Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Wednesday March 16, 2011
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UNDERGROUND
Shane W. Evans
Roaring Brook
ISBN 978-1596435384
NA pages
$16.99
Reviewed by Kristi Jemtegaard
In this visual account of the Underground Railroad, darkness is safety while the bright light of civilization spells danger. At the outset of one group’s harrowing journey, the sole source of light is a glowing orange rectangle set in a swath of deep blue night. All else that shines -- the stars, the moon, the whites of people’s eyes -- is mere reflection. But the faintly outlined faces do not look toward this beckoning, almost cozy, window. Their gaze is turned away toward an even deeper darkness: "The escape." A faceless man, a rifle ready in one clenched fist, holds a brilliant yellow lantern aloft: "Some don’t make it." But the light of freedom, like the light of the morning sun, is also strong. "We are almost there." The sketchy, anonymous faces of the escapees take on depth and individuality as the clear light of day breaks in a new and different land. "Freedom. I am free. He is free. She is free. We are free." The minimal text drums like a heartbeat. From terror to triumph, a perfect evocation for very young readers of what it means to escape from bondage.
-- Kristi Jemtegaard
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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STRINGS ATTACHED
Judy Blundell
Scholastic
ISBN 978-0545221269
$17.99
Reviewed by Mary Quattlebaum
Judy Blundell follows her 2008 National Book Award winner, "What I Saw and How I Lied," with an intense young-adult mystery cut from the same midcentury-noir cloth but, if possible, even more intricately stitched. Family secrets are the warp and weft of this novel, too.
At 17, Kit Corrigan, a talented dancer, has left her home in Providence, R.I., for a Broadway dream. The reality, though, is a low-paying gig in a musical flop and nights on a rented couch. Enter Nate Benedict, the mob-attorney father of Kit's brooding ex-boyfriend, Billy, now a soldier in the Korean War. Nate sets Kit up with an apartment and a glamorous nightclub job but "requests" that she resume contact with Billy, from whom he is estranged. Blundell skillfully threads extended flashbacks through the first-person narrative, as Kit comes to realize Nate's shady connection, over the years, to her father and to pretty Aunt Delia.
Stylish prose creates a sense of time and place, from the New England back yards where "tomato plants and grapevines competed with shrines to the Virgin Mary" to Manhattan's predawn "quiet, gray and silver" streets to the "eerie ... apprehension" of air-raid drills. As past is pieced to present, the story moves to a murder, a multigenerational showdown and, amid shattering surprises, the sense that family forms the fabric -- colorful and torn -- of Kit's life.
-- Mary Quattlebaum
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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