Kirkus Reviews

In 1951, 12-year-old David lives with his father and grandmother in the South. Pushed to be a doctor like his father, David resists buts plays along, and he and his father come to a testy arrangement in most things, including David's friendships. Unable to keep David from playing with his best friend Malcolm, David's father lays down a rule: "You ever let that nigger in [the house], by God, I'll shoot him." As David approaches his 13th birthday, he begins to understand the true horror of the connections between the KKK and his neighbors and family. Even as his friendship with Malcolm drifts, his own sense of the world grows, until the horrible night when turning 13 brings with it more than David ever banked on. The voice and setting here are fully realized and gripping. Even with scanty plot or narrative arc, this is a highly appealing and chilling read for history buffs and fans of historical fiction. (Historical fiction. 11-15)

School Library Journal Starred Review

Gr 6 Up-Small-town Tennessee in the 1950s comes vividly to life in this story of a risky friendship. David, nine, and Malcolm, eight, are both firecrackers, full of mischief and way too curious and independent to accept the rigid social norms that the adults around them take for granted. David's physician father, Franklin Church, lays down the law: Malcolm is black and thus inferior, and may never enter the Church home. As adolescence approaches, David applies to Barlow Academy in the North at his father's insistence. Set at a time and place where crossing the racial line could quickly result in violence and even death, this is as much a story of a complex relationship between father and son as it is one of interracial friendship. David identifies with Franklin, who teaches him physiology "bone by bone by bone." But he knows that Malcolm is his equal and his "heart-friend," and increasingly the son sees his father's racism for what it is. David struggles to reconcile his conflicting loyalties until his father's unthinking violence brings about a near tragedy. The man is a complex character, a father figure whom readers can both admire and reject. The corrosive effects of racism, on both black and white, are thoughtfully explored in the finely drawn minor characters as well. This beautifully written and haunting novel will leave readers with a deeper understanding of the country's past and of the heavy price that sometimes must be paid in order to live with integrity.-Carolyn Lehman, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Voice of Youth Advocates

As recent news focuses on race relations in Jena, Louisiana, veteran writer Johnston, who grew up in the South, shares a personal and thoroughly fictionalized poetic and painful story of life in a 1950s racist home. The author introduces prepubescent narrator David, his racist doctor father, and Malcolm, David's African American friend. Malcolm is banned from David's home: "Rule's real simple: you ever let that nigger in, by God, I'll shoot him," proclaims the doctor, portraying the unsettling, troubling hatred spewed by David's father, one grandmother, and many other characters, several of whom are active Klan members. David is innocent but not na´ve, coming of age in an environment that he innately senses as inhumane. David's intellect and reasoning are evident in his attempts to use advanced vocabulary, his memorizing skeletal bones of the human body (demanded by his father), and his efforts to unravel mysteries of the frightening Klan. He ponders: How can a child love and respect a volatile, hate-filled parent? Johnston's use of metaphor and imagery surface surprisingly-joyously-amid hostility and hatred, when the two young friends role-play, explore nature, and challenge each other. Not all adult white characters project racism and violence; a caring uncle, a neighbor, and another grandmother provide compassionate leadership. Sad paradoxes compound when David encounters his father's black nanny and homeless Mister Swann's diminished dreams. The ending is as unsettling as the book's dark beginning but fits circumstances. Johnston does not apologize for the raw language, stating instead that it "reflects a way of thinking that has troubled me my whole life." Although perhaps no more "raw" than rap lyrics today, Johnston's powerful prose is far more thought provoking and poignant, especially in light of mock lynchings in the twenty-first century.-Patti Sylvester Spencer.

Starred Review for Publishers Weekly

Johnston (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">The<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Ghost of Nicholas Greebe), well known for her witty picture books, writes a compelling, sometimes harrowing coming-of-age story that explores racial tensions in small-town Tennessee during the early ’50s. All his life, motherless David and the others in his family have longed to please his father, a doctor capable of such charm that “he could coax radishes to becoming roses on their way up through the soil.” But David can’t escape his father’s hatred of “Negroes,” in David’s language, especially when his father bans his best friend from the house with a serious threat: “You ever let that nigger in, by God, I’ll shoot him.” Without drawing attention to itself or slowing readers down, the prose gracefully incorporates rich imagery (“It was an afternoon in January, and cold. The leaves on the oaks were brown and damp from the fog that crept along the ground, a cold live thing”), its delicacy sharpening the brutalities David witnesses as he grows from age nine to 13. Johnston expertly builds tension as a series of chilling events awakens David to the full horrors of his father’s—and his neighbors’—actions. This novel stands well above others on the same topic for its author’s refusal to sacrifice the humanity of any of her characters and her dedication to the complexity of their relationships. Ages 12-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Aug.)

Starred Review ALA Booklist (Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2007)

Starred Review In a small town in 1950s Tennessee, nine-year-old David, who is white, and Malcolm, who is black, are blood brothers. Although David's racist father has forbidden their friendship, the boys enjoy wild, free-spirited adventures, exploring caves and acting out their favorite stories (Br'er Rabbit). But as the boys grow older and David's father's threats escalate, David wonders if his dad is a member of the Klan. Is his best friend's life in danger? Like most of her characters, Johnston's novel is layered with disturbing contradictions that add depth and a vivid sense of the time and place. Nostalgic scenes of small-town comforts contrast with the horror in the searing accounts of racism, which are true to David's viewpoint, and Johnston's vocabulary reinforces the effect in bone-chilling shifts from gentle, folksy, poetic colloquialisms to brutal racial slurs, including rampant use of the n-word. The author, who grew up in the South, begins her book with a charged, personal note: "The raw language . . . is my father's language and reflects a way of thinking that has troubled me my whole life." Readers, too, will feel haunted by this powerful story of a child awakening to family secrets and violence, and the racially motivated terrorism enforced by the Jim Crow South.