Molly O'Malley is a Dwerg. Dwergs are a dwarfish race who live in a remote area of the Catskills, where they raise goats, make cheese, mine gold, and brew gin. Dwergs are best known to most readers for slipping Rip Van Winkle a mickey. Molly has appeared in Pinkwater's works before, in Adventures of a Cat Whiskered Girl and Bushman Lives. This is a younger Molly, in her first venture outside her Dwergish village. As is typical in Mr P's work, Molly encounters a variety of people and non-people in her adventures and deals with situations that cross into the surreal and the just-plain weird. She uses her brains, her imagination and her Dwergish powers to come out on top. Fantastic book for middle school students.

My ten year old and I both read and enjoyed this book. We loved the unique main character and the compelling storyline. This book was like curling up with a cup of hot cocoa on a cold day. Highly recommend!

STORYLINE: A wonderful blend of folklore, magic, and history – early American history, that is. Envision the dwarfs that lived with Snow White. The character of this book are like these legendary dwarfs and they live in a mostly invisible village. One day, a young girl, named Molly, a Dwerg (that is what these little people are called) decides there is more to life than living in this village. She tells her family this; they wish her well; and she takes off on adventures into the big outside world. She lands in Kingston, New York.
TEXT: Take a bit of magic, pizza, hotdogs, and papaya juice. Mix this with ordinary people, ghosts, dead and alive British soldiers and gangsters, a radio DJ, the witch of the Catskill Mountain, the bee waggle and a cave, and you have an adventuresome mystery of a book!
ILLUSTRATIONS: Black and white illustrations to begin each short chapter peak interest.
PROS:
*The book lends itself to a geography lesson of this Catskill Mountain region
*The book references American history and folklore of the region
CONS: Story ends and readers want more. A book #2 would be nice!
HOW BEST ENJOYED: This would be a great read-aloud for third and fourth graders. Stoytimes of this nature stick in the memories of children when they grow up.
IN CLOSING: Have you ever thought about your destiny? Molly learns her destiny in this story!

13 year old daughter read this for me and enjoyed it. Funny book with a touch of adventure. Lessons in friendship and not being afraid of learning new things.

Molly is a Dwerg whose people live magically hidden in the Catskills, tending goats and mining gold. Dwergish girls sometimes go into the nearby town to go to school and Molly has seen enough of the outside world to know she wants to see more and that a life of weaving, cooking and tending goats doesn’t really interest her. So Molly goes in to Kingston, gets a job at a pizzeria and starts to make friends with the residents of Kingston; both the living and the dead. When Redcoats, not actually living or ghosts, are seen to around town committing crimes, Molly finds out that it is part of a larger plot to find the Dwerg’s gold. Can Molly stop them and still keep the Dwerg’s existence secret?

Aimed at middle school readers this is a delightful story that will please both the young and adult reader. I look forward to more of Molly’s adventures.

This is the story of a girl who did not feel at home in her secret community. They have been lost to the fables for the city around them. The isolation meant that when our leading lady leaves her family to join the outside world, she finds everything strange. This strangeness is presented to us in a matter of fact manner and works as humour.
This book targets a younger audience than me, and I can see the parts of it that they would enjoy. Instead of world building a whole new world, the author has just presented a spin on our existing one (in the US that is).
There is peril and an ingenious solution to keep it at bay. The ending also seems to indicate that this is the start of a series. It was cute and wacky, but I found my attention drifting between specific events, and that is usually not something I would expect to happen in a narrative such as this.
I really enjoyed his short story collection more.

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers. My review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

A magical realism story revolving around Molly, a Dwerg (and not a human) who ventures outside of her Dwerg World( dwerg as in dwarfs) into human world. She befriends with human, run into some ghosts, and save the town from the villains. The whole story itself is a quirky and fun read for me. However, the vocabulary used here is quite big for middle grades but I guess it's a good thing then; they can improve their vocabulary while at it.

