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Searching... Newberg Public Library | TEEN COMAN | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Boyds Mills Press publishes a wide range of high-quality fiction and nonfiction picture books, chapter books, novels, and nonfiction
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-9With wrenching simplicity and mesmerizing imagery, Coman articulates nine-year-old Jamie's baffled, stream-of-consciousness observations of a violent act that robs him of his security, but not his innocence. Awakened in the middle of the night by some primal sense of alarm, the sleep-disoriented boy watches his stepfather reach into his baby sister's crib and throw her across the room. And then he watches his mother step into the bedroom doorway and catch her flying baby. Patty deposits her pajama-clad children into the safety of her rusty old Buick, collects the bare necessities, and leaves. With the help of her friend Earl, Jamie's teacher, and even her mother-in-law, Patty finds her way back to work and into a support group for battered wives. In a trailer out in the middle of nowhere, she and Jamie tough it out, slowly reinventing their lives. Revealed through the boy's clear, unprejudiced eye, characters, though rough and uneducated, are not stereotyped. It is Jamie who is most delicately and lovingly wrought. His love of magic tricks, illusion, and sleight of hand sustains him through the bad times. Shocking in its simple narration and child's-eye view, What Jamie Saw is a bittersweet miracle in understated language and forthright hopefulness.Alice Casey Smith, Sayreville War Memorial High School, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In a starred review of this "heartwrenching" 1996 Newbery Honor book about escaping domestic violence, PW said, "This work seems to spring directly from Coman's heart into the reader's own." Ages 9-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
This brief novel explodes into the reader's consciousness from the very first page with its startling image of a baby hurtling across a room. Nine-year-old Jamie is traumatized by this episode when his stepfather, Van, grabs Jamie's crying baby sister and throws her. His mother, coming into the room, catches her just in time, then grabs her son and daughter and takes off. After that night, the three of them go to live in the wintry New Hampshire woods in a tiny trailer lent by a friend. The horrifying incident seems to put this fragile family into suspended animation: Jamie's mother, Patty, doesn't make him go to school, although this year in the third grade he has a teacher he likes; and Patty stops going to her job bagging groceries at the IGA. Most days, Jamie entertains his little sister and his mother with his favorite pastime - performing tricks he has learned from his book on magic. An occasional venture into the world produces more trauma. Patty takes Jamie to a school fair, but both of them turn skittish when they see someone who resembles Van. Then one day, Mrs. Desrochers, Jamie's teacher, intrudes on their hideaway and has a long talk with Jamie's mother. After that, he has to go to school, and his mother attends some meetings with "a group of women who were trying real hard and needed to talk," she explains. When Van finally does come, Jamie and Patty together muster the courage to face him and make him leave. Jamie is surprised at how small and harmless the man seems after all. Coman's poetic prose is unsentimental and concise. The elements of plot and characterization meld into a finely balanced blend. This is a powerful story that probes with painful insistence at the insidious nature of fear and its consequences. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An extremely intimate narrative about Jamie, nine, that opens in the middle of a traumatic scene-his mother's lover throws Jamie's baby half-sister across the room, and his mother catches herand then closely follows the state of the boy's soul as he, his mother, and the baby move out of the house and into a trailer on top of a mountain. Written in the third-person, entirely from Jamie's point of view, the book tries to describe what Jamie feels, but what he himself might not yet be able to articulate. To this end, the narrative organizes his experience obliquely, whether by employing a poetic and repetitive prose style in order to convey the uneven manner in which emotions or episodes unfold or by stepping back from the protagonist by posing a question``Just who did Jamie think was going to open that door?''only to return to him immediately for the answer. In effect, Coman (Tell Me Everything, 1993, etc.) speaks for her hero with the intuitive understanding and empathy of a mother. The subjective impressions that she records are unmistakably those of a young boy, and Jaime's subjectivity becomes increasingly convincing; the cumulative effect is mesmerizing. Reading this short novella, readers will find themselves quickly slipping into a mode of thought analogous to the protagonist's. It's a profound characterization and a remarkable achievement in a book about ordinary people trying to put their lives in order. (Fiction. 8-10)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-8. From its opening sentence, Coman's latest grabs your attention: "When Jamie saw him throw the baby, saw Van throw the little baby, saw Van throw his little sister Nin, when Jamie saw Van throw his baby sister Nin, then they moved." Coman captures in lyrical prose the rush of feelings third-grader Jamie experiences when his mother, having successfully caught the baby, packs them in the car and flees to a friend's trailer. Jamie likes the small space, where, "if someone went flying," they wouldn't go far, and there are no sharp edges, but when he and his mother venture out to a school carnival and think they spot Van, their fear overwhelms them. Fortunately, Jamie's teacher spies them crouching, and when Jamie misses more than a week of school, Mrs. Desrocher lends them the support they need to reenter the normal world. Coman depicts with visceral clarity the reactions of both Jamie and his mother, capturing their jitteriness and the love that carries them through the moments when they take their fear out on each other. Coman admirably overcomes the technical difficulties she has set for herself in beginning her novel with such an intense scene, and her conclusion, with Van deflated by the unified front Jamie and his mother present, satisfies and feels truthful. Jamie, with his acute observations and ability to completely immerse himself in the moment, is a memorable character children will recognize as being just like them. --Susan Dove Lempke