| Farm & Ranch Life |
| Family |
| Lifestyles |
| Marriage & Divorce |
| Social Themes |
| Depression & Mental Illness |
| Juvenile Fiction |
Summary
Summary
It is 1965, and twelve-year-old Emaline lives on a wheat farm in southern Saskatchewan. Her family has fallen apart. When her beloved dog, Prince, chased a hare into the path of the tractor, she chased after him, and her dad accidentally ran over her leg with the discer, leaving her with a long convalescence and a permanent disability. But perhaps the worst thing from Emaline's point of view is that in his grief and guilt, her father shot Prince and then left Emaline and her mother on their own.
Despite the neighbors' disapproval, Emaline's mother hires Angus, a patient from the local mental hospital, to work their fields. Angus is a red-haired giant whom the local kids tease and call the gorilla. Though the small town's prejudice creates a cloud of suspicion around Angus that nearly results in tragedy, in the end he becomes a force for healing as Emaline comes to terms with her injury and the loss of her father.
In the tradition of novels such as Kevin Major's Ann and Seamus and Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust, novelist and poet Pamela Porter uses free verse to tell this moving, gritty story that is accessible to a wide range of ages and reading abilities.
Author Notes
Pamela Porter was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and she lived in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Washington and Montana before emigrating to Canada with her husband, the fourth generation of a farm family in southeastern Saskatchewan, the backdrop for much of Pamela's work. She is the author of three collections of poetry, and her poems have appeared in numerous journals across Canada and the US as well as being featured on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. She is also the author of a number of children's books, including Sky and Yellow Moon, Apple Moon (illustrated by Matt James). Pamela's first novel in verse, The Crazy Man, received the TD Children's Literature Award, the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award for Children, the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People and the Governor General's Award, as well as several children's choice awards. It was also named a Jane Addams Foundation Honor Book and won the Texas Institute of Letters, Friends of the Austin Public Library Award for Best Young Adult Book. Pamela lives near Sidney, B.C., with her husband, children and a menagerie of rescued horses, dogs and cats.
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5 Up-This beautifully written novel in verse tells the story of a 12-year-old girl struggling to recover after a freak farm accident leaves her partially crippled and fatherless. Her dad, after shooting the dog that he blames for the tractor mishap, walks out on her and her mother, leaving them to tend the farm by themselves. After a long and painful hospital stay, Emaline returns home to a distraught mother who doesn't have any help sowing the fields. When several conventional plans fall through, the woman decides to bring in a patient from the local mental hospital to drive the tractor and sow the fields. Angus, a gentle giant, slowly gains the trust of Emaline and her mother through his hard work and his kindness to people and animals alike. Despite the town's grumblings about how dangerous Angus must be, he is allowed to continue working on the farm, but not without enduring much cruelty from neighbors and townspeople. It is only when he performs the ultimate act of heroism that others in the town finally recognize Angus's worth as a human being. Emaline is a rich character full of conflicting emotions about her father, her mother, and her strange new family. Subtle in its themes and organization, this book is pure pleasure, offering lessons about love, loyalty, and loss.-Julie Webb, Shelby County High School, Shelbyville, KY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) A terrible accident precipitates many changes for twelve-year-old Emaline in this accomplished first-person verse novel; think Out of the Dust translated to the early-1960s Canadian prairie. When Em, trying to save her dog Prince, falls from the back of a discing tractor, almost severing her leg, her father, for whom this calamity is the last straw, shoots Prince and walks away from the farm, Em, and her mother; her mother hires a man from the local mental institution to complete the spring seeding. Angus, a huge man, a ""gorilla,"" makes people afraid, but Em comes to know him as gentle and kind. Porter's language is appropriately down-to-earth (""Then Mum slumped down into a kitchen chair / like she was a pile of tired laundry"") as she skillfully tracks the novel's two trajectories: Em's gradual healing, both physical and psychic, is shadowed by the town's continuing and intensifying persecution of Angus. Though the characterization of Angus is perhaps over-idealized, and the plot over-the-top (the novel climaxes in a neighbor attempting to strand Angus in a blizzard, and not only does Angus survive, but he rescues a child on his way home), on the whole this is a touching portrait of a real-seeming girl, set in a well-delineated time and place. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 6-8. After Emaline, 11, is crippled by an accident with her father's tractor in 1965, Daddy kills her beloved dog, Prince, and walks away from the farm on the Saskatchewan prairie. Mom takes in Angus from the local mental hospital to help with the farm work, but the neighbors jeer and complain about the sub-human crazy man on the loose. Emaline never denies Angus' illness, but she sees his kindness and strength, and they help each other with their work and with their grief. Narrated by Emaline in short lines of free verse, the story is a very easy read, its plain, lyrical words capturing the beauty of the flat prairie under the huge sky and the sounds of wind, trains, and coyotes in the night, as well as the harsh community prejudice. The poetry is in the details, both immediate and universal: Angus helps Emaline tie her shoelaces, and he wakes her to the glory of the northern lights. --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2005 Booklist
