Kit's Wilderness

Almond, David

ISBN 10: 0385906889 ISBN 13: 9780385906883

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2009

Synopsis

The Printz Award–winning classic gets a new look.

The Watson family moves to Stoneygate, an old coal-mining town, to care for Kit’s recently widowed grandfather. When Kit meets John Askew, another boy whose family has both worked and died in the mines, Askew invites Kit to join him in playing a game called Death. As Kit’s grandfather tells him stories of the mine’s past and the history of the Watson family, Askew takes Kit into the mines, where the boys look to find the childhood ghosts of their long-gone ancestors. Written in haunting, lyrical prose, Kit’s Wilderness examines the bonds of family from one generation to the next, and explores how meaning and beauty can be revealed from the depths of darkness.

A Michael L. Printz Award Winner
An ALA Notable Book
A Publishers Weekly Best Book
From the Paperback edition.

About this title

Review:

Like David Almond's 1998 Whitbread-winning Skellig, this powerful, eerie, elegantly written novel celebrates the magic that is part of our existence--the magic that occurs when we dream at night, the magic that connects us to family long gone, the magic that connects humans to the land, and us all to each other. As Kit's grandfather puts it, "the tales and memories and dreams that keep the world alive."

It seems fated that 13-year-old Christopher Watson, nicknamed Kit, would move to Stoneygate, an old English coal-mining village where his ancestors lived, worked, and died. Evidence of the ancient coal pit is everywhere--depressions in the gardens, jagged cracks in the roadways, in his grandfather's old mining songs. A monument in the St. Thomas graveyard bears the name of child workers killed in the Stoneygate pit disaster of 1821, including Kit's own name--Christopher Watson, aged 13--the name of a distant uncle. At the top of this high, narrow pyramid-shaped monument is the name John Askew, the same name of Kit's classmate who takes the connection between this monument and life--and death--very seriously.

The drama unfolds as the haunted, hulking, dark-eyed John Askew draws Kit and other classmates into the game of Death, a spin-the-knife, pretend-to-die game that he hosts in a deep hole dug in the earth, with candles, bones, and carved pictures of the children of the old families of Stoneygate. Kit the writer and Askew the artist belong together, Askew keeps telling him. "Your stories is like my drawings, Kit. They take you back deep into the dark and show it lives within us still.... You see it, don't you? You're starting to see that you and me is just the same." Are they, though?

Kit's Wilderness conjures a world where the past is alive in the present and creeps into the future--a world where ancestral ghosts and even the slow-changing geology of the landscape are as tangible as lunch. Powerful images of darkness exploding into "lovely lovely light" filter throughout the story, as Almond boldly explores the dark side and unearths a joyful message of redemption. (Ages 11 and much, much older) --Karin Snelson

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Kit's Wilderness:

"A thrilling and spine-tingling ride."                                                         --Starred, Publishers Weekly

"A heartbreakingly real world fused with magical realism. . . . [The book's] ruminations about death and the healing power of love will strike children in unsuspected ways."                                                 --Starred, Booklist

"A whirl of ghosts and dreams, stories-within-stories, joy, heartache, and redemption."                 --Kirkus Reviews

Praise for David Almond:
"Kit's Wilderness establishes Almond as the most exciting new voice in children's books of this decade."                  --Literary Review, London

About this edition

• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0385906889
• ISBN 13: 9780385906883
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 240