The Oxboy - Hardcover

Mazer, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679841911 ISBN 13: 9780679841913

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1993

Synopsis

In an allegorical fantasy by the author of The Salamander Room, the Oxboy, the son of a human and an ox, lives as an outcast, hiding his true nature to protect himself against prejudice, discrimination, and even death.

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Reviews

The form of Mazer's second novel--a stark fable concerning the intermarriage of people and animals--is in striking contrast to the contemporary school-and-neighborhood story in Moose Street (1992), yet its theme is the same: the effects of intolerance. In a preindustrial setting resembling Middle Europe, animals have a nobility that's notably absent in humans who, by custom and decree, abhor them--though many humans mate with the animals. If detected, they and their offspring are summarily executed; still, the ``mixed-bloods'' are everywhere, even among the viciously self-righteous oppressors. When the oxboy's human mother falls under suspicion, his splendid ox father retreats to the forest, still keeping a protective eye on his family. The mother remarries; the boy passes for human, though his best friend is a ``mixed-blood'' who resembles an otter. When the otter is found out and killed, the boy is imprisoned for consorting with him. Mazer's world is incompletely imagined: the father's life in the forest, or why the mother didn't escape to him in the beginning, as the boy does in the end, is not explained. But this allegorical world is compelling (the reference to Jews is obvious, but the tale's meaning is far more universal). A provocative, unusually imaginative tale. (Fiction. 9-14) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 5-7. Part fairy tale, part allegory, this spare, lyrical story has elements of Beauty and the Beast as well as chilling echoes of contemporary bigotry. Once, a long time ago, men and women married animals. Human society now teaches that such pairings were evil, degrading, unnatural; everyone must preserve the purity of the human race. But the oxboy knows otherwise: he's learned that diversity is enriching, that each species brings unique gifts and understanding. While his mother is human, his father is an ox who's been driven into hiding. Oxboy must keep his secret from the purity police, his spying neighbors, and the kids at school. He finds that he's not the only one who hides scales or fur or tails, that there are fugitives in the street around him as well as in the forest. Inevitably, he is discovered and imprisoned, until his father comes for him and they ride away together. Mazer writes with poetic restraint about the glory of pushing boundaries to understand the "language of stones and stars and moss and roses." Just as powerful is her dramatization of the fear and contempt that shut people into apartheid. The haunting dust jacket by Stasys Eidrigevicius shows a boy wearing a sad, beautiful mask that is part human, part ox. Hazel Rochman

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679841911
• ISBN 13: 9780679841913
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 109