A Single Stone

Gr 6 Up—In a compelling and poignant dystopian novel, McKinlay tells the story of young Jena, bred through generations to be as small as possible. Jena is part of a team of impossibly petite, malnourished girls who spelunk through the tight tunnels and crevices of the large mountain near their village, harvesting a lifesaving heat source—mica. They live in a matriarchal society run exclusively by a team of elder women called the "Mothers." When Jena begins to notice that the Mothers are inducing pregnancies months early in order to deliver diminutive babies, she questions everything her village has done and will do. Her disbelief, however, does not stop her from continuing to lead new recruits through the mountain in search of mica: dangerous, exhausting work upon which lives depend. On the other side of the mountain, a young girl named Lia lives in a more balanced, equal society that is not teetering on the edge of extinction. When Lia discovers a passageway through the jagged crevices, she cannot resist following it through. What ensues is a meeting of two girls from very different worlds that prompts them to doubt everything they know and believe. McKinlay's stark yet effective prose and layered world-building, reminiscent of the dystopian societies created by Margaret Atwood, combine in a haunting novel that will stay with readers.