New York Times Review
The fourth and final book in the Twilight Saga once again puts its heroine, Bella Swan, in overwhelming danger. But there's a bigger risk: what happens when the main characters of an epic romance get everything they want? Marriage to Edward, Bella's vampire, was a dead certainty in Book 3, so the threat to their bliss turns out to be creepy and unexpected: someone she may love more, who could kill her and bring down condemnation from the deadly Volturi clan. Over 754 pages, the answers come almost too easily, but not quickly. THE TROUBLE BEGINS AT 8 A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West. By Sid Fleischman. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $18.99. (Ages 9 to 12) Fleischman's illustrated biography skips along hitting the high points of Twain's life - especially his celebrated career as a Mississippi riverboat pilot, which ended with the Civil War - while fleshing out less well-known episodes, often in the writer's own words. Of course where fact ends and fiction begins is not always clear - as Twain is quoted here, "A lie well told is immortal." NEWES FROM THE DEAD By Mary Hooper, Roaring Brook. $16.95. (Ages 14 and up) In England in 1650, a young woman is found guilty of a crime and hanged. Hours later a medical student attending a planned dissection of the body sees one of the eyelids move. Based on a true story, Hooper's novel traces the story of Anne Green, who "was hanged and lived to tell the tale": somehow she was only knocked out on the scaffold. In the novel, Green is taken advantage of by the scion of local landowners and the family sets out to ruin her reputation. Her quiet, rueful voice tells half the story from the strange limbo where she finds herself on waking up; the student tells the rest. IMAGINARY MENAGERIE A Book of Curious Creatures: Poems. By Julie Larios. Illustrated by Julie Paschkis. Harcourt. $16. (Ages 6 to 9) Gouache paintings depict mythical monsters in jewel tones of red, green, yellow and blue - firebirds, mermaids, centaurs and others. The accompanying poems aim to intrigue more than inform: "I'm arrow tailed, fish scaled, a luck bringer," a dragon says. Brief endnotes expand on the folk traditions - dragons get their name from the ancient Greek, and in some tales are as small as butterflies - if only touching the surface of a fascinating subject. DOUBLE OR DIE A James Bond Adventure. By Charlie Higson. Hyperion/Disney. $16.99. (Ages 10 and up) The third "young Bond" novel revolves around codes, crosswords and ciphers as a professor turns up missing and James and his Eton friends get caught up in the case. A shadowy enemy is trying to complete "Nemesis" (in a twist, it's not a weapon; it's the world's first computer). The year is 1933, and the atmospherics, from the spires of Cambridge to an abandoned railway underneath the slums of London, are very well done. A series with a high I.Q. HERE A FACE, THERE A FACE Written and photographed by Arlene Alda. Tundra. $14.95. (Ages 4 to 8) Witty photographs pick out the "faces" all around us - a saucepan becomes a long-nosed tin man, a frizzy-headed potted plant gapes in surprise, while a knotty "old tree whistles tunes," round eyes above a round mouth. Readers will suddenly find faces everywhere they look. JULIE JUST WITNESS TO THE REVOLUTION An interview with Maying Li about her memoir for young adults, "Snow Falling in Spring," at nytimes.com/books. |
Library Journal Review
It is 1650, and Anne is a maid servant in the pious household of Sir Thomas Reade. There she falls victim to his ne're-do-well grandson and becomes pregnant. As in Dowd's A Swift Pure Cry, the baby arrives early and stillborn. However, when the body is inevitably discovered, Anne is sentenced to hang for matricide, this being Cromwell's England. Here's the twist: the story unfolds in alternating viewpoints as Anne's body lies immobile on a dissection table. Young Robert Matthews, a medical student, thinks he might have seen her eyes flutter. Why It Is for Us: Childbirth can be a horrifying business, and this story, based on true events, is a chilling look at the plight of the powerless and impoverished in a classed society. Anne is a victim of her employer, of justice, and of the hangman's noose; it is only in death that she finds rescue. The book concludes with a reproduction of a 1651 medical document chronicling Anne's case. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
Publishers Weekly Review
British author Hooper (The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose) bases this macabre novel on the chilling true story of Anne Green, a maidservant who in 1650 was hanged, thrown into a coffin... and "miraculously" revived just as the doctors at the medical school in Oxford were about to dissect her. From her purgatorial state inside the coffin, Anne recounts the details of her wretched life--her seduction by the lying grandson and heir of Sir Thomas Reade, at whose estate Anne works; her pregnancy and miscarriage; her trial for infanticide, where a guilty verdict is virtually assured by Sir Thomas's fury at her for naming his grandson as the father. Alternating chapters describe events as experienced by witnesses, particularly a shy, stuttering medical student for whom the sight of Anne's corpse-like body reawakens a traumatic memory of his own (gratuitously occasioning a melodramatic subplot). As Oxford doctors observe tiny signs of life but cannot hasten Anne's awakening, Sir Thomas demands that justice be served; meanwhile others interpret Anne's state as a message from God. All the dissection-room debating slows the pace, but it's hard to take the edge off this plot. Ages 14-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved |
Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-A grabber of a premise: It's England, 1650, and as the dissection of an ill-fated 22-year-old servant woman newly unstrung from the gallows begins, the participants detect the cadaver's eyes flickering. Hooper alternates perspective from Anne (the not-actually-dead corpse), who flashes back to explain how she ended up there, to that of a young intellectual attendee of the dissection, a sympathetic stutterer named Robert. Anne's story, rife with gruesome scenes of Puritan-era life (e.g., a rat-infested prison, a bloody miscarriage in a dirty privy) trumps Robert's drier account of the discourse among various distinguished intellectuals of the day, unless readers are well versed in the period's historical details (e.g., when Christopher Wren is teased for his poor poetry). The resulting back-and-forth of the two narrators makes for a poorly paced read, but the pervasive sense of injustice and indignity is vibrant enough to buoy readers through to the unexpectedly positive ending. Loosely based on a true story-hence the title, taken from broadsides published at the time-with a decidedly unromantic view of the era, this is a must-read for teens learning about Cromwell and the Puritan revolution, or for young feminists who appreciate narratives about the treatment of women in history.-Rhona Campbell, Washington, DC Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
Booklist Review
Newes from the Dead was the name of a pamphlet that circulated in England in 1650 after a teenage housemaid, hanged for the crime of infanticide, awoke on the dissecting table. Hooper uses this case as the basis for a historical mystery that is creepy in the best Edgar Allen Poe tradition, as well as thought-provoking about sexual harassment and abuse. The story opens in a coffin, as the reader listens in on poor Anne's frantic coming-to-terms with where she is and how she got there: her days as a servant, her seduction by a young lord, the accusation of murder. Anne's thoughts, from coffin to dissecting table, are juxtaposed with a third-person narrative, centering on a nervous young surgeon who is on hand to witness and assist in the young woman's dissection. Hooper explains that surgeons were allowed to conduct autopsies on criminals, and it's just such intriguing tidbits of Cromwellian history that add heft to this suspenseful novel. Give this to readers who prefer their historical mysteries straight up without an overlay of fantasy.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2008 Booklist |
Horn Book Review
(High School) A primal human fear is being in a dark, cramped space, unable to move, with no means of escape. This novel, based on a true story, takes readers into just such a nightmare. In 1650 Oxford, England, a young woman named Anne Green, a servant in the household of Sir Thomas Reade, was convicted of murdering her stillborn child and was hanged. She did not die, but gradually regained consciousness in her coffin while men from the medical college prepared for her dissection. Anne's narrative reconstructs the events that have brought her to her present condition. In alternate chapters, the events of the impending dissection are told by Robert Matthews, a young medical student afflicted with stuttering. He sees the first faint eye movement but is unable to articulate his concerns. Hooper has created two distinct, authentic voices that flow in parallel stories, building to new awakenings and knowledge. Anne's strong, passionate account reveals life in the mid-seventeenth century, contrasting her position as a servant to that of the elite Reade family. In opposition, Robert's statelier, slower paced sections reveal a different world of academia and the growing power of physicians. As Anne's story moves forward, Robert's moves to the past, each revealing aspects of domestic, political, and academic life in 1650 England. A well-researched, riveting read, with an author's note explaining how Anne could survive being hanged and an extensive bibliography. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
Kirkus Review
A hanged scullery maid rises from the dead in this fascinating historical novel based on actual events in Cromwellian England. Wrongly accused of infanticide after delivering the stillborn child of her wealthy employer's ignoble grandson, Anne Green is sentenced to death. After being hanged, Anne awakens to a state of suspended animation, where she can neither see nor speak. She begins silently reviewing the sordid circumstances that led to her demise, while on the other side of the coffin's lid, Oxford's finest physicians discuss her imminent dissection. Luckily, a shy medical student observes her flickering eyelids and the doctors stay their knives. Anne is successfully revived, her near-death condition attributed to an ill-placed knot in the noose. Hooper takes what could have been a lurid tale of being buried alive and turns it into a suspenseful and thoughtful exploration of capital punishment, class bias, religious belief and medical ethics. Fans of Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light (2003) or Julie Hearn's The Minister's Daughter (2005) will be eager to make Anne's acquaintance. (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. |