The Hermit Thrush Sings

After a natural disaster has all but destroyed the earth, the orphaned and "defective" Leora, while searching for her sister, defies the oppressive laws of the land and joins a band of rebels trying to overthrow the government.

Grade 5-8-Leora longs to venture into the Edgelands, but the village people are not allowed outside the Great Fence. They have been told that the gate is to protect them from vicious human-eating birmbas, but readers quickly ascertain that it is just as much about keeping the villagers in as keeping anything else out. In this post-apocalyptic world, the United States government no longer exists. As a result of the asteroid that hit Earth, some people, plants, and animals have experienced mutations; "deformed" people are usually sent to the Institute. Leora has webbed fingers on her left hand, and she lives in fear that her dead father's wife will send her away. When Leora frees a captured baby birmba, she becomes the target of the guardsmen and runs away, hoping to find her sister, who disappeared years earlier. She discovers that she has a way with the birmbas, and they help her on her journey. Realizing how many lies the people have been told, Leora becomes involved with a group of women who are planning an uprising. Naturally, the revolutionaries are triumphant, Leora finds her sister, and readers are left with the sense that many fences may be coming down. This futuristic story has many parallels to our history and the ways governments have tried to maintain power. Leora begins as a Cinderella-type character, but she quickly evolves into a stronger person. She is the only truly developed character, and the story is a bit predictable, but readers will be so engrossed in her fate that they won't mind. A page-turning adventure with a memorable heroine.
Cheri Estes, Detroit Country Day School Middle School, Beverly Hills, MI
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Leora Moran lives in Village Three in Maynor, a nation under the control of the Rulers and once the state of Maine. It was Leora's Grand Nan, with her gift for drawing visions of the future, who predicted the Disaster?a meteor that struck the earth 100 years ago, creating new species and plant life (and perhaps responsible for Leora's mysterious webbed left hand) and setting the stage for the Rulers' dominion. Leora knows that something greater exists beyond the locked gates of the village, but stories of her father and sister's deaths by the dreaded birmbas, a hybrid species of bear and ape that lives outside the village walls, keep her from exploring. One day she finds a captive baby birmba in her basement, and the act of freeing him, combined with her growing awareness that she shares Gran Nan's gift, set off a chain of events that liberates more than just the birmba. Butler's debut novel holds few surprises (readers will see the big reunion coming), and rare are the details that give readers a sense of time or place (for instance, one character mentions in passing that there were once "traveling machines with wheels that went from village to village, faster than a galloping horse"). But events move swiftly, and Leora as an unlikely champion makes for a likable heroine. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

...[A]n appealing fantasy in which the state of Maine has become the country of Maynor and its people are in thrall to never-seen political leaders who keep each village isolated and ignorant. Leora, an outcast from Village Three, takes a heroine's journey of discovery. The story is convincingly narrated by Kate Forbes, whose gentle, matter-of-fact voice is a good match for Leora's own. M.C. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Butler's first novel has plausibility problems, but readers may be drawn to the characters inhabiting this post-holocaust fantasy. Over a century after the destruction of civilization by a giant meteor's impact, the former state of Maine has become the country of Maynor, governed by a vaguely-defined Rulership that stays in power through a corps of red-coated, musket-bearing Guards. Born with a webbed left hand and the ability to see the future, young Leora breaks away from her village and cruel stepfamily, taking a captured baby ``birmba'' (a mutant bear-ape) back to its mother, finding temporary shelter in a settlement of serape-wearing descendants of migrant workers, then going on to help a band of women foment a rebellion. The plot hinges on contrivances, from conveniently overheard conversations to a company of guards that fails to post sentries and sleeps while a munitions storehouse next door is emptied; in contrast, Leora's painful self-consciousness is realistically drawn, and the fearsome, gentle, intelligent birmbas make engaging companions for her. Devoted fans of the post-disaster genre may take to this, but for depth of character and detail, there are far more precisely imagined outsider tales, from Eloise McGraw's Moorchild (1996) to Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1993). (Fiction. 11-13) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.