Title: Witness
Author: Karen Hesse
# Of Pages: 161
Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: July 5, 2000
Source: Own
Level: Young Adult
Rating: 2 Hearts
Synopsis
(From Amazon.com)
Leanora Sutter.
Esther Hirsh. Merlin Van Tornhout. Johnny Reeves . . .
These characters are
among the unforgettable cast inhabiting a small Vermont town in 1924. A town
that turns against its own when the Ku Klux Klan moves in. No one is safe,
especially the two youngest, twelve-year-old Leanora, an African-American girl,
and six-year-old Esther, who is Jewish.
In this story of a
community on the brink of disaster, told through the haunting and impassioned
voices of its inhabitants, Newbery Award winner Karen Hesse takes readers into
the hearts and minds of those who bear witness.
My Verdict
It’s always disappointing when you read one book by an
author and absolutely love it and then you read another by them and don’t like
it. That is pretty much what happened here. I had just read Out of the Dust the
night before and was expecting another great book but instead was very
disappointed with what I found.
This is a work of historical fiction about a small town in
1924 and how it affects them when the Ku Klux Klan moves into town. Told in
five “acts”, the story unfolds before us through the eyes of eleven different
characters, each passage told from a different point-of-view. The cast of
characters was just too large and hard to keep track of. There was a cast list
in the front of the book with pictures of each character, which was nice but I
got sick of flipping back and forth between pages every time I couldn’t
remember who someone was. Needless
to say this really hindered me from connecting with any of them.
Another thing I didn’t like about switching between such a
large number of characters was that their ages ranged from six to sixty-six so
one minute your in the head of a six year old with her innocent thoughts and
the next minute your in the head of an adult who’s plotting to poison someone.
I apologize for the really negative review but this book
just wasn’t for me. I am still planning to read more of Hesse’s work in hopes
they will be more like my first experience with her writing, which was the
polar opposite of this one.