Thankyou to Netgalley for granting my request for this arc.

2.5, rounded up. I've never read Pinkwater's books--they were never on my radar as a kid, for some reason--but I feel like kid-me would have loved his dry humor. As an adult, the tell-not-show style got a little boring; there's a lot of exposition at the beginning, and this continues throughout the book. It's a fun world, but I would have appreciated more descriptions of the action taking place.

It is a children's fantasy book. It is about a secret community of dwarfs called Dwergs who intermingle with normal humans and then learn at their schools.
It is a highly wonderful and enjoyable book written in simple prose. It keeps reader bound and glued to the book.
Alongwith with story their are wonderful pictures.
I liked the the book and recommend it to all young readers.
It has tried to be original with less influence of other fantasy series.

I really enjoyed this story about Molly, the Dwerg! This was the first book I've read by Daniel Pinkwater and I look forward to checking out more of his books. I enjoyed the pace and think some of my students would enjoy this story as well. As we know, kids tend to choose a book by the cover and I think this book has a great cover!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the opportunity to read and review this book!

I did not like this at all. I usually LOVE Pinkwater. Young Adult Novel is one of my favorite books. I recommend The Big Orange Splot at the library all the time. This was dumb. It wasn't silly or creative or interesting.

Molly van Dwerg is a girl whose ancestors put Rip Van Winkle to sleep (Dwerg being the Dutch word for dwarf). Her family lives in the Catskills and no one can find them, even if they searched for forever. Life is pretty predictable in her village, and no one seems to mind. No one, except Molly, who dreams of going somewhere else and doing anything besides tending goats and making cheese. So when she tells her parents she’s leaving, they bid her farewell with a few coins in her pocket and she goes to the town of Kingston. In Kingston, she discovers pizza, a human friend, and a devious plot with gangsters and flesh-covered robots intent on reenacting the burning of Kingston from the year 1777.

Adventures of a Dwergish Girl was a very creative book. I love books that spin off of classic stories, and Molly was an interesting character. For the most part, I enjoyed taking this adventure with her. However, there were a lot of places where the action stopped to give lots of information, and ultimately, it didn’t feel like Molly had a goal for the story. She just kind of wandered around, and near the end she solves a problem. The problem she solves is interesting, but also kind of anti-climactic in how it is ultimately dealt with. While it wasn’t for me, I can definitely see how some kids would enjoy this book. It was fun to get to know Molly, and the people she meets along the way are colorful and interesting.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Daniel Pinkwater is at his best, most charming and delightful in this tale of a girl from the Dwerg people – you know, the “little men” responsible for Rip Van Winkle sleeping for twenty years? The ones you can never find, no matter how hard you look? The ones who mine gold in the Catskills, can run unbelievably fast, practice domesticity on a level capable of boring any young person to tears? Such is Molly Van Dwerg’s world until she decides to leave home, armed with a couple of Dwergish gold coins and irrepressible self-confidence. Her gift for making friends is rivaled only by her appetite for pizza and papaya juice. When the nearby town of Kingston is menaced by bad guys after the gold and willing to burn down the town to get it, Molly enlists her friends and her wits to save the day.

Charming reading for the entire family.

This is another odd book by Daniel Pinkwater. Molly, a Dwergish girl, doesn't fit into her home culture so she leaves to find a better fit. Molly is brave and adventurous and well able to take care of herself, though she is also able to make friends and reach out to people for help. An admirable character for kids to meet. Pinkwater has such a dry sense of humor (I think) that it is sometimes difficult to tell what you should take seriously. There is a move to Poughkeepsie at the end, hopefully for more adventures.

It's always difficult to describe a Daniel Pinkwater book, because they aren't like anything else--nor are they like each other.

In this tale marketed for a middle-grade audience, our heroine Molly is a Dwergish girl who decides her village is too dull and she's ready to adventure into the big world. Along the way she'll encounter ghosts as well as gangsters, historical and in the present.

