Customer Reviews

Across Five Aprils

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(64)

 

 

This book I had to do for summer reading. My story is actually very ironic. In the beginning I didnt want to read the book because people who have previously read it were saying that this was the worst book ever. So I blew the book off and totally forgot about it. And when it was two days before the first day of school I relised that I still have yet to read the book. So i found out how many chapters were in the book and made a reading schedule. So I read six chapters a day. But when I got to chapter three I relized how good this book really is. It was soo heartfelt and real. I literally felt as if i was sitting rite next to Jethro and Bill in the field. It was a really strong story and plot line. I could feel the anger, the sadness, and the fear in this book. And when I finally came to the end of the book I didnt want the story to end. I wanted more. I wanted to know what happened to Bill and Eb. I wanted to know if Shadrach and Jenny had any children. I wanted the story to last forever. That is the best book that I have ever read in my entire life. And I would read a thousand times over if I could. I recomend this book for anyone who is from the age 13 up and to anyone who is interested in how the people lived in the Civil War when they weren't the ones fighting in it. So that is why I give Across Five Aprils five out of five stars.

If you are looking for a war adventure story with lots of explosions, forget it. If you are interested in what war does to a loving family's everyday life, this is your book.

Jethro Creighton, the central character, grows from the carefree "baby of the family" to a hardworking, thoughtful adolescent who has seen his brothers go off to fight and in one case, die in the Civil War. Two of the family's sons fight for the Union, one for the Confederacy, and Irene Hunt explores in some detail the ways in which everyday farming folks dealt with these divided loyalties.

Hunt is not the sort of writer to condescend to young readers.She creates situations that make you think and reflect. So maybe a junior-high reader who is "made" to read Across Five Aprils would find it tough going.

I first read this book when I was in high school, so I was a little older than some of the readers who seem to be having major problems with it. Twenty years later, it's still a book I re-read from time to time. Hunt's characters lose none of their vividness -- when you're an adult, you find a whole new interest in her portraits of Jethro's parents and their anguish over their children in wartime.

My advice is, if you're being told to read this for a report and you don't like it, grit your teeth and get through it -- but don't throw the book away. I guarantee that in a few more years you will love it -- unless you've given up on reading altogether.

I read Across Five Aprils along with my own son and the 8th graders I teach as part of a unit on the Civil War. Ms. Hunt does a wonderful job of drawing her characters, particularly Jethro Creighton. Jethro and his family, farming in southern Illinois, find that even though they are not in the midst of the battlefields, their lives are nonetheless swept up in the events of this tragic period in our history. Jethro's growth and understanding of the sweep of history as well as of himself are well-detailed. Well they might be, as Ms. Hunt crafted this story from family stories of her great-grandfather, who was the young protagonist, making this novel something between historical fiction and family lore.

She deftly weaves the family events with historic fact, adding faces to the stories in the history texts. As a midwestern gal myself, I found the perspective of a family from that part of the country to be very interesting. Many other similar works make their settings much closer to the historical action, and it is this unique setting that allows the reader to understand just how all-encompassing the Civil War was for the whole country.

I found the last few chapters to be disappointing, as she seemed to want to rush to the end of the war and hence her story. The writing took on a feeling of newspaper reports of battles, with very little of the narrative from the Creighton family viewpoint that made the book so engrossing.

As a teacher, I feel that the authentic dialect that was used in the dialogue might make for somewhat difficult reading for many kids who struggle with involved text. Nonetheless, a book such as Across Five Aprils makes for a much more interesting and meaningful study of the Civil War than the dry texts we read and forgot.

If you asked me about this book before May of '08, I simply would have answered I read it for school 10 years ago in 8th grade, and don't remember a thing about it. This all changed last year. I had a flight overseas to catch. Before I left my home for the airport, I randomly grabbed this book off the bottom of the shelf, not really thinking, just needing something to read on the plane.

What a treasure I discovered! This book is beautifully written with undertones on how Jethro's thought process changes and develops as the war goes on. It's an incredible read, and really paints vivid pictures for the imaginative. During the course of my trip, I read and re-read this book several times, and learned something new every time. I wish I knew what happened to Bill and the rest of the family after the war.

This 3/5 rating is a bit skewered. Most of the 1 scores are from students who do not want to read it and are being forced to, so they're being spiteful. I challenge all of you younger guys and girls to either genuinely give it a chance, or put it away for 5-10 years, and discover it again. It's an amazing read if given a chance.

Firstly, I am an Australian who is interested in the Civil War. I have had no formal education about American history and have only started to become a serious student of the Civil War through my husband's interest in the event.

