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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Conlon-McKenna, M. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
One of the greatest historical fiction adventures in children's literature.
Marita Conlon-McKenna's Children of the Famine series brings to life as never before the Great Famine of 1840s Ireland and the immigrations that followed. Winner of many awards and accolades, these are all-time classics in historical fiction for children. Join siblings Eily, Michael, and Peggy on their incredible journey as they overcome tragedy, famine, and poverty to make their way in a dangerous new world.
" Beautiful and moving...historically true and fictionally vivid."-Sunday Times
" Not a word, spoken or unspoken, nor an emotion, is wasted. Pace and style keep the pages turning, and you are filled with a sense of wanting more at the end. Highly recommended." -Books Ireland
" Brings to a satisfying conclusion one of the undoubted achievements of contemporary Irish children's literature." -Children's Books in Ireland
" Three novels which, in my opinion, must be counted among the very highest achievements of contemporary children's writing - from Ireland or elsewhere." -Robert Dunbar
Author Notes
Marita Conlon-McKenna is one of Ireland's most popular children's authors. She has written nine bestselling children's books. Under the HawthornTree, her first novel, became an immediate bestseller and has been described as "the biggest success story in children's historical fiction." Marita lives in Dublin with her husband and four children.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-- Historic validity and a dramatic writing style work together here to create an engrossing and realistic tale. This sequel to Under the Hawthorn Tree (Holiday, 1990) focuses on 13-year-old Peggy O'Driscoll as she makes her way to America from Ireland after the Great Famine that left her an orphan. Just as the earlier book depicts the hardships of the time, this one offers an honest picture of the problems of immigration. And while it gives readers solid historical background, it also serves up a well-written story with characters who, although somewhat stereotypical, are believable. Passage to America is being offered, and Peggy takes advantage of it. She arrives in Boston with no place to go, but soon finds her way to a home for young girls. She ultimately goes into service to a wealthy family, and it is here that her life in America begins to take shape. Readers will feel the enormity of her decision and the pain of leaving loved ones behind. All the complications of embarking on the journey become clear. The dismal conditions in steerage and the relentless seasickness can almost be felt through Colon-McKenna's sharp prose. High-quality historical fiction.-- Renee Steinberg, Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Thirteen-year-old Peggy O'Driscoll leaves her home and family in Ireland to begin a new life in the United States in this sequel to 'Under the Hawthorn Tree' (Holiday). Though the characters are not fully developed, the book provides a vivid picture of the world of an Irish immigrant in mid-nineteenth-century America. From HORN BOOK 1992, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Peggy, who found refuge with her great-aunts during the Irish Potato Famine (Under the Hawthorn Tree, 1990), sets out on her own for America: her sister is to be married, and her brother has found a job, so only 13-year-old Peggy accepts the subsidized passage to Boston. A motherly neighbor provides some assistance during the grueling voyage in steerage, but is detained with cabin fever on arrival. Another friend helps Peggy find lodging with a kind but businesslike fellow immigrant who matches the newly arrived girls with jobs; Peggy's first employer is a horror, but with the second--despite the obliviousness of even a nice upstairs family to downstairs drudgery--she finds a precarious stability and hope for a better future. Here, the brief tenure of a stingy martinet of a housekeeper and the animosity of the family's spoiled teenage daughter provide some suspenseful episodes, but most of the events simply dramatize the Irish immigrant experience. Still, Peggy is likable, other characters are concisely but effectively drawn, and the picture of a young girl making her way in a new land is authentic. (Fiction. 10-15)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-7. Peggy O'Driscoll's story started in Under the Hawthorn Tree [BKL N 15 90], when her parents died during the Great Famine in Ireland and she walked with her older brother and sisters across the country in search of food and a home. Now at 13, prospects are bleak, and she leaves that home behind and takes up the offer of a free passage across the Atlantic to Boston in the 1850s. Of course, she's brave, resourceful, spirited, and loving, but there's no easy rags-to-riches success formula. The facts of this docunovel will fascinate kids, and the story will make fine reading for any classroom unit on nine~teenth-century immigration: the wrenching leave-taking; the excitement and misery of the long, cramped, stormy journey in steerage ("five stinking, rotten, smelly, disgusting weeks"); the struggle for work as a skivvy and then as kitchen maid in a grand house; the aching homesickness. Peggy's a survivor, but there's little sentimentality. The hardship, fear, and loneliness are always there, as well as the promise of something better. We're ready for the sequel. ~--Hazel Rochman