In the Language of Loons

Kinsey-Warnock, Natalie

ISBN 10: 052565237X / ISBN 13: 9780525652373

Published by Dutton Books for Young Readers, 1998

Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00087944203

Synopsis:

Spending the summer with his grandfather is special for Arlis because his grandfather takes great care and time to teach him about various things, but at summer's end, Arlis is sad about having to leave but knows he is doing so as a stronger person than when he had arrived.

Reviews: Grade 4-7?It's been a particularly bad year for 12-year-old Arlis. His father's been busy with work, his mother's been tired and preoccupied with the baby she's expecting, and he's been the target of a relentless school bully. It's almost a relief when his parents decide to send him to his grandparents' farm for the summer. There, Arlis develops a close relationship with his grandfather, who teaches him all about nature. Grandpa also helps Arlis discover his previously untapped ability as a long-distance runner. By giving him faith in himself and his abilities, and a new sense of courage, Grandpa has given his grandson wonderful gifts that come in handy when Arlis returns home to face some challenging situations, including Grandpa's sudden death. This is a touching and poignant story of a boy starting on his journey to manhood. The relationship between Arlis and his grandfather is tenderly and realistically drawn, and the other relationships and their resolutions are equally believable. While the book is set in rural Vermont in 1969, it's only details such as the family watching the moon landing on TV that reveal the time. The emotions and relationships are the true driving force of this story, and they are timeless. Readers will recognize something of themselves in Arlis's feelings of alienation and gradual discovery of self-confidence, and they will rejoice and mourn with him as he begins to find his place in the world.?Arwen Marshall, New York Public Library
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kinsey-Warnock (As Long as There Are Mountains, p. 875, etc.), a short novel about growing up that opens at the end of the school year in 1969 and closes the next spring. Arlis, 12, is relieved to be away from home, where, during a field trip, he stripped to his underwear to wallow in mud like a pig, was urinated on by classmates, and tricked into eating a worm sandwich. At his grandparents' Vermont farm for the summer, Arlis warms to his grandfather, who teaches Arlis about the call of the loons during a fishing trip. Arlis's carelessness with a fishing line leads to a loon's death; when the elderly man encourages Arlis to take up running, he tries, quits, tries again, then easily makes the cross-country team, turns a tormentor into a friend, reconciles with his father, who goes in a few pages from an overworked lawyer to a runner who sings in the choir. In a final contrivance from which Arlis emerges a hero, he drives his mother through snowstorm to the hospital where she gives birth. Kinsey-Warnock trivializes life-and-death events with more prosaic material; in the meantime, pieces of plot remain undeveloped, e.g., an essay, mentioned only when Arlis is assigned it, and when he turns it in, is greeted with ``This is good, Arlis. Very good. I didn't know you could write like this.'' Every chapter contains emotional scenes or rhapsodic passages on nature, but they are glued on rather than transpiring naturally in the story. (Fiction. 10-12) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Bibliographic Details

Title: In the Language of Loons
Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: 1998
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Good