Zoe Rising

Zoe, traveling back to the time when her mother was a child, intervenes in the past in order to save the future

Grade 5-8-As she did in Stonewords (HarperCollins, 1990), Zoe slips through the cracks of time to prevent a disaster, this time involving her fragile and estranged mother. Zoe, 14, is off to Camp Cedar Ravine with her best friend, Jed. Their lovely summer days are shattered when a fellow camper learns that his parents have been killed. The news sends Zoe into another out-of-body experience. Traumatized, she heads home to the island where she lives with her elderly grandparents to see how they are faring without her and is shocked to realize that she can control these experiences. She stumbles onto a family secret during one of these outings, which provides the climax of the story. This is not a stunning thriller though some parts, particularly the epilogue, are beautifully written. Plotting tends to drag through the first half of the story, really only picking up when Zoe attempts to rescue her five-year-old mother from a frightening neighbor. Dialogue does not always read well and most of the characters are thinly developed. There are several mentions of Zoe Louise, the "ghost" character from Stonewords, but prior knowledge of events in that book is not crucial to understanding this one. The overriding theme here seems to be that today needs to be cherished more than tomorrow or yesterday. Although Zoe comes to that conclusion sooner than most of the intended audience probably will, it is a valid point that needs to be made. An unusual and haunting addition.
Patricia A. Dollisch, DeKalb County Public Library, Decatur, GA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This glowing story of a girl who leaves her body and travels back through time to save her mother is a worthy sequel to the Edgar Allan Poe Award winner Stonewords. Many teens know the feeling of being captive in their bodies, wanting to burst out and fly away to fix things that went wrong a long time ago. Fourteen-year-old Zoe can actually do it: "Without moving I turned around inside my body, fully, again and again. My arms left the shell of my arms... I was like a little paper umbrella twirling." Her "ghostwalking" frightens her, but she is compelled to use her power to solve a mystery in her estranged mother's past. The luminescent language and harrowing plot of loss and retrieval swirls Zoe from summer camp back through time to her mother's childhood in an island home. There, Zoe must summon all her ghostly abilities to protect her mother-child from tragedy. Unlike many molecularly-enhanced heroes, Zoe keeps getting yanked out of the dramatic past by present interruptions?loud cabinmates, canoe trips and curfew (in the only plot dangler, Zoe's friend Jedidiah, let in on her secret, is incredibly willing to "never again speak of what happened at camp"). The late author's moving depiction of Zoe's weightless epiphany in the fourth dimension is well worth readers' time in the here and now. Ages 9-up.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 4^-7. Several years have passed since Stonewords (1990), when Zoe pushed herself back in time to save a ghost that was her childhood friend. This time it's her troubled mother as a child whom Zoe must rescue from the jaws of history and disaster. Logic is more tenuous here than in the first book, and the structure is loose, with some obvious contrivances and at least one incident that seems oddly unnecessary--Zoe and her friend Jedediah are (wrongly) suspected of sexual hanky-panky at the camp they are attending. The time-travel fantasy is convincing, however, and the writing is splendidly atmospheric, with Conrad beautifully guiding readers through Zoe's misty corporeal changes and into a riveting, terrifying climax that brings her close to death. The jacket is attractive but looks young: it appears to be a picture of Zoe's child-mother's legs and feet rising into the air, a rather puzzling image, since time-slipping 14-year-old Zoe is, of course, the real focus of things. Although the book can stand on its own, it will probably be best appreciated by children familiar with Zoe's previous adventure. Stephanie Zvirin