The Grave
Product description Pulled into the past to discover his futureAbandoned in a shopping mall when he was a baby, thirteen-year-old Tom Mullen has no family - he's spent his life shuffled from one rotten foster home to another. When he hears rumors that a mass grave has been unearthed on his school grounds, he feels himself inexplicably drawn to it, and then down into its terrible darkness and beyond. He discovers that he is no longer in Liverpool in 1974 but in Ireland in 1847, the height of the potato famine. A family named Monaghan takes him in, and Tom experiences for the first time what its like to have parents and siblings who cleave to one another even amid terrible hardship. But why has Tom been transported across time and place? And why must the grave keep yanking him back, at intervals, to his dreary, lonely existence in Liverpool? Most of all, what does it mean that the Monaghan's son Tully is practically Toms double? Tom stands by the Monaghan's in their plight, and in so doing discovers that the past, and the Monaghans, hold the key to his destiny. From School Library Journal Grade 7-10-Tom travels between his Liverpool foster kid life, in the early 1970's, and mid-19th century Ireland, where his ancestors are suffering the physical, emotional, social and spiritual effects of the Potato Famine in this novel by James Heneghan (Farrar, 2001). Heneghan's melding of fantasy with historical fiction is neatly complemented by Gerard Doyle's light British accent and energetic pacing. In the 20th century, Tom doesn't bother with self-pity, but he does have more than a few strikes against him, having been abandoned as a toddler and now charged with keeping not only himself but his developmentally disabled foster brother out from under foot. While exploring a local archaeological dig, Tom falls into the past and finds a new set of concerns. The family group among whom he "lands" has troubles aplenty, and while he's willing to help them find ways to cope, he also must conceal where and how he has come by such oddities as the zipper mechanism on his jacket. Historical detail here is authoritative, but never overwhelms the story's aesthetics. Tom is a true hero, in both centuries, and the happy 20th century ending-coming after the deaths of several characters and Tom's cathartic admission to his true identity in the 19th century-is well-deserved if too neat to be likely outside fiction. Good storytelling here will attract listeners of every degree of sophistication, and reward them all.Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.