The Creek - Softcover

Holm, Jennifer L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060001356 ISBN 13: 9780060001353

Publisher: HarperTeen, 2004

Synopsis

When Caleb Devin returns to town after being sent away for his violent ways, Penny learns that he is seeking revenge against her and her friends and so must find a way to stop him before doing irrevocable damage to her small hometown. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Jennifer L. Holm is the author of the Newbery Honor Book Our Only May Amelia and of the historical novels Boston Jane: An Adventure and Boston Jane: Wilderness Days. The Creek is her first contemporary novel. She creates her unforgettable heroines in New York, where she shares a home with her husband and her cat.

From Booklist:

Gr. 6-8. Holm, author of several historical novels about girls grappling with puberty, gives the theme a contemporary twist, adding trappings of a creepy thriller that pushes the story well beyond the wan child-plays-detective stuff so prevalent in youth mysteries. Penny, almost 13, is content to spend her summer hanging out with the boys on her block. But this year, their games are charged by rumors about exciting, sexy, Caleb Devlin, who gives Penny strange, shivery thrills. When increasingly disturbing things happen in the neighborhood, culminating in the vicious murder of a young child, Caleb is the prime suspect. Taut, well plotted, and with a smooth arc of suspense, this does more than deliver a good story; it also addresses some of puberty's difficult emotional changes and raises challenging questions about moral issues. To Holm's credit, everything isn't necessarily resolved, Caleb is a "bad boy," (though not in the expected way), and despite the dead child, there's no over-the-top violence. What stands out most, perhaps, is Holm's chipping away at the literary taboo Robert Cormier cracked open in his Rag and Bone Shop (2001); child murder and young children as murderers are not the province of children's books. Kids often see worse on the evening news, but this skillful, surprising novel may raise some adult eyebrows. Stephanie Zvirin
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About this edition

• Publisher: HarperTeen
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060001356
• ISBN 13: 9780060001353
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304