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This was my first book by Delia Sherman, and it was a very pleasant surprise to find out that this audio version was narrated by Robin Miles, whose lovely voice I'd recently heard narrating two other books: Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race and Another Brooklyn.)About The Freedom Maze: Sophie is thirteen years old and on her way to the family's country property (former plantation) outside New Orleans. Sophie's feeling resentful and frust...
Originally posted on The Book SmugglersIt’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when I realised The Freedom Maze was something special. I felt its impact from the very start: I had barely started it and already had problems falling asleep because I kept thinking about what was happening to the protagonist and where the story might go. This is a book that works on every single level I can think of: from a storytelling point of view, as a coming of age tale, as a Speculative Fiction story, as a Hist...
Bailed at the 30% mark - the time travel back to the days of slavery part of the story, which was going to take up the rest of the novel, rubbed me the wrong way. I felt it was sugar-coated and ineptly done. This year I've read two stunning novels about slavery: Octavia Butler's Kindred, and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing. I have no desire to suffer through a bad one.
According to an interview with Delia Sherman at the end of this audiobook, it took eighteen years, twenty-seven drafts, countless hours of research, and a whole bunch of informed beta readers to complete this book – and it shows. If you’re looking for historical fiction that’s been thoroughly researched and very well done, this is an excellent choice. And the best part is that this was written for children.I know that I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating: children deserve great
In 1960 Sophie's wish unexpectedly results in her trip back in time to her family's plantation in 1860. Tanned dark by the summer sun, Sophie is mistaken for one of her family's mixed-blood children and put to work as a slave, first in the moderately gentler "Big House," then as a more harshly used kitchen and field hand. This is a riveting, edge-of-the-seat story to read. Sophie finds even the supposedly easier life of waiting on the old mistress far harder than she is used to, with random blow...
Technically well-written, but with ultimately underlying flaws in the perspective that make this unrecommendable for me. I am never convinced that the main character is doing anything but "playing" at being a slave, and even as it gets more serious, the ending confirms this. She sure feels lucky not to be "mistaken" for a slave any longer, but she'll claim to walk in her ancestor's shoes. Also note the plentitude of blurbs...and then check acknowledgements to see how many are in her writing grou...
Verisimilitude—authenticity—authority. Plausibility and credibility. Truth.So much is written about the books in whose fictions we find truth so strongly that we willingly not only suspend belief, but tuck the fiction away among our own life memories.So much has been written on how and why it happens, and here I go, adding to the flow. What makes a book real? Injecting realism is the first answer, but that wasn’t satisfactory for all. Back in 1750, Samuel Johnson ranted about how it wasn’t usefu...
I picked up this book at the recommendation of the Slatebreakers blog ( http://wp.me/p1DtDT-oH ). I agree with their review in that the time travel in which there is no magic fix for every problem and in which real change occurs in a character is quite compelling. I loved the beginning and end, the 1960s parts. A nice portrait of some conflicted family relationships. Bu I am troubled by the perspective here: a book about slavery and racism in the 60s all told from the point of view of a white gi...
A historical novel within a historical novel, time travel created by a twist of magic as a girl wishes she could have "an adventure" like the ones in her favorite books. Her granted wish drops her right into 1860, where her white but deeply tanned self is taken for a mixed-race slave, and allows us to experience the injustice of slavery even on a "nicer" plantation. Richly detailed and a very satisfying story, genuinely suitable for elementary age to adult. The fact that she goes back in time to...
Middle grade children's novel featuring time travel to the past. The book opens in New Orleans in 1960. The main character, Sophie, is 13 years old and adjusting to life after her parent's divorce. Her father has moved to NYC and her mother is now working and planning on returning to school (which she enjoys despite pretending that as a proper southern lady that she does not). Sophie's mother sends her to Oak River in rural Louisiana to stay at her family's run-down former plantation for part of...
