Thursday, January 25, 2007
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
by Elizabeth George Speare
I had high hopes for this one. I had read other tales by Ms. Speare and had enjoyed them. My wife and eldest daughter had told me that this book was the best of them all. So I read it--hurriedly, since my youngest needed to start reading it herself for school--and it was a good book. It just wasn't great. The story is about a young lass named Kit, a native of Barbados in 1687. Her parents had died when she was young and she had been raised primarily by her grandfather. But now he, too, has died and she has to move to the wilds of Connecticut to live with her aunt, her closest relative. Well, Connecticut ain't no Barbados. In addition to the obvious differences in climate, Kit finds herself an alien among a group of some of the most superstitious, narrow-minded Puritans one has ever seen. Actually, that was part of what I felt made the book a lesser effort than, say, The Bronze Bow. The characters, for the most part, are flat. The bad Puritans are all stuck up and judgemental. You know that there's going to be a showdown between them and the independent minded Kit. The romances, also, can be seen a mile away. The whole ending is quite predictable. But even though I "knew" the ending, it was fun getting to that point. This book is certainly worth checking out.
LibraryThing link
I had high hopes for this one. I had read other tales by Ms. Speare and had enjoyed them. My wife and eldest daughter had told me that this book was the best of them all. So I read it--hurriedly, since my youngest needed to start reading it herself for school--and it was a good book. It just wasn't great. The story is about a young lass named Kit, a native of Barbados in 1687. Her parents had died when she was young and she had been raised primarily by her grandfather. But now he, too, has died and she has to move to the wilds of Connecticut to live with her aunt, her closest relative. Well, Connecticut ain't no Barbados. In addition to the obvious differences in climate, Kit finds herself an alien among a group of some of the most superstitious, narrow-minded Puritans one has ever seen. Actually, that was part of what I felt made the book a lesser effort than, say, The Bronze Bow. The characters, for the most part, are flat. The bad Puritans are all stuck up and judgemental. You know that there's going to be a showdown between them and the independent minded Kit. The romances, also, can be seen a mile away. The whole ending is quite predictable. But even though I "knew" the ending, it was fun getting to that point. This book is certainly worth checking out.
LibraryThing link
Labels: CheckItOut, ElizabethGeorgeSpeare
// posted by John @ 6:02 AM 
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