Customer Reviews

All the Way Home

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was alright, but it was kind of boring....I expected alot more after reading Lily's Crossing, which I really liked alot. It was one of those books that you count how many pages you have left till it's over.....

The book called All the Way Home by Patricia Reilly Giff is a very good book. It's about a boy named Brick. He and his family used to live in a small house on an apple orchard but when a fire destroys it his parents have to find work. And Brick has to go live with his parent's friend Loretta. Loretta lives in Brooklyn with her adopted daughter Muriel.
Muriel once had polio at a hospital in Windy Hill were Brick used to live. Loretta was a nurse at the hospital that Muriel went to and she adopted her because her mother never came back for her. So this story is about Muriel trying to find her mother and Brick trying to get back to Windy Hill to save the apple harvest.
I liked this book and I would recommend this book because it is very exciting. This book gets right to the point and you never want to put it down. I liked how it had two stories weaved together and how Brick and Muriel both had some kind of similarities with in each other. I thought the book All the Way Home was a very good book for all ages.

All the way Home By: Patricia Reilly Giff A Dell Yearling Book

Mariel and her mother were great friends. All the way Home took place in the 1940's. Mariel was diagnosed with polio disease, but at the time there were no treatments. Mariel was soon adopted by a nurse named Loretta from the hospital because her mother didn't want to see her daughter suffer with having polio and have to take care of her on her own. She thought it would be very difficult to deal with and it would be easier to have a nurse who knows all about polio take care of her. So she asked the nurse to adopt Mariel and take care of her until she is old enough to be by herself. Then there is Brick who is Mariel's best friend. He lives in a different part of New York than Mariel. He lives in an area away fom the city. Mariel used to live there until she got adopted and moved closer to the city. Brick is going through some family struggles also. Bricks family has an apple orchard to make money. Then on a stormy day a lightning bult struck the trees and set them all on fire. So together Mariel and Brick figure out their problems.

The two main characters are Mariel and Brick. Mariel as I said before was diagnosed with polio. The author did not give any descriptions of the characters that were very clear at all, at least not clear enough to make a picture of the characters in your head. I can picture her as being a small, petite girl who is very smart though. I can also picture Brick being a small, skinny, dark haired person. Then there is Brick. Brick is very out going just as Mariel is. Both of them are very brave also. Brick is dealing with family problems like trying to help his family make money to pay for their house and put the food on the table. Mariel and Brick aren't only best friends they are also huge Dodgers fans. In case you are not aware, the Dodgers are a baseball team. The two friends are hoping that the Dodgers will win the pennant in the year that the book takes place, but not many people believe that the Dodgers can do it.

This book had an okay plot to it but I really disliked the style of writing the author used. There would be two chapters on Mariel and then two chapters on Brick and so on. That really got me confused. I had to take little sticky notes and write what happened in each chapter on them because I would get so confused. It was really hard for me to concentrate on the story too because the author would go off subject so much and then say "so any ways..." all the time and that just about drove me insane. Some adjectives I would use to describe this book are boring, slow, irritating and very off topic. The genre of All the way Home is realistic fiction. The author is not very good at describing the different characters and her chapters are very confusing, but if you are interested in this book go right ahead and give it a try. Personally I think it would be a waste of time. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

This is a lovely historical novel for young people. With both a male and female point of view -- the book is a great choice for both boys and girls and would make a wonderful addition to any school curriculum. Both characters are nicely characterized and are admirable people without being too perfect to be real. The bonds between Brick, Mariel, the wonderful secondary characters and the Brooklyn Dodgers make for a warm and satisfying story of a different era that has lessons to teach us today as we too face
uncertainty and war.

A young girl searches for truth of her beginings in life and discovers how precious she is. Even with polio a young nurse still wants to adopt her and raise her as her own. Her adoptive mother believes she can do anything, even with polio, so she wants her to go out there and make a difference. Truly not a story to be overlooked or past by. It you never read another book.... read this one.

Brick and Mariel share their interest in the Dodgers team in 1941 where it seems they share little else in common. Mariel is determined to know her real mother, who left her in the hospital with polio, and Brick's parents must abandon their family farm when disaster strikes, sending him to live with nurse Loretta. The three form an unusual, different kind of family with renewed dreams for the future.