It's a beautiful book set in Ireland, so it already has a lot going for it. But Ballywhinney Girl is much, much more.

The story involves a young girl, Maeve, who's cutting peat with her grandpa when he discovers a body in the sod. They summon the police, who in turn call a team of archeologists from Dublin; it's not a recent body by any stretch, but rather a girl who's been buried in the soil for upwards of 1,000 years.

For Maeve, it's a troubling series of events. While the authorities busy themselves with unearthing, packing, moving and studying the ancient corpse, Maeve worries that the girl's rest is being disturbed. When the body is put on display in a Dublin museum, Maeve frets that the girl misses her warm bog.

"Do you think she's glad to be set free from where she was?" I asked my da, who knows a lot.
"She's dead, me darlin', dead and gone. The dead don't know or care."
I wonder, though.
I wonder, did she like her sweet, warm resting place? And did she like it more than that cold viewing case where she will lie from now until forever?

It's a moving story that looks at a young girl's concept of death ... and of compassion for a person long dead. Illustrations by Emily Arnold McCully are beautiful and lush, like the Irish countryside, and the prose by Eve Bunting is lyrical, sometimes approaching poetry in its haunting mood.

When Maeve visits the museum to see the girl again, she is saddened by the display.

She lay curled up, her body black as coal and full of secrets. So pitiful to see those tufts of hair as blond as mine. It made me cry.

Later, she lays a stone for the girl on the bog where she was found. Maeve engages in a bit of fancy as she imagines the girl haunting the scene.

Out on the bog the wind blows soft across the closed-in hole across the stone that marks her place. And on a moonlit night you still may see her there, walking on the bog she loved.
She carries flowers, blue lupin and wild roses. Her ghost-light steps are gentle on the place where long ago she fell.

It's a sad, beautiful book. When I read it for the first time to my twins, just 6, they huddled close and concentrated on the pictures. They asked questions. And they've asked for it again many times since.