The Crying Rocks
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From Newbery Honor author Janet Taylor Lisle comes a lyrical story about one girl’s discovery of her startling past—and her search to understand her complicated present.
Joelle’s height and dark skin set her apart from everyone in Marshfield. It’s no secret that she’s adopted, but where is she from? Aunt Mary Louise says she came from Chicago on a freight train, but the story doesn’t sit right with Joelle. There’s something more. She feels it.
Carlos, the quiet boy in Joelle’s Spanish class, sees it. When he tells her that she looks like a girl in the town library’s old mural of Narragansett Indians, Joelle can’t help sneaking a look. She’s surprised by a flicker of recognition. And when Carlos tells her about the Crying Rocks, where the ghosts of Narragansett children are said to cry for their lost mothers, Joelle knows she must visit them.
When they finally set out through the forest, neither she nor Carlos anticipates the power of the ancient place, or the revelations to be found there—about the pasts they’ve both buried, and the discovery of a rare kind of courage that runs deep in Joelle’s family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Once again, Lisle (Afternoon of the Elves; The Art of Keeping Cool) demonstrates her ability to sensitively and suspensefully unveil enigmatic characters' secrets. Joelle, 13, remembers nothing about her early years. Adopted at age five by a middle-aged Rhode Island couple, Joelle has been told odd, painful bits of information: that she was born in Chicago, where her mother threw her out of a third-floor window; and that somehow she made her way to Connecticut, where an old lady kept her in a wooden crate near a train depot and sent her out to collect cigarette stubs. Her classmate Carlos suggests she is part Narragansett Indian, and when she studies the mural of Narragansetts at her local library, Joelle sees her resemblance to them. Carlos, haunted by his own painful memories, plays a key role in helping Joelle retrace the steps of colonial-era Narragansetts. He takes Joelle on hikes in the wilderness and shows her the Crying Rocks, a site where many Native Americans perished. Connecting the Narragansetts' suffering with tragedies occurring in their own lives, the children confront and eventually come to accept hard truths. Lisle artfully weaves the stories of Joelle and Carlos together with mysterious, centuries-old myths. If the pacing lags at times, Lisle offsets it with her expertise at developing complex, intriguing characters. Ages 12-up.
