Extraits-

• From the cover  
   
  November 1943
   
  In an empty nursery, behind two woven wire fences topped with barbed wire, five nine-year-old girls waited for their father. Five suitcases sat alongside them. Five smiling Shirley Temple dolls were clutched in their arms. Yvonne stared out the window at the yellow brick mansion up the hill. Annette quietly seethed, pretending not to be afraid. Cécile sat in a corner, rocking her doll. Émilie prayed that it was all just a bad dream. Marie tried to tell a silly story, but no one laughed.
  At the sound of their father’s footsteps in the hall, all five sisters hugged their Shirley Temples closer to their chests. The moment they dreaded had come.
  For the first time in their lives, the Dionne Quintuplets were going home.
  Oliva Dionne did not speak as he and his five identical daughters walked through the hospital’s guarded gate, down the road, and through another gate that led to the colossal Georgian house that was to be their new home. He did not lead them up the steps to the grand front door. Instead, he entered through a service door into the kitchen. Yvonne followed first, trying to be brave for her sisters’ sake. Though Yvonne was no more than a few minutes older than Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie, she had acted the part of the little mother since she was a toddler. For nine years Mr. Dionne had battled with the government to unite his family under a single roof. Now that his triumphant moment had arrived, the man who had once crawled through a drainpipe to elude hospital guards just so he could glimpse his five famous babies through a window spoke a single sentence.
  “The little girls are here,” he told his wife, and continued into the house, leaving his daughters standing in the unfamiliar kitchen with their dolls and suitcases.
  “Bonsoir, Mom,” Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie said, greeting their mother in a mixture of French and English.
  “Supper will be ready soon,” Mrs. Dionne replied in French, then called for two of her elder daughters. “Show the little girls around the house,” she instructed.
  Without a word, “the little girls” followed as their big sisters pointed into one doorway after another. The living room, the den, the sewing room, their father’s office. Redolent of fresh paint and filled with pristine furniture, the house felt new and sterile, more sterile by far than the hospital that had been their home since they were four months old.
  Then they reached the dining room. Like everything else in the house, it was big, in this case big enough to seat fourteen—Mr. and Mrs. Dionne, Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, Marie, and their seven brothers and sisters, Ernest, Rose-Marie, Thérèse, Daniel, Pauline, Oliva Jr., and Victor. An archway divided the room in half, with a table on each side. “This side is for our family,” the little girls remembered one of their elder sisters saying. “The other side is for your family.”
  Not one of the bewildered nine-year-olds knew what to say.

Au sujet de l’auteur-

• Sarah Miller is the author of the historical fiction novels Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller, which was called “an accomplished debut” in a starred review from Booklist and was named an ALA–ALSC Notable Children’s Book, and The Lost Crown, a novel hailed as “fascinating” in a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and named an ALA–YALSA Best Book for Young Adults.
  
  Robin Miles is a veteran of Broadway, classical plays, television, and film. She is an AudioFile Golden Voice, having won numerous Earphones Awards, ALA awards, and Audie Award nominations.

Critiques-

• 

  August 5, 2019
  Beginning two days after their premature birth in rural Ontario on May 28, 1934, “the lives of the Dionne quintuplets were inextricably bound with the press,” asserts Miller (Caroline: Little House, Revisited), whose headline-style chapter titles reinforce that point in this compelling account. Together, the five babies weighed only 13 pounds, 6 ounces, and their desperate parents, Oliva and Elzire Dionne, traded privacy for critical necessities: breast milk and incubators. Those rushing to provide support simultaneously saved the quintuplets’ lives and wreaked emotional havoc upon the family. Miller details the efforts of Dr. Dafoe, the local medical practitioner; the nurses he chose to keep the infants alive; Dr. Blatz, who attended to the sisters’ emotional and mental development; and the government of Ontario, which tried to protect the family from being exploited by unscrupulous Americans seeking to profit from the story. The Dionne parents’ rights to raise their children were continually overruled, and the physical separation of the quintuplets from the rest of their family until age nine produced lifelong emotional dysfunction. Miller presents multiple viewpoints with sensitivity, enmeshing the reader in the Dionnes’ lives so successfully that it is impossible not to feel the tragedy of the quintuplets’ lives. Black-and-white family photos and notes further expand this eye-opening, thoroughly researched title. Ages 12–up.

• Robin Miles narrates the story of the famed quintuplets, born in Canada in 1934 to Olivia and Elzire Dionne. Speaking in a tone of authority and engagement, Miles captures the story's dramatic elements and the author's impeccable research. The birth quickly became a media frenzy, and Miles dramatically renders the parents' fight to retain custody of the children and control of the income they produced. Listeners will hear about the complex emotional dynamics of children being raised as tourist attractions--their attachment to attention and contrasting loneliness, their closeness to caregivers and distance from family, and, ultimately, the price they paid while others benefited financially. Each chapter begins with a headline that encapsulates a key event from a 64-year period. Miles's readings of dialogue and journal writings add emotion to the real-life drama. S.W. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

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