With no work for tailors and music teachers during the Great Depression, Ellie’s parents moved their family onto Echo Mountain three years ago. They build a cabin and carve out a subsistence-style living. Twelve-year-old Ellie loves the mountain and the freedom of life on it. Her little brother is like her, but Ellie’s mother and older sister dreadfully miss city life. One day, while helping her father fell a tree, an accident occurs, and although not her fault, Ellie shoulders the blame. Lonely and emotionally estranged from her family, Ellie explores the woods past where she is allowed to go and makes friends with the mysterious “hag” who lives at the top of the mountain. Cate knows about healing—but will Ellie’s family listen?

Ellie is an incredible character, wild and tender and brave and wise beyond her years—yet realistically so. Wolk creates a family full of complex emotions and relationships as seen through the eyes and heart of a child. The story teaches so many good lessons and does so subtly, within the heart-pounding suspense of the many conflicts. The way Wolk weaves together the different elements of the story is stupendous. Highly recommended. Ages 10 and up.

Ever since I read Wolf Hollow, Lauren Wolk has become one of my favorite middle-grade authors, along with Jennifer Brubaker Bradley. Both can give readers something to consider, think about how they would work through the issue, and grow from reading their books.

As with Wolk’s Wolf Hollow, Echo Mountain is an incredible feat in historical fiction and fiction about rural populations.

Ellie and her family have to move to Echo mountain due to the Depression. Ellie and her father love it there but her mother and sister are having a hard time. After an accident causes her father to fall into a coma, Ellie is determined to find a way to “wake” him up. She also meets a couple of new friends and they help her learn some things about herself and help her family learn the strength they all have.

Beautifully written historical fiction that tells the story of a family struggling in the wake of the stock market crash that kicked of the Great Depression. Ellie and her family have been forced to leave behind their life in town to try and make a go of it on the mountain. As if losing everything wasn't enough, they soon suffer yet another tragedy. This is a story about women, isolation, family, hardship, joy, nature and resilience.

Lauren Wolk again writes about a time and place in history that is unique and interesting, with strong and sympathetic characters to win you over. I particularly love her independent and fierce girls!

This was a really great Middle Grade book about the Great Depression, it focused on important history that kids might not have learned before. The characters and plot were very well written, I really enjoyed it and I know my students will too.

Lauren Wolk's writing style hooked me from the very beginning of Echo Mountain. After the stock market crash, Ellie's family is forced to build a new home on Echo Mountain. Unlike her mother and sister, Ellie loves the freedom of the mountain. After an accident that leaves Ellie's father in a coma, Ellie must do whatever it takes to bring her father back. Ellie's determination and courage make her a character that you find yourself rooting for. Lauren Wolk did an excellent job creating a story that won't easily be forgotten.

Beautifully written story that will surely be a Newbery contender with well-developed characters and a gorgeously depicted setting that makes the environment feel like a character in the story. The audience appeal, however, is definitely more suited to adults or those rare kids who want a deep and literary read, or like getting a glimpse into the lives of someone else without any specific villain or good/bad dichotomy playing out in the characters. This is not the kind of title that will circulate well in my library even though it was a lovely story for me personally to read.

An absolutely riveting story set in the 1930's in Maine. Ellie endures so much hardship and pain when her father nearly died from a fallen tree. He is in a coma for the longest time, and as he is Ellie learns to fall for the natural world she lives in on Echo Mountain. Even though the outdoors can be something so peaceful, Ellie cannot let go of the burden and blame she has for her father's accident. This story is woven with such detailed imagery, a strong and independent female protagonist, and pure courage and hope. The relationships that Ellie builds with her often negatively-talked-about neighbors are so beautiful, and the ending leaves you in tears.

A great story of family and perseverance. Very lovely setting and prose. I think this one would be great for fans of adventure stories and realistic fiction alike.

Very slow, but beautifully written. Great character development. I am not sure what kind of middle grade reader to pass this to at the library.

I absolutely loved Lauren Wolk’s debut middle grades novel, Wolf Hollow. I was excited when she published Beyond the Bright Sea and just as excited to see her publish this story, Echo Mountain. However, similar to Beyond the Bright Sea, I felt like Echo Mountain fell a little short when compared to Wolf Hollow.

Lauren Wolk is a master storyteller, and that doesn’t change with this book. The plot of Echo Mountain was superb. I love how the story ties together. The characters were good, but I felt like they were always on the move - it was a little much to keep up with and didn’t seem necessary at times. The story was also very slow to start. I did not get “hooked” until about 1/3 of the way in, but once I was hook - I was hooked. I do worry that her primary audience will abandon this book before they get to meat of the story.

Overall, I give this book 4/5 stars. It was good. I’ll buy a copy for my library and recommend it to students.

