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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
compelling novel about friendship, growing up, and what it means to be alive, June 4, 2010
This review is from: Chasing Orion (Hardcover)
Kathryn Lasky's newest novel is set in Indiana during a polio epidemic in the summer of 1952. The story is narrated by 11-year-old Georgie, who has just moved cross-town to a new neighborhood, where she knows no one. Georgie is bored out of her mind, since she's not allowed to swim in public pools, go to camp or to the movies because of the all-pervasive fear of contracting polio. Georgie has a strange obsession with the disease, tracking the number of new cases daily in the newspaper and memorizing lists of polio symptoms, just in case.
It's a strange quirk of fate that right next door to Georgie and her family lives Phyllis, a beautiful, flirtatious teen-aged girl who seems right out of the Archie comics Georgie loves to read--except that she's a polio victim who is trapped in an iron lung, with a useless body that is withering away. Completing the triangle of main characters is Georgie's brother, Emmett, a socially awkward high school basketball player who's an expert amateur astronomer.
As Georgie and her brother get to know Phyllis, Emmett falls in love with her, spending hours with Phyllis looking through his telescopes at the stars. Phyllis makes Georgie feel very grown up by engaging in "girl talk" with her and even gives her some real lipstick. Georgie, whose hobby is building miniature worlds, makes for Phyllis an elaborately detailed miniature diorama featuring the myth of Orion. But Georgie becomes increasingly uneasy with Phyllis; she has an uncomfortable feeling that there is more to this beautiful yet pathetic neighbor than meets the eye. Georgie even starts to have nightmares that she and her brother are ensnared in some kind of evil web, spinning out of control, and begins to grow fearful of Phyllis. Without giving away the ending, let me just say that the resolution of this tense situation brought tears to my eyes.
I highly recommend this novel for young people (boys or girls) ten and up. In telling the story of Phyllis, Georgie, and Emmett, Lasky touches on many deeper themes--what does it really mean to live? Why do bad things happen to good people? The book is also likely to spark conversation about polio and other highly contagious diseases--those that are still a threat, and those that have been eradicated. Many of the young people reading this book may have grandparents who recall vividly the terror that polio struck into their families when they were young, and therefore this could be an especially interesting book to read for book reports or other school assignments. Home schooling parents also might be especially interested since the book could easily serve as a gateway for an interdisciplinary lesson combining astronomy, biology, history, and literature.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Kathryn Lasky perfectly evokes the climate of fear that surrounded the polio epidemic as well as the larger 1950s culture, July 1, 2010
This review is from: Chasing Orion (Hardcover)
When 11-year-old Georgie's family moves to a new house, Georgie feels like she's the only one left out. Her parents have each other, after all, and her older brother Emmett has his basketball friends. But Georgie has no friends in her new neighborhood, and she'll be heading to a new school in the fall, where she won't know anyone either. What's more, the polio epidemic means that Georgie can't go to the pool, or to her beloved movie theater, or pretty much anywhere where there might be people gathered together, out of fear that she might contract the debilitating, potentially deadly disease.
So, for the long, hot, Indiana summer, Georgie's world consists of her house, her backyard and the library, where she meets a new friend, Evelyn, who, although not as "cool" as her old friends, still makes her laugh when they meet or talk on the phone. But most fascinating to Georgie is her next-door neighbor, Phyllis, a beautiful blonde teenager who is almost paralyzed and has to remain locked in an iron lung in order to breathe. Phyllis is beautiful and stylish, and seems genuinely interested not only in Georgie's favorite hobby --- building "small worlds," dioramas based on books and legends --- but also, romantically, in Emmett.
As the months pass and Georgie grows increasingly interested in Phyllis, both as a role model for her own impending adolescence and as a potential girlfriend for her shy, awkward, science-obsessed brother, she begins to suspect that Phyllis is not simply the tragic victim others may initially believe. Phyllis has a complicated relationship with her parents. Her mother reads Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott"
obsessively to Phyllis, seemingly oblivious to the bitter resonance the story about a woman trapped in a tower might have with her daughter's own circumstances; Phyllis's father channels his love, grief and sadness into inventing a series of elaborate contraptions that will supposedly ease Phyllis's condition, but that his daughter couldn't care less about.
Meanwhile, Georgie makes it her mission not only to help Phyllis try to have a normal life but also to show her brother how to fall in love. It turns out, though, that the real world isn't as easy to control or contain as the worlds Georgie creates in boxes and frames.
In CHASING ORION, Kathryn Lasky perfectly evokes the climate of fear that surrounded the polio epidemic as well as the larger 1950s culture, mores and fads. Most affecting, however, is Georgie's position on the cusp of adolescence. She's fascinated by teenagers, particularly Betty and Veronica in the Archie comics she adores, and she's worried that she herself, with her unmanageable hair and awkward body, won't transform into the kind of graceful, elegant, talented teenage girl she idolizes. Meanwhile, her friendship with Phyllis provides Georgie with a confusing glimpse into the moral complexities not only of adolescence but also of the adult world. Phyllis's disease has forced her to grow up too quickly, and Georgie's encounters with Phyllis introduce her to the heartbreaking and complicated adult realms of manipulation and bitterness as well as love.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An charming and education Middle Grade read, July 23, 2010
This review is from: Chasing Orion (Hardcover)
Books about polio seem to be popping up more and more lately and Kathryn Lasky has just published one of her own. And really, who doesn't like Kathyn Lasky? Kids like her, parents like her, librarians like her, and Chasing Orion is just another addition to a steam of well-written, well-researched books.
Our main character is 11-year-old Georgia Mason; a precocious girl that just moved to a new neighborhood with her family. It's an incredibly hot summer and Georgie misses her friends terribly. Polio outbreaks are in full swing and her mother won't allow her to go to the local swimming pool to make new friends, in fear of Georgia catching polio herself.
Next door, polio has become very real for Phyllis, a teenage girl in an iron lung who befriends Georgia and her older brother Emmett. While Emmett is busy falling in love with the beautiful and charming Phyllis, Georgia is determined to find a way to cure the girl of her terrible disease, throwing herself into research and truly wanting to have Phyllis as her friend forever. And when the real reason Phyllis has been so friendly with Emmett and Georgia comes to light, an entirely new dimension of plot is revealed.
Lasky is an amazingly talented writer, having the ability to sink her teeth into a story and get in all the nooks and crannies before letting the reader turn the last page. I loved Georgia and her honest heart and innocent nature...though I suppose I did find her a bit more mature than most 11-year-olds. She was insightful, pensive, and thoughtfully written. You want to read more after the first page and you'll find yourself questioning Phyllis' motives soon after we meet her in the story.
On a historical level, I definitely learned some things about the time during the polio epidemic. Not only the limitations it placed on healthy people, but just what it might be like to have to live in an iron lung and the fear that people lived with on a day to day basis. Midway through the book I found myself on the internet looking up facts about polio and just what it did to a person's body. So devastating, but incredibly interesting to learn about how advanced something like an iron lung was for that period.
A couple of very mature themes end up running through the book, but I'm not going to mention them b/c giving away plot points is not something I'm fond of. It's written in an appropriate way for a middle grade reader, but you may want to skim it first, so as to be prepared to answer some questions when your kiddos have put it down. Great historical elements, as well as some facts on astronomy.
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