When I read YA books, I do so with a lens of my own students (past, present, and future) and how I would use it or recommend it to independent readers. I chose this one because it was from a limited selection of age-appropriate fiction available on our MyON service, so I thought I might assign it to groups or even a whole class due to how easy it would be for us to access it. I regrettably even purchased two paper copies so I could mark it and use it for Distance Learning purposes. It took me, a...
This is a thought-provoking book for middle school students (Grades 5-8). It touches on many different topics that would engage a class into deep discussion and reflection, such as divorce, slavery, human rights, time-travel, self-reflection, etc. The main character Sophie faces all of these topics in some form through the book and I think many students would relate directly to her encounters. In summary, Sophie ends up at her grandmother's house for the summer, and she is feeling less than good...
It’s 1960, and 13-year-old Sophie is doomed to a boring summer with her aunt and ill grandmother on the decaying remains of what was, 100 years ago, a bustling Louisiana sugar plantation. Through the strange machinations of a Brer Rabbit-type “Creature” (with clear parallels to the Natterjack of Edward Eager’s The Time Garden , Sophie’s preferred reading material), Sophie is plunged back in time to the plantation’s heyday. She’s a direct descendant of the plantation owners and is recognized a...
This is a marvelous book that I highly recommend. In terms of format/genre, it's a fantasy story involving travel back in time (a type of story I adored as a kid), but it's much more than that. In 1960, thirteen-year-old Sophie has to go stay with her grandmother and aunt on the property that was once her ancestors' Louisiana plantation. She wishes to go back in time and have an adventure, and so she does--though not the one she expects to have: appearing in the past, she's assumed to be a slave...
An exciting, nuanced and thoughtful work. I loved it. Three things that bothered me, though: 1) After returning to 1960, why did Sophie never bother to look inside the hiding place under the summerhouse to see if there was anything still there? 2) At times the book comes too close to suggesting that Sophie's restrictive upbringing is comparable to slavery. 3) Sophie's mother is a completely unsympathetic character (so is her father, but he never appears on-camera). The author provides some hints...
Sophie is a young girl who can do nothing to fill the shoes her mother has set out for her. Not that the shoes are a particularly good fit, but Sophie bows her head and takes her mother's sharp comments in silence. When her mother has to move for schooling and work, Sophie spends a summer with her aunt and grandmother on what is left of the familial plantation in Louisiana. There she meets a mysterious, magical entity that sends her back in time. But Sophie quickly learns that adventure isn't as...
The 5th star is for the 2013-Audie-nominated audio production; the voice of Robin Miles swept me through time - first to 1960 and then to 1860 in this perfect-for-middle-school historical fantasy about a 13 year-old girl who meets a trickster creature, makes a wish for adventure, and finds herself 100 years in the past, enslaved on her family's sugar plantation in the Louisiana Bayou.(Never tell your wishes to tricksters - especially those you meet in a hidden garden in the center of a haunted m...
First of all, I love the cover of this YA book! Which is of course is why I picked it up in the first place. No teens in fancy ball gowns looking much older then their years, thankyouverymuch!The setting was delightful. How perfect to have a girl of the 1960s travel to the antebellum era and learn a thing or too about how it feels to be treated like less than a person because of the color of your skin. At first blush, it might seem just like another time traveling fantasy a la Edward Eager but t...
One of the biggest strengths of this book is how it makes the small seem large. Because if you look at the plot - a girl gets transported 100 years to the past - you'd expect her to go through some incredibly important historical event; maybe she'd help out Abraham Lincoln, maybe she'd play an important part in the war. Heck, I've more or less written a similar plot and I did just that.This book, though, doesn't do that at all. And I didn't mind it the least. The only reason why Sophie gets tran...
Originally posted on my blog: http://libraryladyhylary.blogspot.com ! Check it out for more reviews!In 1960 New Orleans, thirteen-year-old Sophie Martineau is struggling to cope with her parents’ recent divorce. Her father has moved to New York City, and her former best friend is no longer allowed to socialize with the child of a single mother. To make matters worse, Sophie’s mother has decided to send her to Oak Cottage, an old plantation outside of New Orleans, to stay with her grandmother and...