From: Christine Hill <chill>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 15:09:56 -0400

Since the month is almost over, I hope I can mention a different Canadian author, one of the few (I am chagrined to say) I have read. Kit Pearson's The Sky Is Falling has stayed with me in the several years since I read it. In it a brother and sister are evacuated from Britain to Canada during WWII. Their foster family is of considerably higher social status than their birth family and the brother, who barely remembers his real parents, becomes their pet while the sister rebels, both for reasons of status and temperament. The emotions involved are very complex and skillfully depicted. The scene which I will never forget occurs just after their evacuee group arrives in Canada. A librarian has come, they are told, to tell them a story. She enters and lights a candle. Without preamble or introducing herself, she tells a long story which holds them spellbound. Then she leaves, again without a word. The protagonist says it was as if the story had used her to tell itself. It gave me goosebumps. Christine M. Hill Willingboro Public Library One Salem Road Willingboro, NJ 08046 chill at willingboro.org My new book! Robert Ballard: Oceanographer Who Discovered the Titanic, Enslow, 1999
Received on Tue 28 Sep 1999 02:09:56 PM CDT