Sweetly Sings the Donkey - Hardcover

Cleaver, Vera

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0397321562 ISBN 13: 9780397321568

Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1985

Synopsis

It is up to fourteen-year-old Lily Snow to hold her family together when her parents' plans for a better life in Florida backfire

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 6-8 Lily Snow, at 14, is tired of living on dreamsher father's dreams, mostly, and for the most part unrealized. When Judson Snow inherits land in Florida, he packs up his family for yet another move, bolstered by visions of sunshine and dreams of peanut farming. Reality is another thing, howeverthe land at Sweet Root Falls is rough and wooded, with no house to welcome them, and it doesn't take Lily long to realize that nothing has changed. Her mother's abandonment of the family, spurred by final disillusionment with Judson's unfulfilled promises, leaves Lily in charge of her father and two younger brothers. What they need, she determines, is a home of their ownnot just another rented houseand with the help of some locals, she secretly builds a house on the land at Sweet Root Falls (a rather implausible accomplishment) in the hope that the family can now put down roots. Cleaver writes with her customary strength of theme and emotions, using sharply precise, gritty characterizations. Cleaver makes the story of this rather unappealing family (the impractical father is full of plans that never come to fruition; the mother is a weak, ineffectual whiner; Danny is a withdrawn, curiously suppressed and sullen loner; and Lily shows a budding predilection for manipulating men) a particularly compelling one. There is an immensity of anger here, expressed or merely felt, yet the plot does not bog down into heavy depression due to some subtly crafted pacing and plotting. Although the text is occasionally choppy (perhaps to mirror the Snows' lives), and although there is only the suggestion of an upbeat ending, this is an intriguing book. Kathleen Brachmann, Highland Park Public Library, Ill.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0397321562
• ISBN 13: 9780397321568
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 150