Blackbird - Hardcover

Southall, Ivan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374307830 ISBN 13: 9780374307837

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1988

Synopsis

During the Second World War, young Will must conquer his various fears as the Japanese Second Army threatens to invade Australia and eventually comes to accept the things he cannot change

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5-7 Southall's latest novel is difficult to describe. The main character, Will Houghton, is an Australian boy of ten or so at the beginning of World War II. His father is a soldier who is away most of the time preparing a defense against a possible Japanese invasion. Will, who has an active imagination, is full of the wonder of the world about him, his imaginary war games, and the confusion of his family life. The story takes place over a few months, and there is almost no action save for Will's tumbling from a roof and breaking some bones. It's as if these are the musings of an adult over a period of his childhood, and indeed, at the end of the story, readers are told that the jottings belong to a former speechwriter for an older Will Houghton who apparently became a very important person when he grew up. But musings and jottings these are rather than a straightforward story line, and as such, they are difficult to get into. It is a good recreation of an exciting, yet difficult, period in a young boy's life, as he wrestles to grasp the nature of events about him. The writing is poetic at times, but even strong readers will have difficulty locating or following the novel's meager plot. Robert E. Unsworth, Scarsdale Junior High School, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

This typically challenging work by the Australian author of Josh and other stream-of-consciousness books is set during World War II. Although the Japanese army is thousands of miles away, Will believes it is his duty to defend his family's home from an invasion. While he recedes into this military fantasy, his father, a colonel, is absent; then his sister is sent away, to boarding school; and his brother is called to fight. Finally, left only with the company of a blackbird and a cat (his mother can no longer reach him), Will confronts the limits of his powers. "I'm out of my depth," he tells the shrieking, pesky blackbird. "It's time you bothered someone else." Southall's unconventional style, made up of dialogue fragments and constant shifts of perspective, is imaginative but wildly enigmatic. Readers who like to know exactly what is happening may have trouble with that. But those who stick with it will be rewarded and startled by this glimpse of people poised on the brink who, in war's troubling times, fight their ways back from the madness. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0374307830
• ISBN 13: 9780374307837
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 135