From: Elsa Marston <elsa.marston>
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:18:17 -0500

I have to comment on this book by Marian Dane Bauer. I read it in an auto mechanic's waiting room, and found myself weeping by the end (in part, I must admit, because the boy on the paperback cover reminded me so much of my son at that age, and I couldn't help wondering how he would have behaved in such a situation--and how I could have saved him from unhappiness!).

As I recall, it is indeed an open-ended treatment of a very basic, all-ages, dilemma: How do you choose between withholding information-- or even lying-- in order to save your skin, and telling the truth and suffering the consequences? The boy in the story does finally tell the truth, not surprisingly, but I think the description of what he goes through until he reaches that decision is extremely moving--beautifully handled by a master-writer. The background assumptions about families, behavior, etc., to my mind, are just what we need to know in order to appreciate what this particular child is experiencing as he finds himself deeper and deeper in moral agony, rather than a "sneaky" injection of "what should be."

Elsa www.elsamarston.com
Received on Sat 25 Jul 2009 02:18:17 PM CDT