Point of View

The collection has ten different narrators. All the first-person narrators are adolescents who tell their own stories. The title story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” is narrated in first-person present by a teenage girl, Claudette. “Ava Wrestles the Alligator” and “Haunting Olivia,” are both narrated by 12-year-olds, Ava and Timothy, in first-person present. “Z.Z.’s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers,” and “The Star-Gazer’s Log of Summer-Time Crime,” “From Children’s Reminiscences of the Westward Migration,” and “Accident Brief, Occurrence # 00/422” are all narrated in first-person present by teenage boys Elijah, Ollie, Jacob, and Tek. “Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artificial Snows” is narrated by another teenage boy, Reggie, but he tells his story in first-person past rather than present.

The only other story that partly shares the past-tense is “The City of Shells,” which is narrated by a third-person...