Overview
In this gentle, poignant novel-in-verse, the acclaimed author of AMARYLLIS tells a family tale that is infused with joy, heartbreak, and hope.
Mom says Dad's spirit lives in every blade of grass,
in every tree, in all the ways we learn to keep on breathing.
A new beginning and a simpler life — that's what Mom and Dad and their young son are looking for when they move north of everything, leaving the city life of Miami for a farm in Montpelier, Vermont. And that's what they find, among a hundred peaceful acres of fields and pastures hugging the banks of the Winooski River. But even as the now-rural family takes careful note of the changing seasons, they encounter their own unexpected series of beginnings and endings. Craig Crist-Evans's spare, lyrical novel will speak to anyone who has experienced change and loss, and who has faced the struggle — and found the spirit to carry on.
Synopsis
In this gentle, poignant novel-in-verse, the acclaimed author of AMARYLLIS tells a family tale that is infused with joy, heartbreak, and hope.
Mom says Dad's spirit lives in every blade of grass,
in every tree, in all the ways we learn to keep on breathing.
A new beginning and a simpler life — that's what Mom and Dad and their young son are looking for when they move north of everything, leaving the city life of Miami for a farm in Montpelier, Vermont. And that's what they find, among a hundred peaceful acres of fields and pastures hugging the banks of the Winooski River. But even as the now-rural family takes careful note of the changing seasons, they encounter their own unexpected series of beginnings and endings. Craig Crist-Evans's spare, lyrical novel will speak to anyone who has experienced change and loss, and who has faced the struggle — and found the spirit to carry on.
Sue Stefurak - Children's Literature
The pain of his father's death through eyes of a boy. A family moves from the crowded city to a Vermont farm and finds deep pleasure in the "good clean dirt," the birth of a baby sister, and a new friend with bunnies. Then the father dies, and mom has difficultly coping and the son is not much comforted knowing that dad is "silent as the earth, still as water on a windless day and invisible as air." But the healing begins to happen as the son begins to accept that "soon the peepers and the crickets will stop singing . . . and the moose will disappear into the woods . . . until spring," for everything has a season. He takes up the abandoned reins and "keeps the wheels steady in the furrows between the rows of corn" and mom "pulls a baby cow" into life. Crist-Evan's rich evocative free verse paints the cycle of life and death with subtly and healing and the book is a welcome addition to this difficult theme. 2004, Candlewick Press, Ages 13 up.
Editorials
From The Critics
Poet Crist-Evans uses sparse, but evocative, language to create an emotional response in this verse-novel about rebirth and hope. The prologue introduces this theme by describing the cycle of the seasons "north of everything" where fall turns to winter and then spring. This seasonal change is a symbol of the cycle of death, birth, and rebirth which the young narrator encounters during several years in his life when his family moves from Miami, Florida, to a farm along the banks of the Winooski in Vermont. They start over and are happy working the land and then expecting a new baby, until the father is diagnosed with cancer. Each person in the family deals with the reality of death in different ways, but in the end they find the courage to go on, realizing that "Dad's spirit lives/in every blade of grass,/in every tree, in all the ways/we learn to keep on breathing." This touching verse-novel will remind readers of several other recently published books which use poetry to tell a story, such as Almost Forever by Maria Testa and Out of the Dust and Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse. 2004, Candlewick Press, 80 pp., Ages young adult.—Jeanne M. McGlinn
Children's Literature
The pain of his father's death through eyes of a boy. A family moves from the crowded city to a Vermont farm and finds deep pleasure in the "good clean dirt," the birth of a baby sister, and a new friend with bunnies. Then the father dies, and mom has difficultly coping and the son is not much comforted knowing that dad is "silent as the earth, still as water on a windless day and invisible as air." But the healing begins to happen as the son begins to accept that "soon the peepers and the crickets will stop singing . . . and the moose will disappear into the woods . . . until spring," for everything has a season. He takes up the abandoned reins and "keeps the wheels steady in the furrows between the rows of corn" and mom "pulls a baby cow" into life. Crist-Evan's rich evocative free verse paints the cycle of life and death with subtly and healing and the book is a welcome addition to this difficult theme. 2004, Candlewick Press, Ages 13 up.—Sue Stefurak
KLIATT
In a series of prose poems, an unnamed boy relates how his family moves from Miami to a farm in Vermont and starts a new life there. His mother becomes pregnant, but as her belly swells his father grows thinner. A baby sister is born; his father dies of cancer; his mother fights alcoholism. The seasons change and life goes on, with grief tempered by the baby, by spring, by new calves and crops growing on the farm. This spare, affecting novel in verse, by poet/writer Crist-Evans (author of Amaryllis and Moon Over Tennessee: A Boy's Civil War Journal), is a model of the form, and a good choice for upper elementary and middle school students, who may be inspired to try their own hands at this way of telling a tale. KLIATT Codes: J—Recommended for junior high school students. 2004, Candlewick, 80p., Ages 12 to 15.—Paula Rohrlick