For those of us who spent our childhoods with one eye focused on our toys and trinkets, waiting for them to come to life and offer us their friendship, we know a thing or two about the disappointment in the law of diminishing returns. The older we get, the more we look away, the less we believe. Despite the heartbreak of wanting the things we love to love us back, giving voice and personality to our prized possessions is one of the earliest ways we develop characters.
In Allie Millington’s debut middle-grade novel, , the story is told from dual perspectives: a 12-year-old boy named Ernest Brindle and a 60-year-old typewriter named Olivetti. In it, Olivetti is filled with the stories Ernest’s mother Beatrice used to write on him, memories of story-times with the entire Brindle family, moments of disappointment
