Under the Bridge - Softcover

McKenzie, Ellen Kindt

3.96

26 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0064406296 ISBN 13: 9780064406291

Publisher: Trophy Pr, 1996

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When Ritchie's younger sister Rosie gets very sick after their mother suddenly goes away, Rosie begins to receive letters from a lonely troll, and these letters help Ritchie cope with his mother's absence, his father's seeming indifference, and the fifth-grade class bully.In the 1940s American midwest, Ritchie is coping after his mother suddenly goes away, and his little sister Rosie becomes sick, when a strange letter from a lonely troll comes for Rosie that changes both their lives

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From Booklist:

Gr. 5-7. A child's bewilderment and sadness are movingly dramatized in 10-year-old Ritchie's account of his loving mother's sudden disappearance. His father won't say what's happened to her; in fact, he barely talks to Ritchie and his four-year-old sister, Rosie, except to tell them not to bother him. Slowly Ritchie finds out that his mother is in a hospital with a "nervous breakdown," and he tries to imagine what that means. Unfortunately, the bleak realism is interrupted with some kind of cutesy, comic half-fantasy about a "troll" that lives under the bridge and writes to the kids in a special lingo about how to cope with the monster in their lives. The letter writer is really a musician, who provides a warm, nurturing male figure in contrast to the father. The letters are contrived. It's the tension between the boy and his dad that will hold readers. Any child who has tried to fathom adult secrets will recognize Ritchie's terror and isolation. Hazel Rochman

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