I am greatly fascinated by the effects that Civil War (as with the Holocaust) had on the people of the country. I found Across Five Aprils a perfect introduction to Civil War fiction. It was well researched and written with great compassion. As a "foreigner", I found the apparent "Lincon" worshipping a bit much, but now, after a lot more research and many hours of watching documentaries and reading non-fiction works, I can understand the writer's adulation, especially from Jethro's adolescent point of view. Indeed, I was deeply moved by the last few pages, even to the point of tears as I could imagine Jethro's pain at the loss of his (for want of a better term) last great hope.

I am greatly amused by other reader's opinions of the book being "boring". Well, what can you expect? Amazon describes it as a fictional work. It doesn't say "Read the exiting adventures of a farmer boy as he single handedly wins the Civil War" does it?

This is an excellent read, as the author is so damned good at descriptive prose that you can feel the heat of the fields, take pleasure in the simple pleasures of these people's lives (who could've imagined that salads would have been such a treat!), rejoice in their small triumphs and feel for them in their loss.

I would whole-heartedly recommend this book for "foreigners" with an interest in the Civil War and its effects on an everyday rural family. I also liked this book as I was an avid fan of the Laura Ingalls Wilder (spelling?) Little House series as a child, and I sort of found this book in much the same style.

For me, this book wasn't at all bad. In fact, I started it yesterday and today I'm finished. If you want a short little story that will keep you interested, then you should try this one. But that's not all it did; I picked up a lot from what I didn't remember in the Civil War. This book hardly made it an American history lesson--it made the Civil War come alive instead. For the kids, well I can understand your pain. In junior high I wouldn't have given this book a second look, but wait a few more years until you can appreciate the history and writing in it. All right, take care.

Across Five Aprils is a book that is set during the Civil War. It is about a 9-year-old boy named Jethro who lives on a farm in Illinois, and it chronicles his experiences across the five aprils that the war goes through.
I particularly enjoyed this book, because most books about boys set during the Civil War are about how the boys go off to fight. This book is different, because Jeth does not join the army. Instead, he stays at home and helps his family with the crops. I thought that this was a most refreshing change.
I learned many new things from this book. From my history books I had always gotten the impression that Lincoln was a grand hero. We know now that he was, but at the time, many people didn't think so. They criticized him and blamed him for all their problems when the war went wrong. In truth, when the Union army lost battles, it was because the Generals in charge ignored Lincoln's orders and did something different instead.
I would recommend this book to people ages 10 and up. I would not recommend it for younger children, because some of the things described in the book are a bit scary. It is, after all, about a war.

I'm going to be honest here, because there's a statute of limitations on grade school book reports. I wrote a book report on this one without ever actually READING it. Not sure if my teacher ever picked up on that. I think someone told me about it. Out of guilt, it has been on my bookshelf since, and I've promised myself I'd read it. It's short, why did it take so long? Well, there's TV afterall, quite distracting. But eventually I've gotten around to reading it, and I was OK with it. I'm sure in grade school I wouldn't have been. BORING would have been my chant. I've matured since then.

It's not a face paced read. I don't think it was meant to be. What it does is reveal a world torn apart by events larger than the people who lived them. Events forced choices with real consequences. No one really knew for certain WHO was right. People had very little trust in the leaders of the day. And people you loved dearly often didn't make it home. And unfortunately for these people, who had no access to the latest from the front lines, who had no heliocopters following the troups, who had to wait for someone heading to town to bring a month old newspaper back to them, they really had to hang a lot on faith. Facts during the Civil War were awful hard to come by.

I'm not sure I'd say this was spelled out in the book in dramatic fashion. Irene Hunt was going for realism, not shock value. She let the events stand on their own and if you're a good reader, you rise to understand just how compelling the subject matter is.

Frankly, I'm glad I waited.

I did not read Across Five Aprils by choice and did not expect to like a story about a boy named Jethro and his family. Suprisingly I was pulled into the story right away. I found the characters feelings very real. It painted a very real image of the times. I felt, for a few hours a day, that I was living on a farm in southern Illinois during the Civil War. I read the book for the first time over 2 years ago but I still find my self fliping through it now and then to find one of those many lines that really touched me.

Six brothers who live on a small farm in Southern Illinois durng the Civil War, have a family conflict. Four of the five brothers went to fight for the North and one brother fights for the South. Jethro, the youngest brother, has to stay home with his mother and sister to run the family farm. Everyone at home worries about the brothers at war. Getting letters helps the family know about the war battles. I gave Across Five Aprils a three star rating because it was slow moving in the beginning. If Hunt had added information about war scenes, the story would have been more interesting.