Rating: 
Summary: Pack this one in your beach bag...
Review: I just loved this book! You can't help but love Clara, Georg, and even Tamar. The story worked at a great pace with small surprises thrown in when you least expected. One of the ways I know that a book is really great is that it plays out almost like a movie in my head, and that is the vivid manner in which Alison McGhee wrote each scene and dialogue between her characters. There was an equal mixture of funny, thoughtful, heartwarming, (and tear-jerking-is that a word? ) moments to keep a reader both entertained and enlightened. I agree with another one of the reviewers that I would love to learn the next installment of Clara's life! (sequel, sequel! )
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing and boring book
Review: I was very disappointed in this book that came highly recommended by the authors of the "Nanny Diaries" and was featured on The Today Show. I found the book to be utterly boring, and extremely repetitive. The author had many opportunities to expand on what could have been interesting characters and storylines, but instead just plodded along. The only positive thing I could say is that I did enjoy the author's writing style. But her storytelling abilities left left something to be desired.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful author, a wonderful book....
Review: I'm always a little surprised that the people who offer reviews here summarize the book - the summary is already included in the amazon info. I'll just tell you that Clara winter knows what all readers know; the incredible power of words, and that stories, once imagined, cannot be unimagined. I loved the ephemeral quality of truth, as seen through Clara's eyes. Alison McGhee is a very gifted writer, and a "master of the art of possibility". I think that some readers will have a little difficulty with accepting eleven year old Clara's remarkable vocabulary, but this book is so beautifully crafted that this precocity is believable. If you are a fan of Alice Hoffman, Anna Quindlen, or Elizabeth Berg, you will be delighted with Shadow Baby. I absolutely loved it!
Rating:
Summary: Run, don't walk, to get the Recorded Books version
Review: If you can get the Recorded Books version of this book narrated by the absolutely wonderful Christina Moore, you will be in for a real treat. (I borrowed it from my local libary but it is available at RecordedBooks.com) Christina Moore provides the perfect voice for Clara winter, the most delightful protagonist I've met in a long time. Alison McGhee has written about a very precocious child - yet not a child who is obnoxious or too adult. All of the other reviews of this book are great and give excellent summaries of the plot and my 5-star rating acknowledges the other reviews. However, by listening to this wonderful story on tape, it is almost as if you were listening to Clara herself read the pages of her diary - I truly did not want this book to end.
Rating:
Summary: Strange and wonderful
Review: In contrast to what a reviewer above said, I'm always really GLAD when someone else starts their review with a synopsis of the plot. Everybody's perception of what happened in a novel is a little bit different -- some people see one thing as the novel's focus and others something else. It can tell you a lot about a novel to read several different descriptions of the story (unless they're all swiping their descriptions from the book jacket!). So, here's the book that *I* read when I read "Shadow Baby": Novel about 11-year-old Clara Winter (who prefers having her last name pronounced without the capital letter -- "winter" -- which tells you quite a bit about her precocious character). When she is given a school assignment to interview an elderly person, she latches onto an old immigrant man living in a trailer, Georg. Clara's whole world is constructed of stories, so many of which she has invented herself that she can hardly remember what is true and what isn't. Through her friendship with Georg, Clara learns how to see the world in a new way -- to see everything without focusing on any one thing. And through that, she gradually begins to learn how to let go of her obsession with the past. This was a very touching novel about both a girl coming-of-age and the wisdom one can find in the strangest places -- in an illiterate old metalworker and in a mixed-up 11-year-old girl. Recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous writing
Review: It's been a long time since I've read a book, written from the viewpoint of a child, which I felt was actually realistic. I take issue with those that thought it was otherwise. The way we are taken through thoughts, stories, and experiences in what seems like a fairly random order...and are also privy to what are the lies that pop through her head...was outstanding. I was less "impressed" with Clara's vocabulary than with her imagination. The reader of this book is promised a trip through a plethora of emotions that is diminished in a review. I can't begin to do it justice. When I finished it, I called everyone I know that enjoys fiction and recommended it highly...as I do here.
Rating: 
Summary: Sweet, sad and redemptive
Review: McGhee's Clara is a precociously strong-voiced character, but I didn't find her unbelievably so. Instead, I quickly developed affection for her, and smiled at her quirks, like inventing book reports. The novel centers around the friendship she develops with an old man in her town. McGhee is a skillful writer and has crafted lovely characters, as she did in her previous novel, Rainlight. There are some terribly sad moments, but they are ultimately redeemed in this complex, beautifully written novel.
Rating:
Summary: I wish I could read about the rest of Clara's life...
Review: Once I started reading this story I could hardly tolerate any of life's little interferences, like sleeping or eating...Clara had me enthralled. She's an eleven year old master of words who befriends an old man, Georg, who is a master of metalworking. Clara is wise and smart beyond her years but believably precocious. Georg is the catalyst to her finally discovering her grandfather and her grandfather's reappearance is ultimately the reason her Ma tells her about her father. Clara finally gets all the answers she has wanted but finds she prefers the stories she has made up...is her grandfather a hermit living in a primeval forest in upstate New York? Was she born in a ditch in a blizzard? Do chickens really go crazy? What is the truth and what is Clara's fertile imagination? As Clara winter would say..."read the book and find out" This is really an outstanding book that grabs you and doesn't let go. I was very sad when I read the last page and had to close the book on Clara's life
Rating:
Summary: Sweet, startling, and sassy --
Review: Once you meet Clara Winter, you won't want to let go of her. One of the best narrators I've ever come across. Years ahead of her real age, Clara tells it like it is and delights the reader by showing her world with all its humor and warts. If you liked this book, you'll probably also like "Feeling Sorry for Celia" by Jaclyn Moriarty, "A Girl in Parts" by Jasmine Paul, and "Durable Goods" by Elizabeth Berg.
Rating:
Summary: A Little Disappointed
Review: Shadow Baby is a very strange novel, told from the point of view of its quirky 12-year old narrator. The writing was compelling, and the characters very believable, but I got to the end of the book and thought "Is that all?" I would wish for a stronger plot, and more closure and resolution.
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