Ellie has spent the majority of her life living a comfortable life in town with her father who works as a tailor and makes fine clothes, her mother who teaches at the local school during the day and is a musician at night, and her two siblings. Unfortunately, the Great Depression comes and slowly eats away at the family’s means of living until they are forced to abandon town and go live up in the mountains of Maine. Ellie and her family struggle to learn how to live in the rough wilderness. Just as Ellie and her father begin to adapt to their new life, tragedy strikes, leaving Ellie to try and fill her father’s shoes and care for her family while still remaining true to herself. Dealing with a mother and sister who blame her and despise their new life causes Ellie to spend more and more time exploring the mountain until one day Ellie meets someone new who just may be the key to helping Ellie learn to trust her instincts and begin to heal the damage done a few months prior.
Echo Mountain explores what it means to be a kid trapped by tragedy and circumstance and to try everything you can to find a balance between trying to be a hero and being a kid. Strung throughout the story are the ripples of love and how it can trap and smother you in one moment or save you when you truly need it the most. Written much like how a preteen would process the events of the book if writing it down in a journal with bits of foreshadowing sprinkled throughout, Echo Mountain can occasionally seem rushed but I believe that this allows it to seem more realistic. In the end, Echo Mountain is “a matter of moments, strung together like rain. To try to touch just one drop at a time, to try to […] reckon their worth—each by each—was impossible. To stand in the rain was the thing. To be in it.”

Unfortunately, I could not start this book before it was archived on NetGalley. :(
But I love the author and know I would not have been disappointed!

Thanks to Penguin and NetGalley for providing me a copy to review.

This book is set during the Great Depression and tells the story of a family who left the town where they were no longer able to live and moved to a rural area near a mountain where they farmed, hunted, fished and either lived off the land or bartered for things they needed or wanted with a handful of neighbors. The family’s self sufficiency and especially the grit of the main character (a 12 year old girl) is inspiring.

A lovely book with timely themes, amazing characters and language and setting that transport the reader to Depression-era Maine. Plus a tough and somewhat defiant protagonist that drives the story in ways you have to admire.

The writing is exquisite, the tale’s threads are tangled and tantalizing but always connected together, and she skillfully transforms nature into a character unto itself.

Wolk is a master of words, and she knows how to create beautiful and poignant pictures in a reader’s mind through her words. This is a story of both hope and despair, and readers will feel themselves being drawn into the main characters’ plights quickly. There aren’t any villains in this tale, only people forced to make difficult choices or suffering from the results of the choices they have made. I do wish there had been an author’s note at the end that told about the treatments that were used in the story to help the different injured or ill characters and gave real examples of their usages historically. Beyond that, this book was exactly what I expected from this author, and it did not disappoint.

This book was beautiful and brilliant and I can foresee it becoming a classic for all ages. This is my first book from Lauren Wolk but I’ll be reading all her titles.

This took me forever to read. Granted, I stopped a couple of times to read more time-sensitive books, but still... how long was this? I really liked the characters, all of them, even the not-so-nice ones. I am a fan of Lauren Wolk for sure!

Lauren Wolk’s previous book, Beyond the Bright Sea, is one of my absolute favourite books. When I heard Lauren had a new book coming out I was very eager to get my hands on it and see where she would take me next. The cover alone is one of the best covers of 2020 and would draw any reader in! In Echo Mountain, Lauren Wolk transports readers back to a time that is both simpler and harder. There is no technology so distractions are few and it’s quiet, but the doctor is far away and you must trade for food or grow it yourself. Lauren introduces us to Ellie and her family, making a home on Echo Mountain.

It is 1934 and Ellie’s family have been hit hard by the stock market crash. Her father was a tailor and her mother was a teacher but business for them both had dried up, so the family must move from the city to the wilds of Echo Mountain. They survive by growing food and trading what they can. When Ellie’s father slips in to a coma after an accident on the farm their lives are changed forever. While Ellie’s mother and sister use lullabies to soothe him, Ellie sees that this is doing nothing to help him get better. Ellie determines to do anything she can to wake her father, from pouring ice cold water on him, putting a snake in his bedroom to make her sister scream, and making her own medicine. When Ellie is out collecting ingredients for her medicine a mysterious dog leads her to a hut the top of the mountain, where she discovers a sick, old woman called Cate. As Ellie helps Cate to heal she starts to heal her family. The more that Ellie learns about those around her, the more connections she uncovers

Echo Mountain is an engaging, character-driven story that leaves you feeling like you have just lived Ellie’s life right beside her. Ellie is a person who has strong emotional connection to things around her. She feels the pain of tree roots as she walks through the woods, she feels great sadness when honeybees die trying to sting her. As you read you feel Ellie’s determination to wake her father and the frustration that her sister and mother won’t break out of their slump. Adults in the story keep mentioning that she is ‘only 12’ but she is the one using her commonsense and is willing to do anything she can to help the ones she loves, whether that is her puppy, her father or Cate. She realises that to save her family she is the one to do it. If she doesn’t know how to do something ‘the best way to learn is to do it,’ something she has learnt from her father.

It's a story about identity. It's about Ellie trying to figure out who she is, but also realising that people aren't just the person you see on the outside. Ellie says "For a long time, I'd thought that people simply were who they were and became who they became. But I didn't think that anymore." Ellie learns that Cate is not simply 'the hag' that everyone believes she is, but a kind, caring person who has been affected by the events in her life. Ellie also realises that her mother isn't just the sad woman whose husband is sick, that she was a different person before she moved to the mountain and a different person again before she met Ellie's father.

If you haven’t yet read one of Lauren Wolk’s books read Echo Mountain and fall in love with her writing.