Sally and her brothers buy a product from a friend’s mom, who’s a Wiccan, hoping to cast a spell to make FLMG/Marianne stop bullying their sister. They sprinkle it on her school lunch, but all it accomplishes is making her barf all over herself. Aunt Sally doesn’t do things the usual way. She tells them stories—stories about their family that they’ve never heard before, stories so outrageous that it’s hard to believe that they’re true. She makes them WANT to eat green beans. In short, Aunt Sally is wonderful. I remember how that first sentence hooked me, carpooling with a friend in second grade. That family always travelled with audio books. I don’t remember the name of the narrator but she was outstanding, with this very clean, sharp line delivery and perfect diction that sealed each line in your memory. It’s been in my head ever since. Everyone needs an Aunt Sally. Someone who mixes truth with play; deeper meaning, for those who wish to extract more than just what the surface of listening carries within it. Politics and Religion: Louis accuses a local pastor of leaving four consecutive wives for the trolls.

As you might have noticed, some of the humor in this book is not politically correct. I first read this book in second grade and was never tempted to call anyone “Fat Little Mean Girl” or anything close to that after reading it. But if your young reader is the type to repeat whatever they hear, take note. Sex: There’s a hint that the mother of a neighborhood kid, whom Sally cruelly dubs “Fat Little Mean Girl” had a scandalous past, at least by small-town 1960s-70s standards. Likewise, one wonders how exactly FLMG/Marianne herself got Edward Anderson to marry her, the event which led to both of them dying young. Like the activities of the trolls, this is left almost completely blank, and what the reader comes up with to fill it in depends entirely on the worldly knowledge of the reader.There’s a few anecdotal stories about people getting drowned, burned in their house as they slept, swept away by rogue waves, or being mauled and eaten by cougars and/or bears. Cheery stuff. Three kids leave their spoiled little brother for the trolls on Halloween night. The parents realize that the child is missing, and eventually a search party finds him. He never speaks of what happened to him that night, but he’s never able to bond with those siblings again either. So they’re quite unprepared for the charismatic and whimsical figure that arrives, with her towering blonde beehive of hair, her fondness for green beans and surprise meat loaf, her talent for drawing, and most of all her storytelling abilities.

I read this with my 8-year-old son and found it more thought-provoking than the "grown-up" novel I was reading at the time. This book centers on Aunt Sally, a sophisticated kind of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, who comes to stay with her 2 nieces and nephew when their parents vacation in France. Every chapter is another fanciful story told by Aunt Sally, involving her family in Canada growing up. The story includes the children's father (the youngest sibling of Aunt Sally in the story). There is a subtle undercurrent of family brokenness....why did Dad never talk about Aunt Sally? Why was Dad hesitant to have Aunt Sally come stay with the children while they were gone? Along with Amanda, Melissa and Pee Wee, I loved Aunt Sally's storytelling, building a tree house, and teaching the children how to eat meatloaf by adding surprises. The children continued to wonder why their dad did not want her around.

Uncle Lewis told Aunt Sally's family that the reverend had gone through six wives. When he was finished with one, he would take her to the beach and leave her for the trolls. "That," said Aunt Sally, "is what happened to all six wives." Uncle Lewis also told about the neighbor's dog, which fell off the front porch. She was also taken to the beach and left for the trolls. When Aunt Sally arrives she is a surprise to the kids. Tall, wearing very high heels with chunky soles and laces that wound up her legs. She had a lot of yellow hair that was piled high on the top of her head, sparkly eyes and long dangle earrings. It starts when Melissa, Amanda, and Pee Wee's usual babysitter "came down with a mild case of bubonic plague and called tearfully to say she didn't want to spread the buboes around." So her parents (who are going to Paris for a week) are forced to call on Aunt Sally, whom they have never met and their father never talks about. Violence: Sally’s Uncle Louis claims that the woods along the beach on Vancouver are inhabited by nocturnal trolls. People who want to get rid of something badly sometimes leave that thing on the beach for the trolls to find.