A Shooting Star - Softcover

Klass, Sheila Solomon

3.92

97 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440414938 ISBN 13: 9780440414933

Publisher: Yearling, 1998

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Who says boys are the only ones allowed to have talents and use them? That's what Phoebe Anne Moses, or Annie, as she prefers to be called, would like to know. From the day Annie first picks up her father's rifle at age 8, it's clear she has a rather unusual gift. She is the sharpest shooter in the land. Her Quaker mother would rather Annie concentrate on more traditional activities like cooking and sewing. But Annie can't deny what's in her soul. It's only when she's out in the wilderness, alone with the quiet and the trees and the animals, that she truly feels alive. And Annie knows the game she shoots just may save her family from a life of poverty and despair.

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From School Library Journal:

Grade 4-8. Annie Oakley (1860-1926) was a fascinating woman who won her way into the hearts of audiences worldwide. This fictionalized, first-person narrative of her early life in Ohio takes place during the Civil War years and is developed from the documented major events of Annie's childhood and the beginnings of her celebrity status as an incredibly talented sharp shooter. She was born into a loving Quaker family, but after the deaths of her father and then her stepfather, she was sent to the county poorhouse and then, at age nine, to a cruel family who beat her. In desperation, she escaped and returned to her family. Soon after, her natural shooting skills began to emerge and she supported her family with her hunting talents. When she challenged and won a match with Mr. Butler, star of a traveling Wild West show, she won a husband and a new career. This account dwells on the physical abuses of Annie's childhood. The anger she may have experienced is expressed with gratuitous death threats, "I got my Pa's gun....You better be careful or I'll shoot you dead. I swear it." Would Annie, raised as a Quaker and praised by Will Rogers as a "good Christian woman," have made such threats? The "country" colloquialisms and uneven writing style detract from the story of a life that was fascinating without such embellishments.?Toni Dean, Patchogue-Medford Library, NY
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

From the author of Kool Ada (1991), a fictional glimpse of Annie Oakley that combines elements reminiscent of Wilder's Little House on the Prairie and Burnett's story of The Little Princess. The fast-moving first-person narration begins during the Civil War, when Annie's father dies and the family is in dire straits. One day Annie shoots a rabbit for food, a great blessing that also distresses her Quaker mother who believes that girls should not shoot. When the financial situation becomes impossible, the family splits up and Annie begins a bleak but tolerable existence in a poorhouse. It's a black day when she is sent to help a farm family, where she is beaten, overworked, and starved. She runs away, returning to her family where she resumes the role of provider, thanks to her hunting skills. The inventive plot moves quickly, with pacing and settings that are cinematic and a great happy ending. Readers won't know if the voice of the real Annie has been captured, but this is a terrific story, with moments- -e.g., when the usually careful Annie tells her life story to her future husband, or the description of the quiet of her mind when she aims her gun--that are utterly convincing. (Fiction. 10-12) -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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