December Stillness - Softcover

Hahn, Mary Downing

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380707640 ISBN 13: 9780380707645

Publisher: Avon Flare, 1990

Synopsis

QUESTIONS

Sensitive and idealistic fifteen-year-old Kelly McAllisterfeels at odds with everyone around her. Her best friendhas suddenly turned boy crazy. Her talented mothercreates greeting card designs instead of real art, andher father never talks to her about anything exceptworking hard and getting ahead.

That's why Kelly becomes so involved in the plight of ahomeless Vietnam vet who takes refuge in the libraryeach day. Interviewing him began as a Social Studiesproject, but it takes on new meaning after her offers offood and friendship backfire into a real disaster.What had the war done to destroy this man? And whathad it done to her own father, who had been to thesame war ... and refuses to speak of it?

About this title

About the Author:

Mary Downing Hahn is the best-selling author of more than twenty award-winning books for young readers, including Stepping on the Cracks, which won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Anna on the Farm is the follow-up to Anna All Year Round, both based on the author’s mother’s memoirs about growing up in Maryland pre-World War I.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 6-9 There are two climactic scenes in Hahn's new novel: one in which a homeless man is killed in a traffic accident after being barred from the library; and a powerful, moving, and convincing chapter set at the Vietnam War Memorial, in which the protagonist's father finally comes to grips with his war experiences. Yet there is no clear focus to the novel, and no direction to any of the myriad other issues that Hahn tackles: adolescent angst, individuality and conformity, the homeless, Vietnam veterans, library policies on vagrants, and more. None get the treatment that they deserve, and the story suffers as it meanders. An underachieving, show-off type high-school freshman who is trying to carve a niche for herself among her friends and her family, Kelly is concerned for a homeless, possibly deranged man whose troubles are a result of his experiences in Vietnam. This teen, who does well in an honors English class but almost fails other academic subjects and finds refuge in the children's section of the library, who abhors the shallowness of her friends' interests but acts smart alecky to gain their approval, comes across as being more inconsistent than three dimensional. The moments of great writing here serve only to underscore those too-abundant plot elements that do not work. David Gale, ``School Library Journal''
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon Flare
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0380707640
• ISBN 13: 9780380707645
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 181