Time-Traveling Black Kid Earns Praise for New Novel, "The Black Canary"
"The Black Canary" (McElderry Books, Simon & Schuster) has attracted early plaudits for its young black hero from Pittsburgh and his unexpected plunge into the past trapped in Elizabethan London. Almost-thirteen James struggles to keep his head above water in an unfamiliar world as, time after time, he fails in his desperate attempts to make his way back to his own time. What he finds instead are music, danger — and himself.
(PRWEB) February 16, 2005 -- A starred review in Booklist (2/15/05) has
highlighted "The Black Canary" (McElderry Books, Simon & Schuster), a new
time-travel adventure from award-winning author Jane Louise Curry. Noting that
the novel is "One of the few time-travel fantasies for children with an
African-American character, let alone protagonist," Booklist says of its young
hero that "readers will gladly follow him through the portals for the pleasure
of his company as well as the need to know what will happen next."
"The
Black Canary" has more surprises for young—and adult—readers than its unexpected
turns of plot. Its hero, James Parrett, a biracial almost-thirteen-year-old who
feels alternately smothered and neglected by his close-knit family, is in search
of himself. Most of us are, or were, at almost-thirteen. James, however,
finds—and very nearly loses—himself not in the here and now, but four hundred
years in the past, in the London of the first Queen Elizabeth. And this is not
your parents’ Elizabethan London. Splendid and exciting it may be, but it is
crowded, turbulent and dangerous, too; it is dirty, and often stinks; its
politics are treacherous; its winter is bitter and dark; and, astonishingly,
children are stolen off the streets in the queen’s name. James, snatched along
with young Thomas Clifton (an actual historical kidnapping, this) to be pressed
into the queen’s service as an actor-singer, is drawn—not entirely against his
will—dangerously far into this new life. You hold your breath, and
follow.
The novel gives readers portraits of real Elizabethans, from the
boy singers and actors of the Chapel Royal to the tempestuous poet-playwright
Ben Jonson and soon-to-be-doomed Earl of Leicester, but of particular interest
in Black History Month is the realization that the London of Elizabeth I had a
significant population of free "blackamoors," both African and English-born, who
were for the most part servants, but also merchants, musicians and
entertainers—including the black servants, musicians and dancers of the queen’s
court. These Londoners of color often married white English wives and husbands,
and they persisted or even thrived despite periodic rumblings of "Send them back
where they came from." Offstage, of course, London merchant adventurers were
gearing up the profitable Africa-America slave trade, which was to build huge
private and commercial fortunes—a cultural schizophrenia that would persist
until Parliament’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807. (The book’s web site,
theblackcanary.com, provides links to a number of U.K. Black History sites of
interest to general readers as well as to teachers and students.)
Played
out against so rich a background, young James Parrett’s search to regain the
world he has lost is made more desperate and more poignant, and readers will
share his deepening fascination with the new world he has gained.
"The
Black Canary," by Jane Louise Curry.
McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon
& Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, 2005, $16.95. ISBN:
0-689-86478-7.
For additional information, visit www.theblackcanary.com.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/2/prweb207788.htm