The pacing is rather slow and the vocabulary pretty steep for middle-grade, but content-wise it's closer to middle grade than YA, especially today's YA, which seems to have romance at its core more often than not.

I was really enjoying it, though wondering who the audience was, when I thought back to my teaching days, and it hit me that this would read aloud well to those fourth, fifth, and sixth graders to whom it's marketed. When reading aloud, one can choose a book with vocabulary and concepts that will get the kids to stretch their learning and imaginations a bit, and this book will fit the bill with its fun, often tongue-in-cheek historical bits.

I highly recommend reading it aloud to your kids, your class, or even yourself, to get the most fun out of it!

I just knew I was going to love this book as soon as I read the blurb. It sounded like such fun. It was. I thought it was going to be aimed at a younger audience, maybe middle grade but I think it would suit a slightly higher age-group. I loved this book. I had a lot of fun reading it. The history of Molly and Dwergs was a lot of fun and very entertaining. Molly is a great character, well fleshed out and I liked how she develops across the book. I thought this was a great book. I need to read more of this author’s work.

Have you heard of Dwergs before? Well, meet
Molly a Dwerg who has lived all her life in the Catskill Mountains. She does not aspire to follow Dwerg's traditions and decides to leave her community to experience life in the city among the English people. As she settles in her new life she gets a job, makes friends - some stranger than others (no spoilers ^^) - and along the way adventure finds her.
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I had never read anything by Pinkwater before and was quite excited to pick up this book. It was a cute story that made me smile at times. The slow-paced beginning and world-building made the story drag a bit, and I felt as if the first person narrative worked more against the story development than anything else. Perhaps, less telling and more showing would have been preferable.
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3/5
#fridayinaprilbookreview
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I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Tachyon Publications for this ARC.

Ever see or hear of a Dwerg?

Nope?

Neither had I until reading this title.

Dwergs are a mythical race living in the Catskill Mountains and tied with the tale of Rip Van Winkle .

Molly O'Malley is a Dwerg who is too adventurous for her kind. So she sets forth from their protected village to live among humans.

Soon she is wrapped up in an adventure that will hopefully end in the protection of her village, but also mean leaving the area, too.

Delightful story to engage kids in upper elementary grades into middle school.

Thanks to Netgalley and Tachyon Publications for providing an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is my first-time reading Daniel Pinkwater's book and will definitely not the last. I was mesmerized by the book's cover when I first saw it on Netgalley and when I read its description, BOOM! That's when it fully got me. It’s scheduled to come out on September 25, 2020.

The Story
Molly is a Dwerg (Dwerg is a Dutch word which means “dwarf”) who lives very quietly in the Catskill mountains, in a place you cannot find no matter how hard you try to locate. As a Dwergish girl, one is expected to be interested in cooking and weaving and do it all your life. But Molly isn’t interested on those things. She’s fed up to that kind of tradition they have. So, she set off to see the world for herself. She went to a town in Kingston, and there, she got a job in a pizzeria owned by Arnold Babatunji. She also met Leni, a girl from the school she’s attending, and later on, became her friend. During her stay in Kingston, she discovered that aside from the living, the place is also overrun with ghosts. That’s where she met her favorite ghost, Roger Van Tussenvuxel. Her life becomes complicated when she finds out that some gangsters are coming after the Dwergs and the coins.

The verdict
3.5 stars for me. It’s an interesting read and had fun being with Molly’s adventures. The ending was too abrupt, like it was rushed or something. I was expecting to have more chapters but then I realized that it was the end (or maybe the author deliberately kept it that way). I would love to have more of Molly’s adventures. It may not be a perfect book, but it’s a good one.

#AdventuresofaDwergishGirl #Netgalley

I just did not connect to this story and found it to be rather boring. It just did not hold my interest. Thank you to Netgalley for this free ebook in exchange for an honest review.