The Silent Boy

Publishers Weekly

Nine-year-old Katy describes the unlikely friendship she develops with a "touched" farm boy. "The author balances humor and generosity with the obstacles and injustice of Katy's world to depict a complete picture of the turn of the 20th century," wrote PW in a starred review. Ages 12-up. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

VOYA

This compassionately written novel chronicles a story set in the early 1900s, inspired by the period photographs that illustrate each of twenty chapters. Narrator Katy Thatcher's voice provides enchanting evidence of her developing cognition. Six-year-old Katy's precocious intelligence contrasts with her naïveté. Her doctor father explains science and medicine to his future-doctor daughter, giving her an advanced but credible medical vocabulary, while her linguistic errors and concrete thinking reveal her innocence. Katy sees Jacob, the silent boy, watching when she and her father come to cart away his sister Peggy to be their hired girl, and she becomes acquainted with him while with her father on a medical call. Jacob is revealed to be gentle and good with Katy as his kind, understanding, and curious friend. Peggy and Jacob's sister Nellie is the hired girl next door who falls for a young man of the house in a lopsided relationship. Katy's growth enables her to understand and explain Jacob's bizarre action but innocent intent in carrying Nellie's unwanted infant to leave it for Mrs. Thatcher, a woman whom he has judged a caring and nurturing mother. Lowry's latest achievement delivers complexity disguised as simplicity-providing depth through her child-narrator's eyes. Themes of birth and death weave throughout; period news and truths add substance, and town life is contrasted with country. Farm girls cease formal education when hired out, but town girls may study further. Farm girls understand maternity; Katy believes babies arrive in the garden. Overlaying this setting, touched in the head, nonverbal Jacob Stoltz appreciates sounds and communes with animals. Readers sense that Katy'spatient understanding of his behaviors and motivations surpasses adults', and realize that Lowry has wrenched their hearts again. VOYA Codes: 5Q 4P M J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2003, Walter Lorraine Books/Houghton Mifflin, 192p,
— Cynthia Winfield

From The Critics

Deeply reminiscent of Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Lois Lowry's The Silent Boy is a touching story of a series of tragic events in a small town in the years immediately preceding World War I. In the book's prologue we meet our narrator, Katy Thatcher, now an elderly woman and a retired physician. The rest of the book is her recollection of her friendship with and growing understanding of Jacob Stoltz, a mentally retarded boy who rarely speaks, loves animals, and possesses the capacity for tragedy and heroism. As in To Kill a Mockingbird, The Silent Boy describes the beauty and the ugliness of rural life through the eyes of a young girl, the only character in the story who understands Jacob's actions and his heroism. The text is enriched with antique photographs interspersed throughout, and Lowry inserts historical events (e.g. the San Francisco earthquake, the first automobiles) into the narrative to provide a rich historical context. The Silent Boy is a gentle, bittersweet, and well-crafted novel. 2003, Houghton Mifflin Co, 178 pp., Ages young adult.
—F. Todd Goodson

KLIATT

To quote the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, March 2003: Inspired by old photos (reproduced at the beginning of each chapter), Lowry has fashioned an affecting and ultimately tragic tale set nearly a hundred years ago in a small farm community. Katy, the young daughter of the local doctor, tells the story. She is curious and clever, and plans to become a doctor herself; we know from the prologue, which is set in 1987, that she achieves her goal. When Katy is almost eight, she accompanies her father on a trip to the countryside to bring home their new hired girl, Peggy, and briefly glimpses Peggy's "touched" younger brother, Jacob, who is 13. Jacob doesn't speak, or go to school, but he helps out on the farm and has a special, gentle way with animals: when a mother sheep rejects her lamb, he convinces another sheep to suckle it. Over the next year, Katy forges a friendship of sorts with shy Jacob. In contrast, Peggy and Jacob's older sister Nellie, a hired girl at the household next door to Katy, is an outgoing, flamboyant type, who responds to the advances of the teenage son in that family. When Nellie becomes pregnant, she returns home to have the baby, but rejects it when it is born. Jacob then takes the fragile newborn and carries it for miles through cold and rain to Katy's household, hoping, perhaps, that Katy's mother, who has recently had a baby herself, will care for this unwanted infant, like the sheep did with the lamb. But the baby is found dead in Katy's sister's crib, and Jacob is taken off to the asylum, never to be seen by Katy again. Much of the story is given over to Katy's happy reminiscences of her childhood, from making a snowman to getting a kitten as a gift fromJacob, seeing the town's first motorcar, and celebrating her ninth birthday. The few dark notes, such as learning about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and visiting the asylum with her father, do not prepare the reader for the events at the end that unfold so tragically and yet so logically, giving them an even greater impact. This is a thoughtful and dark work, with carefully drawn characters, that imaginatively brings to life a rural community of a century ago. Like many of Lowry's other works, it raises moral and ethical issues in a challenging and subtle fashion. KLIATT Codes: JS—Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2003, Random House, Dell Laurel-Leaf, 178p. illus., Ages 12 to 18.
—Paula Rohrlick

