Elizabeth George Speare (1908–1994)

I didn't think I was going to like this book after reading the first few chapters; too many hot-headed religious types for my taste. But I stuck with it, and was pleasantly surprised. I predicted long before how it was going to turn out. But it is sometimes not an unexpected conclusion that makes a book worthwhile, but rather how the author takes the reader to the longed-for conclusion. And there were a couple of surprises after all. I'm glad I gave this one a chance.

"Kit," the teenage heroine, leaves Barbados to go live with her aunt and her aunt's husband and children, none of whom has she ever met. Kit does a colossal job of not fitting in - so much so that the fanatically religious Puritans decide to put her on trial as a witch. But Kit is not the eponymous "witch of Blackbird pond." That appellation belongs to another - a poor, elderly Quaker woman, who is also in great danger from the community.… (mehr)

Although he faces responsibility bravely, thirteen-year-old Matt is more than a little apprehensive when his father leaves him alone to guard their new cabin in the wilderness. When a renegade white stranger steals his gun, Matt realizes he has no way to shoot game or to protect himself. When Matt meets Attean, a boy in the Beaver clan, he begins to better understand their way of life and their growing problem in adapting to the white man and the changing frontier.

Elizabeth George Speare's Newbery Honor-winning survival story is filled with wonderful detail about living in the wilderness and the relationships that formed between settlers and natives in the 1700s.… (mehr)

In this Newbery Medal-winning novel, a girl faces prejudice and accusations of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Connecticut. A classic of historical fiction that continues to resonate across the generations.

Sixteen-year-old Kit Tyler is marked by suspicion and disapproval from the moment she arrives on the unfamiliar shores of colonial Connecticut in 1687. Alone and desperate, she has been forced to leave her beloved home on the island of Barbados and join a family she has never met.

Torn between her quest for belonging and her desire to be true to herself, Kit struggles to survive in a hostile place. Just when it seems she must give up, she finds a kindred spirit. But Kit's friendship with Hannah Tupper, believed by the colonists to be a witch, proves more taboo than she could have imagined and ultimately forces Kit to choose between her heart and her duty.… (mehr)

READING LEVEL: 4.9 AR POINTS: 5.0
(Ages 9-11, grades 5-7)
Newberry Honor Book

What a great story full of adventure and survival for any young boy to read. Thirteen year olds back in those days were very mature and independent because they had to be. Today, most thirteen year olds that I know are like spoiled little baby pigs...squealing and complaining, selfish, expectant, wasteful, know-it-all and giving their parents hell, and especially lazy. I should know...I raised three of them. Hell, I was a know-it-all thirteen year old, myself. You can't teach somebody something if they already know everything, right?

In 1768, Matt Hallowell was almost 13 years old when his father left him alone in the Maine woods to watch over their new log cabin they just built on their purchased land while he headed back to Quincy, Massachusetts, to fetch Matt’s mom, sister, and their newly born baby. He would be gone for 6 weeks.

When a white scallawag of a fur trapper came traveling through, Matt fed him and let him sleep in the cabin, but by morning the stranger had left and had left with Matt’s shotgun, his best chance for food and protection, which his father had left with him.

When Matt got himself into trouble climbing a tree, trying to steal honey from a beehive and was stung all over, he could have died had it not been for Attean and his grandfather, from the local Beaver tribe, who had been watching him from a distance and came to his rescue.

In return for saving Matt’s life, Matt would agree to try and teach Attean to read white man’s words from the Robinson Crusoe novel, and so the ensuing friendship began. The friendship would slowly develop as the trust between the two developed, bringing each other into the other’s world and culture. Matt learned from Attean and his people how to survive out in the woods alone. But, more importantly, he learned that they weren’t all savages. In return, Attean learned that not all white people were hard, ruthless and careless people, even though the whites had killed his mother.

This is a great little book for young people to learn that not all people in any one culture are cut from the same mold. In other words, don’t judge a whole race of people, no matter what race, by the bad behavior of a few. Take the time to learn from each other because there is always something to learn.… (mehr)