A Crack in the Line (Withern Rise) - Softcover

Lawrence, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 006072479X ISBN 13: 9780060724795

Publisher: Greenwillow Books, 2005

Synopsis

A sixteen-year-old boy, who resides in a big Victorian house, stumbles into an alternate reality where he comes face-to-face with another version of his life where his beloved mother, who was killed in a train crash, is still alive. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Lawrence started his working life as a graphic designer and photographer and subsequently worked as (among other things) a television script reader, an antiques dealer, and a publicist for a traveling circus. He now writes full-time and currently lives near Stamford, England, some forty miles from the house in which he was born—the house he calls Withern Rise in The Underwood See.

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From School Library Journal:

Grade 7-10–Alaric and Naia, both 16, have nearly identical lives in parallel worlds. Their parents, their house, and their circumstances are the same, with one major difference. Alaric's mother was killed in a train wreck, while Naia's mother survived. This story of alternate realities raises questions about how one's life might be changed forever by a certain turn of events. Alaric's home is dreary, dirty, and joyless and he misses his mother terribly. Naia lives in a world of light and privilege, with a clean, nicely furnished house and two loving parents. Through an association with a tree in the garden of their mutual home, the two teenagers travel back and forth from one world to the other. Working together, they try to make sense of what has happened to them and why. This is a very engaging tale at the outset. Lawrence vividly describes the same house under radically different circumstances and it becomes the focal point of the story. The dialogue contains some British slang and humor but is not difficult to follow. Ultimately Alaric and Naia trade places irreversibly, so that it is now Naia who is motherless. Readers may be left wondering what all this means, but will need to wait for the next volume in the series for a possible explanation.–Bruce Anne Shook, Mendenhall Middle School, Greensboro, NC
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About this edition

• Publisher: Greenwillow Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 006072479X
• ISBN 13: 9780060724795
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352