Review-The Hired Girl, by Laura Amy Schlitz

The Hired Girl
Laura Amy Schlitz
Candlewick Press
Publication month: September 2015
978-0-7636-7818-0
$17.99/$23.99 Canada
400 pages
Age 12+




                                                                  Review by Wisteria©

The heroine of this coming of age novel is a feisty, headstrong, inherently impulsive powerhouse-a memorable character destined to be a classic. The Hired Girl, set in the year 1911 on a Pennsylvania farm is historical fiction.  However, the author has a storyteller's magical gift to transport the readers  into the mind  of Joan Scraggs and her experiences through her daily diary. Joan, fourteen, lives with her three brothers and evil tempered father.  After her mom dies, Joan is forced to assume her mom's arduous chores, exhaustive and thankless. She seeks solace in her passion for reading. The few books she owns have been read again and again.  Her father is determined to end her educational goals and the close relationship she has with her favorite teacher. Joan is very quick witted and eager to learn. Yet, when her teacher tries to persuade her father that Joan should stay in school she is rebuked.  Later, her father spews words of vitreous hatred at his daughter. Sadly, it just confirms what she has felt all along.  Unloved and shackled to a hard life on the farm she makes plans to flee.  As hateful as her father is, she recalls her mom's love and support.  Fortunately, her mother left a rainy day treasure in the ruffles of her favorite doll. With her mother's gift and and timely luck Joan secures a job as the hired girl, with a Jewish family.  Although she leads her employers to believe she is eighteen, assumes the name Janet, she settles into this new life.  It is through her diary that the reader will come to empathize and love Janet (Joan).   Her struggles with her own faith, love, women's roles, Anti-semitism and the social class prejudice prevalent are believable. The author captures not only the flavor of this period in history, but she allows the reader to experience Joan's her inner most thoughts, as only a diary will allow.  Laura Amy Schlitz is a gifted storyteller, one of my favorite young adult/tween writers. This one is now on my list to be order for my school's media center. The Hired Girl, with multiple themes and character study possibilities, is the perfect novel for classroom libraries, literature study and read aloud.  Yet it will stand out as a well loved free choice read for young and adult readers. Highly recommended. ~Wisteria Leigh

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Disclosure: An uncorrected proof was sent to me with a request for an unbiased review.  This review is my honest opinion.

© [Wisteria Leigh] and [Bookworm's Dinner], [2008-2015]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Wisteria Leigh] and [Bookworm's Dinner] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Review-Scottsboro by Ellen FeldmanScottsboro

Scottsboro
by Ellen Feldman
978-0-393-333527
2009






When you read Ellen Feldman’s book Scottsboro you savor each page like a vintage wine. The story is so mesmerizing tendrils seem to wrap around your chair. The story is so chillingly real you become frozen it its truth. The story is so poetically lyrical you have no doubt that you are hearing the cadence of the colorful Southern speech. Unfortunately, color in the Southern world is only black and white. Unfortunately, the truth in Scottsboro is always grey.

This historical fiction novel is based on the famous Scottsboro case in Alabama in 1931 and The Scottsboro Boys who were accused of a crime they didn’t commit. It is the story of nine black boys who were on a freight train. Unfortunately, for them, that same day two white girls, dressed in overalls, were also riding the same train. What they shared in common was poverty and riding the rails, as they all tried to get from place to place.

At an unscheduled stop the train slowed down and the two girls looked out to see a mob of forty to fifty white men brandishing pitchforks, shotguns, and at least some kind of weapon in their hands. A furious angry chase ensues as the mob is hell bent on capturing “niggers.”

Victoria Price and Ruby Bates are scared as dogs in a thunderstorm. They know a white woman being caught with a “nigger” is worse than being one. When the men discover that they are female, Victoria begins to invent her story accusing the nine captured boys of raping her and Ruby. Ruby is the younger of the two and follows along.

Blacks in Alabama in 1931 could just as easily been strung up by a rope, but the mob, feeling a sense of duty and fairness decide to bring them to town to be tried. Truth be told, they would rather that they die in the electric chair for their alleged crimes.

What follows is the story of Alice Whittier, a New York reporter, who persuades her boss to let her find the story. Alice takes on a quest that covers several decades as she digs for the truth. Her personal life and relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt becomes part of the story. Anti-Semitism is pervasive during this era and the story covers this theme as the lead defense attorney in the second trial is Samuel Leibowitz, a Jewish lawyer from New York. The importance of the Communist Party involvement in the case is also brought out in the book.

Class divisions are blurred as the white community in solidarity condemning the nine try to purify the image of the two girls, who are anything but virtuous. On the other hand, the defense tries to discredit Victoria and Ruby as a prostitute and white trash.

When Ruby Bates decides to alter her testimony, there is a ray of hope for the defense, but will it be enough to break down the walls of racial hatred that are embedded in the community and southern culture? Will the defense have a fair trial instead of the previous trial that was a travesty of southern justice?

Ellen Feldman’s writing is so deeply rich, her dialog begs to be read aloud. The voice of Ruby is brilliantly written and a treasure to savor. Not since Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, has the southern dialect been so artfully written and emulated with such poetic craft. Ruby is a complex emotional character in flux. Yet, her speech is always entertaining and genuine, down to earth and charming with a plethora of witty unforgettable similes.

This story may surprise and shock some who read it, but should it? The ugly truth is that Jim Crow did exist and still does today. This division of race was unfair, unjust, and hopelessly unbeatable. Books like Scottsboro are necessary to bring the truth forward as we continue to see racial and ethnic hatred in the global arena. The greatest fear is burying the past in ignorance. Ellen Feldman’s hypnotic historical fiction novel is destined to become a classic. Highly recommended.






Cross-posted on blogcritics.org