle and aunt after the death of her parents. She and her relatives immigrate to Canada, but Elspet feels her family is merely doing its duty by her until her fears are resolved in a happy ending. An interesting pioneer tale, but readers may eventually find Elspet's gloom and uncertainty about her adoptive family's affections excessive. Category: Fiction. 1997, Viking, 124pp.. Ages 9 to 12. Rating: 4: Recommended, with minor flaws.