"A startling coming-of-age story. . . . Through Harper, Hartnett captures the humanity of her spirited, slightly eccentric, and then nearly broken characters." —  Publishers Weekly  (starred review) Harper Flute believes that her younger brother Tin, with his uncanny ability to dig, was born to burrow. While their family struggles to survive in a bleak landscape during the Great Depression, the silent and elusive little Tin begins to tunnel beneath their tiny shanty. As time passes, Tin becomes a wild thing, leaving his family further and further behind. Sonya Hartnett tells a breathtakingly original coming-of-age story through the clear eyes of an observant child, with exquisite prose, richly drawn characters, and a touch of magical realism. "Sonya Hartnett has written a haunting story that burrows deep into the hidden lives of children. Beautifully written and endlessly satisfying."—Ellen Wittlinger, author of HARD LOVE, a Michael L. Printz honor book — None "THURSDAY'S CHILD is a brilliant story, brilliantly told—so deeply imagined and dreamlike in its unfolding, so compelling and believable in the wild, extreme world it creates. Hartnett's beautifully rendered vision drew me in from the very start and carried me along, above and under ground, to the very end. This book amazed me." —Carolyn Coman, award-winning author of MANY STONES and WHAT JAMIE SAW — None Sonya Hartnett is the author of several acclaimed novels - the first written when she was just thirteen - and the recipient of many prestigious awards in her native Australia. She says Tin and his tunneling had their origin in ants: "I was living at the time in two rooms, just going back and forth, back and forth as I watched an entire summer of ants excavating under my house. One day it occurred to me that they probably had a huge palace under there. And that’s when I started to think about ways of taking your existence into your own hands - of how, if the space around you was not big enough, you might just dig out some more." This is Sonya Hartnett’s first book with Candlewick Press. The land where we lived was by nature dry and dusty but that winter there'd been more rain than a duck would have dreamed of and when I glanced at Tin the mud was seeping up between his toes and he was sinking into the earth, shivering and half asleep. I shook him wakeful and hurried him along. "Where will we go, Tin?" I asked, not expecting any answer because he was generally reticent. "Will we go fishing?" I had him moving at a trot and his head was joggling up and down, which I took to signify his agreement. There weren't any fish in the creek but he was at the age where you can fool them. He was certain to start whining sooner or later, anyway, no matter what we did, and the best I could do was stall that commotion as long as I could. I had a pin in the hem of my dress and I stopped to unfasten it and give it to him. He examined it carefully before looking at me quizzically through tangles of dandelion hair. "You can spike a fish with that," I explained. "That's your hook." I could see he liked that sharp reflecting thing. It was half a mile to the creek and I put him on my back and hiked him most of the way, he being light as a feather. I talked to keep him distracted, telling him it was callous to stab my throat with the pin and what would the baby be, a new boy or a new girl? We had two of each already, not counting Mam and Da, so things were pretty equal as they stood and it would be a hard blow to the side that came away the minority. I thought it was a shame that only babies could be born, whichever it turned out being. I could think of plenty of other things I would have preferred to get for nothing. The creek was typically a drool of a waterway but that afternoon it was running high because of all the rain and the bank was soft and oozy; Tin's feet disappeared to his ankles and he was covered in mud before he even reached the water. He was a dark child anyway, so it didn't look too bad on him. I set on a rock and left him to his devices and looked around, bored. There were white-trunked trees on either side of the creek and you could see where the rain had washed away the earth that had hidden their roots and the roots poked out knotted and naked, groping. It was that quiet, cold kind of day when the birds are surly and refusing to sing and the leaves on the branches aren't moving and seem like they never could. The creek was sluggish, hardly rippling, made from something thick and heavier than water. I was hungry, and could hear my stomach rumbling. I would have exchanged a new baby a hundred times over for a plate of something warm to eat. When I looked again at Tin he was crouched staring and musing in the shallows with the seat of his pants drenched black, so I crawled forward to see what was diverting him. There was a fish there, swimming in his shadow. There was a whole crowd of fishes, when I looked harder, stranded in a pocket of rock