Ami McKay's Birth House is an absolute "Mama Book"

I had it coming.

My sister and I used to sit at our mother’s bookshelf and theatrically read the titles and authors out loud. There was nothing funnier than our mother’s reading taste.

So when my own children started hooting and hollering over my books, I knew it was my due. Certain books are absolute “Mama Books,” apparently.

If it’s historical fiction with orphans and haunted houses, maybe set in the turn-of-the-century English countryside — it’s a LOCK.

If there are native species retaking a city, witches thwarting bullies, or maybe vampires falling in love with witches while studying at Oxford — I’m there.

When Amy McKay’s The Birth House was greeted with the customary eye-roll, I knew I’d struck gold.

This book, published in 2006 before McKay wrote her Witches of New York books, delivered on all the “Mama Book” promises.

Are there native herbs? YES. Babies (sometimes multiples)? Absolutely. Is it historical fiction about a minority group in Canada? INDEED.

And my kids can laugh all they want about how much I love this type of book — with gifted healers and country lanes — but I know that someday, a few decades in the future, some little girls we don’t know yet will gather around their mamas’ bookshelves and get in a good snicker.