Only 28132 inches tall, Josephine is possibly the smallest girl in the world, smaller even than the wife of the famous midget Tom Thumb. Sold into domestic service at age seven to the headmistress of a New York City finishing school where she’s abused by staff and students alike, Josephine’s had enough and runs away by the time she’s 12, eventually joining the Museum of Earthly Astonishments at Coney Island. Renamed Little Jo Jo of Bohemia, she’s captivated by her new life as a natural curiosity and soaks up the attention and applause. But Josephine soon realizes that she’s exchanged one kind of servitude for another and with the help of new friends, she sets out to take back control of her future.

In her first historical fiction, Marthe Jocelyn has created a fast-paced, thoroughly engaging novel rich in historical details and the same zany humour that delighted readers of her previous books (The Invisible Day and The Invisible Harry and the picture book Hannah and the Seven Dresses). She skillfully uses mock handbills, newspaper reports, and Victorian-style chapter headings and melodrama to conjure up the excitement of late-19th-century amusement parks. But while taking readers on a guided tour of Josephine’s life that almost mirrors the kind of tour that visitors then might have taken, Jocelyn adds 20th-century sensitivity and humaneness. She gives readers a glimpse into the lives of characters such as Charley the Albino Boy who soars through the streets of Coney Island on a rusty bicycle. As Charley points out, “What we have to remember is, there’s things on this earth more astonishing than the colour of a person’s eyes or the size of a person’s foot.” Earthly Astonishments is a lively and rewarding historical novel with a compassionate heart.