Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 5-9. See Focus on p.1072.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This sensitive yet gritty novel about incest may be Woodson's ( Between Madison and Palmetto ) strongest work to date. Marie, the eighth-grade narrator, lives in an all-black suburb of Athens, Ohio, with her father; her mother, who has inherited money from her own parents, sends arty messages from the far-flung locales she has toured since leaving the family two years ago. Ignoring the sneers of her friends--and her father's warnings--Marie befriends ``whitetrash'' Lena, the new girl at school. Woodson confronts sticky questions about race head-on, with the result that her observations and her characterizations are all the more trustworthy. Her approach to the incest theme is less immediate but equally convincing--Marie receives Lena's restrained confidences about being molested, at first disbelieving Lena, then torn between her desire to help her friend and her promise not to tell anyone. Lena has tried all the textbook solutions--including reporting her father to the authorities--and has learned that outside interference only brings more trouble. Marie, struggling to cope with her mother's desertion, must accept Lena's disappearance, too, when Lena and her younger sister first decide to run away and then do flee. Told in adroitly sequenced flashbacks, Woodson's novel is wrenchingly honest and, despite its sad themes, full of hope and inspiration. Ages 12-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8Jacqueline Woodson touches a nerve in this haunting tale of innocence lost and friendship gained (Delacorte, 1994). Despite differences in race and economics, Lena and Marie become friends when they discover that neither of them has a mother at home. Lenas mother is dead, and Maries has left for the lure of greater individual freedom. As their friendship grows, Lena trusts Marie with a secret that both shames and enrages her. Lynne Thigpens narration brings to life a sad tale of incest and abuse. This Coretta Scott King Award-winner provides a moving illustration of the bonds that exist among friends.Cindy Lombardo, Orrville Public Library, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Twelve-year-old Marie, who comes from the well-off African-American community of her Ohio suburb, is still reeling from her mother's sudden departure two years earlier. She develops an unlikely friendship with Lena, a poor white girl who has also lost her mother, and the two forge a strong bond. Yet Lena has a sadness that runs even deeper than Marie's: she confides that her father has been sexually abusing her. Woodson's characters are deftly drawn, whole individuals; her spare prose and crystal images create a haunting, poetic novel. From HORN BOOK 1994, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Friendship lightens the burden of adolescence in a spare novel about two girls drawn together by the common thread of their loss. Marie, popular daughter of a black professor who developed anti- white sentiments during the civil rights movement, befriends Lena, the essence of ``poor white trash.'' Not only is Lena struggling with the death of her mother; she's also tormented by her father's sexual advances. ``Lena's eyes seemed to hold on to that sadness as though any minute she'd start crying and no one in the world, not even God, could stop the tears. She didn't cry, though. Behind the sadness in her eyes there was something--like a thin layer of steel.'' Marie's mother, too, is gone, on a ``walkabout'' from which Marie and her father know she'll never return. Marked by their abandonment, the two struggle to negotiate treacherous early adolescence; briefly, they find a gritty comfort in each other. But when Lena's father makes a pass at Lena's younger sister Dion, Lena summons the courage to take her and disappear. Woodson's poignant prose deftly understates issues of race, abuse, and loss as it tracks the friendship's brief course. ``Me and Dion, when we go, if I never see you again, I want you to know that I'm somewhere thinking about you, Marie.'' (Fiction. 12+)
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