Available:*
Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Buffalo Creek Memorial Library at Man | JF WHELAN | Juvenile | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
When thirteen-year-old Clair's relationship with her minister father changes after her mother's death, she stops speaking, and the subsequent events change both their lives.
Author Notes
Gloria Whelan was born on November 23, 1923 in Detroit, Michigan. She took a strong interest in reading early in life when she was bedridden for a year with rheumatic fever. She dictated stories to her sister who would then type them. She then went on to writing poetry and later editing her high school newspaper. She attended the University of Michigan and earned her B.S.degree and M.S.W. degree. She began working as a social worker in Minneapolis and Detroit. She soon became tired of Detroit's hectic pace and moved to a cabin in northern Michigan.This peace was disrupted by an oil company 's desire to drill on her property. Because she did not own the mineral rights, the drilling proceeded. This experience inspired Gloria Whelan to write her children's novel, A Clearing in the Forest in 1978, which was about a boy working on an oilrig. Gloria Whelan has written several works of fiction for children and adults, many set in rural Michigan. She has also written stories set in exotic places like China and India. She won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2000 for Homeless Bird - the story of a young woman in India abandoned by her mother-in-law.
Reviews (2)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-8-Clair has stopped talking in a desperate attempt to get her father's attention after her mother's death. Ironically, her success at putting him in touch with reality has also given him the courage to fulfill a lifelong calling: to establish a mission church. As a minister, he feels guilty about his affluent, suburban life style and transplants himself and his daughter to an economically depressed, rural community. There Clair meets Dorrie, also 13 and motherless, who lives alone in the basement of their unfinished house while her abusive, violent father is in jail. She is fascinated by her new friend's unending tricks of survival, and Dorrie loves having a silent partner. The novel climaxes with an exciting chase through the woods when Dorrie's father is released and wants to teach his daughter a lesson. Clair is frightened into speaking, her father becomes Dorrie's willing protector, and Clair decides she loves her new life. This book really belongs to Dorrie, whose gutsy personality and life of adventure will excite readers' imagination. Clair's character lacks complexity, and her first-person narrative fails to give any insight into the psychological machinations behind her muteness. Young teens who are satisfied by a smoothly flowing story with an uncomplicated plot will enjoy this, but anyone hoping for more will find it to be a series of missed opportunities.-Margaret Cole, Oceanside Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
I stopped talking so my father would listen to me. He spent his evenings sitting alone in his study with the lights out. . . . It was because my mother died."" Whelan's first sentence is just a bit glib for its subject matter, though it is likely to snap readers to attention, and the whole story is a bit too neat to make a strong impression. When her mother dies and Claire stops talking, her minister father gives up his affluent suburban post for the ""mission"" he's always dreamed of in the Northern Michigan woods. Though Claire resents the move, she soon makes friends with Dorrie, a girl her age (13) who lives alone in a hovel in the woods because her mother is dead and her surly, drunken father is in jail. Sharing Dorrie's goat and her shack-building project changes Claire's mind about wanting to go back to the suburbs, and fleeing with Dorrie from the other girl's abusive father (just out of jail) leads to hairy moments on a raft--where Claire, concerned for her friend, breaks her silence by calling Dorrie's name. Both Claire's behavior and her new natural surroundings might find constituencies. The process of her recovery is convincing as far as it goes, and so is the north woods setting; but neither is deeply felt. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
