Escape Underground (Kidwitness Tales, 7) - Softcover

Kelly, Clint

3.67

12 ratings by Goodreads

9781561799640: Escape Underground (Kidwitness Tales, 7)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1561799645 ISBN 13: 9781561799640

Publisher: Bethany House Pub, 2001

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In 39 A.D. in Jerusalem, a group of local children must work with the foreign converts they previously tormented when all of their parents are arrested for practicing Christianity.

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About the Author:

Clint Kelly is writer-in-residence for Seattle Pacific University. An ex-forest ranger, Clint’s inspiration for his novels comes from his wife and four children. The family makes their home among the gorgeous landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 4-6-These two titles attempt to portray young people living in biblical times facing problems relevant to today's youth. In Escape Underground, the children of Christian believers living through Saul's persecution of the early church learn a lesson about accepting people whose social class and background differ from their own. Eleven-year-old Mara, her brothers, and their friends consider themselves "the true Hebrew Christian kids" and look down on the believers from "Greece and Cyprus and other foreign places who [have] moved to Jerusalem." When Saul and his men arrest all of the friends' parents, it is one of those despised foreigners who leads the others to safety in the sewers and tunnels underneath the city. The Prophet's Kid is set during the reign of King Ahaz. Shub's father is the prophet Isaiah, and the boy is tired of being what we would call today a "preacher's kid." He thinks the prophet's harangues about idolatry and coming destruction are ridiculous. When he and his friends sneak out to see what goes on at the temple of Molech, they learn that idol worship isn't all fun and games. Both stories are briskly paced and competently plotted, but characters are one-dimensional. Kelly and Ware have done their best to make the children sound like young people of today, and succeed all too well-the youngsters are not convincingly a part of their historical time frame. Transporting 21st-century attitudes and behaviors into the past results in stories that ultimately fail to convince or engage.
Elaine Fort Weischedel, Franklin Public Library, MA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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