From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 14:56:10 -0600

I confess that I had not yet read this book at the time it was announced as a Newbery Honor book. Since then I've had a chance to read it and, once I started it, I found that I couldn't put it down.

The voice is so distinctive AF it reads almost like an oral history. The author frequently uses old?shioned expressions to give the narrative a historical flavor. May Amelia's character, too, comes through strongly in the voice AF in her observations and turns of phrase. While she is a strong, unconventional female character, I never got the sense that she was a 1990s girl plunked down in a historical setting, as I do in much historical fiction written for the young.

Does anyone else have any responses to this unusual book?



Kathleen T. Horning (horning at education.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education
Received on Fri 28 Jan 2000 02:56:10 PM CST