Way Home - Hardcover

Hathorn, Libby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517599090 ISBN 13: 9780517599099

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1994

Synopsis

Shane finds a no-name stray cat and takes it through the dangers of the city to his home, a corner of an alley

About this title

About the Author

Libby Hathorn is Australian. She read voraciously as a child. The beach and the bush have had a big influence on her, and even now she cannot imagine living too far from the beach. Greg Rogers was born in 1957 in Brisbane, Australia. He studied Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, and had his first major exhibition in 1983, the year in which he won the SGIO Art Award for photography. He illustrated his 1st book in 1988. Has won a number of awards for his pencil work, but likes to work with pastels, ink and watercolour too.

From School Library Journal

Grade 3-8-In this distressing look at life on the streets of a big city, Shane, a preteen boy, heads home past broken windows, graffiti-scribbled walls, dilapidated fences, and alleys strewn with trash. On the way, he avoids a group of tough boys and encounters a fierce dog, talking all the while to the stray kitten snuggled safely inside his jacket. Finally he crawls through a jagged hole in a chainlink fence and into the cozy, sheltered corner of an alley that he calls home. A toy robot is the only sign of childhood amid a bed of newspapers, blanket, pictures torn from magazines, and empty milk cartons. Soft, double-page, charcoal-pencil drawings in muted shades of blue, brown, gray, and terra cotta on black backgrounds sharply contrast the brightness of signs, buildings, and rush-hour traffic with the secluded loneliness of dark alleys. Rogers has created a feeling of drama and harshness by placing white text on black backgrounds that appear to have a large piece of each page torn away to reveal a glimpse of the city underneath. Gentle closeups of Shane show a handsome boy with slicked-back hair; tidy baseball jacket; and t-shirt and jeans sans worn spots or patches. He's a healthy, cool-looking kid, seemingly well fed and neat, so his situation seems somewhat at odds with his appearance. Only one split-heeled sneaker and his grimy hands hint at what his home will look like. There is no explanation of his plight in either text or illustrations. Although this story is disturbing, it lacks credibility and thus the pathos that might be evoked by such powerful artwork. Keith Greenberg's Erik Is Homeless (Lerner, 1992) presents a realistic picture of the life of a homeless boy and his mom in a factual format that children can understand.
Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0517599090
• ISBN 13: 9780517599099
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 32