Jericho Walls
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- 52,99 lei
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- 52,99 lei
Publisher Description
Set in 1957, Jericho Walls is an unforgettable and inspiring novel about the power of friendship for a young girl growing up amid racism.
"I woke early that first Sunday in Jericho. The sun was barely a stain in the sky, but the air was hot and clammy. My nightgown stuck to my skin. I padded to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. My stomach clenched in a queasy ball . . . I'd keep myself out of trouble in Jericho, I promised myself. I'd do all the right things and make lots of good friends and no one would care a whit about my being a preacher's daughter."
Jo Clawson isn't the boy her father wanted, and she's not the "young lady" her neighbors expect of the preacher's daughter, either. But even though Jo doesn't always meet the expectations of the people around her, she still longs to fit in. When she and her family leave their northern home for the small southern town of Jericho, Alabama, Jo might finally stop picking fights and settle in right.
But when Jo befriends a young black boy, she discovers that "fitting in" is about a lot more than proper manners or a smart outfit. Suddenly she's faced with a new set of questions that call up her own values. Maybe some fights are worth picking, after all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her first novel, set in 1957, Collier creates a compelling narrative voice in Jo Clawson, a spirited 11-year-old from the North who attempts to negotiate the racial divisions in a small South Carolina town. Jo's mother, a strong woman with Cherokee roots, is even more open-minded than Jo; it is from her more conservative father, a Baptist preacher who has recently moved the family to Jericho, his birthplace, that Jo seeks and finally gains acceptance. Collier juxtaposes Jo's struggle to make friends among the white girls of her age with her gentle but secret friendship with Lucas, the son of the Clawsons' "colored" maid. The white girls ridicule Jo when she unknowingly drinks out of the "colored" water fountain, and she tries to impress them by misbehaving at Sunday school. Meanwhile, Lucas's help when she injures herself earns Jo a sharp reproof for associating with a "colored" boy. While Collier captures tensions within Jo's family and within the community, Jo's confrontation of those tensions seems at times more sophisticated than her years might allow, such as when she quotes Scripture to rebuke a hypocritical group of deacons visiting her father. Jo's decision to help Lucas and his brother take a political stand in order to obtain a library card, landing her temporarily in jail, also strains believability. Like the mockingbird that figures in a somewhat overdone motif here, the author strikes the right notes, but she hits them a little too hard. Ages 9-14.