Green Boy - Hardcover

Cooper, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689847513 ISBN 13: 9780689847516

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2002

Synopsis

Long Pond Cay, in the Bahamas, is a magical white-sand island, and twelve-year-old Trey and silent seven-year-old Lou love to visit its loneliness. But one day the magic becomes nightmare, and suddenly they are in another world, strident, polluted, and overcrowded -- where little Lou is hailed not as a mute Bahamian boy but as the mythic hero Lugh, born to bring terrible destruction and renewal.
Carried betwween worlds in a zigzag adenture of mounting tension and danger, the children risk their lives not only to save the alien world, but to ward off a new, parallel threat to their beloved Long Pond Cay. The forces of myth and nature explode together in an amazing climax.
This is a deeply moving fantasy told by an internationally acclaimed Newbery Award -- wining writer, who knows and loves the Bahamian islands. Its vision of a spoiled world ominously like our own will haunt the reader for long time to come.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Cooper is one of our foremost fantasy authors; her classic five-book fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her books’ accolades include the Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and five shortlists for the Carnegie Medal. She combines fantasy with history in Victory (a Washington Post Top Ten Books for Children pick), King of Shadows, Ghost Hawk, and her magical The Boggart and the Monster, second in a trilogy, which won the Scottish Arts Council’s Children’s Book Award. Susan Cooper lives on a saltmarsh island in Massachusetts, and you can visit her online at TheLostLand.com.

Reviews

Grades 4-7--While playing on pristine Long Pond Cay near their home in the Bahamas, 12-year-old Trey and 7-year-old Lou are transported to a nightmarish world that has almost been destroyed by pollution and overbuilding. The siblings make several visits to this Otherworld, where underground rebels take them under their wing, realizing that mute and mysterious Lou is the prophesied catalyst in the Greenwar they are waging. Meanwhile, in their own world, the children's grandparents are fighting a losing battle against developers who want to put a resort on Long Pond Cay. Trey, whose gender is never clearly stated, narrates this environmental fantasy in a sensible, likable voice, and there is enough tension and adventure in both worlds to keep the pages turning. Like Trey, readers might not understand why and how the siblings travel between the worlds and are so crucial to the future of the Otherworld. Compared to the compelling scenes that take place in the Bahamas, the Otherworld episodes feel forced and illogical-why must Lou find fossilized star shells in his own world in order to open a passageway in the Otherworld? That the Otherworld is a warning about the possible fate of Earth is clear, but whether it is a view of the mythic past, our future, or simply a different world is uncertain. These are issues that readers may enjoy pondering, but this is ultimately an unsatisfying tale.

Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Set in the fictitious Bahamanian island of Lucaya, Cooper's (The Dark Is Rising) latest fantasy begins with restful images of whistling ducks, bonefish and casuarina trees, but soon quickens its pace as two worlds collide for 12-year-old Trey and his "strange and special" younger brother. Although seven-year-old Lou is mute, he finds ways to communicate in his own world and in the "Otherworld" of Pangaia (referencing Gaia, also known as the earth goddess). At home, in their world, Lou and Trey's granddad wages a battle against developers who wish to create a resort on their unspoiled island. Meanwhile, in the Otherworld, Lou is the prophesied hero who solves a riddle and then transforms into a giant Green Man flowing with vegetation and rids it of its pollution. The message is clear: Pangaia portends the earth's future. In each setting, the narrative gives way to moments of preachiness or melodrama about protecting our environment; at the island meetings, for instance, winter residents, or "yachties," become contrite about their past sins and the "greenies" in Pangaia are labeled "terrorists" by the government officials. A subplot involving the boys' father wraps up a bit quickly and, in a somewhat contrived scenario, the idyllic Bahamian island is spared from development. As the story unfolds, however, young readers are likely to be pulled in by the sensitive portrayals of Trey and Lou, the mysterious adventures in Pangaia and the whirlwind climax. Ages 9-12.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 4-8. Part fantasy adventure, part ecological fable, Cooper's latest novel is also eerily close to home. Powerful foreign developers are moving in to take over the island bay in the Bahamas where 12-year-old Trey lives with his grandparents and his mute little brother, Lou. Between the tides, Trey and Lou cross over to a horrifying future world where greed, overpopulation, and technology have shut out the stars and choked everything green. In that alternate world, Lou is the mythical savior, the Green Man, who leads the Underground to bring about terrible destruction and renewal. Then back in the boys' island home, nature rises up with a hurricane force that drives out the evil developers. The fantasy parallels are sometimes too contrived, but Green peace followers will recognize the battle. What Cooper does best is set the scary action in a world that is both endangered and strong. The lyrical nature writing evokes the fragility and the power of a spider's silk, the miracle of a seashell, the physical connections of wind, water, and sand. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

It was a little fluttering sound in the roof, moving. The living room of Grand's house reaches up high, with beams across it, and one side open to the porch. Along the top beam the little sound ran, very soft, you could scarce hear it. Then at the wall it turned, and came fluttering down a side beam. You could begin to see a shape now. So small: was it a moth? A spider?

Lou was watching. He moved toward it.

"Careful," I said. "Don't touch. Might be poisonous."

The little fluttering thing slid down to the floor and rested there. I saw a tiny foot. It was a bird.

Lou crouched down beside it and put out his hand. Somehow he knew how to rest his finger behind the bird's feet so it stepped onto his hand. Then you could see clear: it was a tiny hummingbird, and it was all wound around with sticky spider-silk, so that it couldn't fly, nor hardly walk. It must have blundered into a powerful big spider's web. Now it was all trussed up, terrified, there on the palm of Lou's hand.

Lou made a little comforting sound at the back of his throat. Slowly and very carefully, with his other hand, he pulled the fine sticky strands away from the bird's legs and wings. His fingers were so small and gentle; after all, he's only seven years old. The bird didn't move.

There it stood on his palm, bright green, an emerald hummingbird. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Its throat was red, and its feathers all different shades of green, gleaming. The spider-silk was all gone now, but still the bird didn't move. It must have been totally exhausted.

Lou gazed and gazed at the bird, and the bird looked back at Lou.

"Take it outside," I whispered. We moved out of the room, across the porch, to the hibiscus hedge, all starred with yellow-centered red flowers like trumpets. Hummingbirds love hibiscus. But the tiny bird still rested there on Lou's hand, not moving; as though it was giving Lou a present, staying so that he could look.

It was so beautiful, I can't tell you.

At last it flew, and hovered beside a flower, and darted away.

"Oh man," I said. I couldn't think of anything else to say, it was so amazing.

Lou smiled at me, and made his happy sound, that's as close as he can get to a laugh.

My brother Lou doesn't talk, and he has a few other problems too. He's different. But I'm used to it. My name is Trey, and I'm a writer, I look after him. I'm twelve years old. This is my book, the story of what happened to Lou and me.

Copyright © 2002 by Susan Copper

Edition details

• Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0689847513
• ISBN 13: 9780689847516
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208