Children's Literature

Great anticipation lures readers to the newest novel of a Newbery Award winner, especially a two-time winner like Lois Lowry. She does not disappoint in The Silent Boy. Her splendid images are ripe with possibility from the first paragraph of her acknowledgments: "To glimpse other lives (in photographs) makes me shiver with imagination." Each chapter opens with a turn-of-the-century photograph, connected--at least in the reader's imagination--to the people and events in that chapter. Jacob is the silent boy; "touched in the head," says his sister; autistic we would probably say today. We learn the taunts and cruelties the wider world showers on boys like Jacob, but through his sister Peggy, the young protagonist Katie, and her wise doctor-father, we also gain an appreciation of Jacob's qualities and the joy that can come from befriending and understanding such a young man. There are wonderful windows on American life in the early twentieth century, when telephones and automobiles were often considered toys that appealed to the "extravagant foolishness of men." There are also windows on the innocence, wisdom and eternal impulsiveness of youth. The conclusion of the story is intense, filled with suspense and surprise; until that point, the book is a rich but quiet drama of daily life, brimming with sensitive characterization and moral contemplation rather than action and intrigue. Lois Lowry brings her characters to adulthood before the story ends, but by that time you feel so connected to this family that you are not ready to bid good-bye.
—Karen Leggett

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-The Silent Boy (HM, 2003) by Lois Lowry (The Giver, Number the Stars) recounts the early 20th century childhood of Katy Thatcher and her special relationship with an autistic boy. Lowry subtly recreates the lifestyle, customs, and attitudes of the time period, weaving well-researched details seamlessly into the narrative. Told as a flashback by an elderly Katy, this poignant work of historical fiction is read superbly by actress Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Perfect Storm). Her gravelly yet soothing voice perfectly suits the elderly Katy Thatcher. Allen captures the playful innocence of young Katy, the patience of her deep-voiced father, and the quiet strength of her mother, while her voice is weighted by years of sorrow. There are a handful of awkward moments in the flow of the reading, but not enough to detract from the story. Background music plays at the close of the final chapter. The overall aural quality is excellent. Middle school girls will especially appreciate this insightful and compelling audiobook. While well-handled, the tragic ending may upset younger or more sensitive listeners.-Leigh Ann Rumsey, Penn Yan Academy, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Around her private trove of atmospheric old photographs, Newbery winner Lowry (The Giver, 1993; Number the Stars, 1990) spins a patchy but sensitive tale of a country doctor's daughter observing the lives of those around her-in particular the women, and a mentally disabled teenager with a strong affinity for animals. Writing as an older adult, Katy looks back to 1911, the year she first became aware of the new hired girl's brother Jacob. "Touched by God," according to his mother, dubbed "imbecile" by ruder locals, Jacob never speaks, does not go to school, and never makes eye contact. But he ably helps to care for the livestock on his family's farm, whether it be with routine milking, or the delicate task of persuading a ewe to accept a lamb rejected by its own mother. Taking her cue from the steady, tolerant adults around her, Katy treats him with respect, learning to be comfortable around him in their occasional meetings, and even to understand him a little. Jacob passes in and out of view as other events, from the arrival of a new baby in her household, to the planning of her ninth birthday party, not only absorb more of Katy's attention, but give her narrative an episodic structure; several of the characters, in fact, seem constructed more to flesh out the photos at their heads than to advance the story. Jacob's story ends in a tragedy deftly foreshadowed. Katy wraps up the loose ends by describing what became of the other major characters. Though well-crafted and narrated by a perceptive, large-hearted child who goes on to follow in her father's profession, this lacks the focus of Lowry's best work. (Fiction. 11-13)

From the Publisher

“The author balances humor and generosity with the obstacles and injustice of Katy’s world to depict a complete picture of the turn of the century.” Publishers Weekly, Starred

“Lowry’s latest achievement delivers complexity disguised as simplicity—providing depth through her child–narrator’s eyes.” VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)

“Emotionally devastating and infinitely haunting.” Horn Book

“Not since Autumn Street has Lowry written a novel that injects childhood experience so deeply with adult tone.” The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

“Lowry excels in developing strong and unique characters.” School Library Journal

“Well-crafted and narrated by a perceptive, large–hearted child.” Kirkus Reviews