From: PritchWitt at aol.com <PritchWitt>
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 10:02:07 EST

Thanks for your response, KT. I completely agree that Hesse's writing is marvelous. But I wanted to address briefly your feeling that the burning and death scenes in OUT OF THE DUST were "pretty mild compared with other images kids are exposed to today..." I know kids love the horror genre and probably in William Sleator and SCREAM there are equally hideous images, but aren't they more supernatural and unreal than in a historical book like DUST?

It seems to me this book is aimed at 4th to 6th grade readers many of whom will not have seen in movies or even imagined such things. I don't mean to say, of course, that the book shouldn't be available to kids, but by winning the Newbury it gets THE seal of approval and I suspect unknowing parents will give it to children who could be very negatively affected by it. I would have been, and I think my children at that age would have been.

Ellen Wittlinger
Received on Thu 05 Feb 1998 09:02:07 AM CST