Part One. “The walls were whitewashed. The timber floor was bare. As if the room was waiting to be ours.”

Imagine yourself in a familiar setting, yet at the same time, strange. A house somewhat sunken into the ground. A door is not a door. All is not what it appears. Sunlight can easily stream in through the windows with rainbow colors reflecting off of the dust motes, as rain water can easily pour and ping into the many rooms leaving dark and dim patches.

It is magical. Often, eerie.

This is where the father of a rag-tag family lives – he, ever the optimist, his sons almost doltish, while grandmother and daughters face the hard tasks that lie ahead. The mother is dead – of course.

Familiar? “A folktale by the Grimm brothers” you declare! No. A novel by Benny Lindelauf, and translated from the Dutch (with extreme sensitivity) by John Nieuwenhuizen.

It is not an American story in the best sense of the word. There is no predictability despite given time periods in the 1930’s; it is the uncertainty of the storyline, and the wrapping around of your tongue to pronounce the sounds of the vocabulary, that draws you into this foreign place.

Intrigue. This is the force that propelled me into the world of Negen Open Armen is delightful, unusual, and unnerving. Bliss to any reader of any age.

The story of Nine Open Arms is good, but it was the vivid characters and setting that really drew me in.

A refreshing change from 21st century YA, Great characters, wonderful window into 1930's Netherlands. I enjoyed as an adult but I think good for mature tweens.

The Boon family is moving yet again. The father has decided they are going to start making cigars and moves the family to the country. The house is a ramshackle place with the front door in the back and no porch. There is a lot of room for the big family though and the girls christen it Nine Open Arms for how wide the place is. Sisters Fing, Muulke and Jess love having their own room and not sharing with their four brothers, grandmother and father, but they don't like that there is no running water or that there appears to be a tombstone in the cellar. They also live right across the road from the cemetery where they get their water. While their father and brothers are trying to figure out the cigar business, the girls are trying to discover the secrets of Nine Open Arms.

The story goes between the Boon family in the 1930s and the story of Nienevee and Charley Bottletop in the 1860s. The family learns about the story of the house from Oma Mei and her crocodile, a suitcase filled with pictures from which Oma Mei tells her stories. This book is translated from the Dutch original and for the most part the translation works rather well. I loved the quirkiness of the story and the timeless feel of it. I don't think this is a book that every reader will appreciate though. I am not sure if it is the story itself or the fact that it was originally written in another language for another culture, but there were things that didn't always come through how I imagine the author intended. Of course, since he wasn't writing for an American reader, it might be exactly how he intended. There was just something so charming about this story that I really enjoyed even if there were hiccups in the telling of it.

I was thinking what to write and realised I needed to mark this as historical fiction (set in the 1930s). I was so caught up with the characters while reading, that I barely noticed the setting wasn't present-day. That's not to say that the setting was ambiguous, because it wasn't. It is, however, character-driven - and what an excellent cast of characters.

This is one of those nicely written novels aimed at 8-12 year-olds (and narrated by a child in that age group), but equally appealing to the adult reader. I loved the setting and the characters and the connection to their past. A well-spun story.

Not an easy book to get into initially, but well worth the effort. It provides a perfect antidote to the current stream of North American protagonists with a narcissistic outlook. In part the difficulty of access is due to it being set in an unfamiliar time (1860's to 1930's) and place (Limburg, Netherlands), and therefore not fitting into the YA's usual schema of expectation.
It is however a rewarding book for those who stick to it, dealing with many complex themes in an uncompromising manner...
outsiders, travellers, uneasy love, disability, financial difficulties, homelessness, bullying, parents who don't meet up to children's, society's or even their own expectations. The female characters are strong and feisty, with the men and boys a backdrop - a welcome change.
Probably a book for students who are up for a bit of a challenge.

This felt a little uneven to me, but I really liked parts of it. The flashback story was especially good. The ending didn't much work for me.

I think that this book, which was originally written in Dutch, would completely confuse my students. While I enjoyed the story, I don't think it is a good fit for our middle school library.