Small Spaces, published in 2018, is the first book in the middle-grade Small Spaces Quartet Series by author Katherine Arden. Arden was previously best known for her adult historical fantasy series, The Winternight Trilogy, which became a New York Times bestseller. The Small Spaces series is her initial foray into middle-grade fiction.

The first novel in the series made multiple lists for Best Middle-Grade Book of the Year in 2018, including Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, Amazon, and the Chicago Public Library. Subsequent titles in the quartet include Dead Voices (2019), Dark Waters (2021), and Empty Smiles (2022). Small Spaces is categorized as Children’s Fantasy & Supernatural Mystery Books and Children’s Scary Stories. This study guide and page citations refer to the book’s Kindle edition.

The novel is set in the small upstate Vermont town of East Evansburg in an unspecified contemporary year. The season is autumn, and the principal events in the novel occur a few days before Halloween, but there is a short concluding chapter that takes place a month later, in early December. The author uses a limited third-person narrative technique. Events are described from the perspective of an 11-year-old sixth grader named Olivia “Ollie” Adler. The novel also uses the device of a story within a story as Ollie stumbles across a book called Small Spaces within the novel of the same name. Excerpts from this book are incorporated into the novel proper as Ollie reads various passages.

When the story begins, Ollie is having difficulty adjusting to the loss of her mother, who died in a small plane crash a year earlier. She lives alone with her father and does her best to isolate herself from her classmates and the school activities she once enjoyed. Instead, Ollie rides her bike and spends much of her time along the banks of Lethe Creek, immersing herself in reading as an escape from dealing with her mother’s death.

During one of her trips to the creek, Ollie encounters a woman who is about to throw a book into the water. When Ollie snatches the book away, the woman warns her of danger and advises the girl to keep to small spaces. Ollie takes the book home and begins to read the strange story of a farm family that lived in Smoke Hollow a hundred years earlier. The writer cautions the reader about a mysterious creature known as the smiling man who grants wishes but exacts a heavy price. During a school outing with her classmates, Ollie discovers that the warnings in the book are all too real. While trying to avoid being captured by animate scarecrows, Ollie learns valuable lessons about coping with loss and avoiding disaster. Her frightening adventure allows the book to explore the themes of Denying Loss, Clinging to the Past, and The Price of Desperation.

Plot Summary

As Halloween draws near, Ollie Adler is impatient for the school day to end so she can enjoy one of the last warm afternoons of the season reading a book next to Lethe Creek. Ollie doesn’t like spending time around other people since her mother's death a year earlier. Instead, she enjoys losing herself in books to forget her sorrow. When she arrives at the creek, Ollie sees a young woman about to throw a book into the water. The woman says the smiling man told her to get rid of it as part of their bargain.

When Ollie snatches the book away, the woman advises her to keep to small spaces or something bad might occur. Back at home, Ollie dives into the book, which is called Small Spaces. The author, Beth Webster, published the book in 1895 as a warning to her daughter. The tale tells of the disappearance of Beth’s husband and brother-in-law because of a deal made with a mysterious figure called the smiling man who grants wishes for a price.

The next day, Ollie goes on a field trip with her class to the nearby Misty Valley Farm, owned by a woman named Linda Webster. Ollie is shocked when she recognizes Linda as the woman who tried to drown the book the day before. Ollie soon discovers that Misty Valley was once Smoke Hollow, the home of Beth Webster and that hauntings have been reported here for years. Ollie is particularly unnerved by the multitude of scarecrows dotted around the property.

That evening, as the school bus makes its return trip to the school, it breaks down on the road. The driver warns Ollie that she should run and hide in small spaces because the scarecrows will come to life to capture all the children. Ollie tries to rally her classmates to flee. Nobody believes her except for two students named Coco and Brian. The three children escape while everyone else is captured and transformed into living scarecrows. They spend two horrifying days avoiding the creatures while Ollie solves the mystery of the smiling man. She is aided by messages appearing on a broken watch that belonged to her mother. These words guide her and make her believe that her mother is still with her in spirit.

This conviction allows her to defeat the smiling man when he offers Ollie a deal to bring her mother back to life. The girl also succeeds in freeing her classmates from his evil spell. Back in the real world, Ollie establishes a bond of friendship with Brian and Coco and is ready to face the future instead of living in the past.