Customer Reviews

A Corner of the Universe

5 star:		(79)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Hattie's universe is permanently altered the summer she turns twelve, when for the first time she meets her 21-year-old mentally ill Uncle Adam, of whom no one in the family had ever mentioned previously. His presence disrupts the orderly life of her wealthy and controlling grandparents, who are left with no other option than to accept him back into their home when his school closes. Hattie, an introspective only child with few friends, feels alternately enchanted by Adam's childlike exuberance and concerned that she might be somehow "like him." She becomes protective of him as she witnesses the cruel reaction of those who deem him a "freak."

Ann Martin's authentic writing takes us back to 1960 with such details as rickrack as a fashion statement, nylons and garter belts, and "Dobie Gillis." Her sympathetic treatment of the characters draws the reader into this poignant story, earning a well-deserved Newbery honor for 2003.

Though the reading level is listed as 9-12, I would offer a caution that the emotional content is rather mature for this age group. I consider this appropriate for middle school and older. Younger readers might find Betsy Byars' "The Summer of the Swans," a book with similar themes, to be a bit more emotionally on target.

If I were reviewing this book for an adult reader or even a teenager, I would say that it was very well-written, and it kept my interest. But, I read the book because it was recommended to me by a school teacher for our mother/daughter book club. This book club was composed of girls in 3rd and 4th grade at the time. I don't read most of the books that my daughters bring home from school, so I was interested to see what type of book this was. It was pretty early in the book that "red flag" number one appeared. If this is a book for 9 year olds, is it really appropriate to have the main male character gawking at a female character's chest? Later this male character walks in on this same female and catches her "in the act" with another man. Please don't read any futher if you don't want to hear the ending, but this was the final straw in my book. This main character, who has mental issues, kills himself. And at the service for his funeral, the young girl in the story calls him "brave." There is something definitely wrong with recommending this book for ages 9-12--at least for MY 10 and 11 year olds. Come on, sex and suicide for 3rd and 4th graders? I'm sorry, I've never considered myself "old-fashioned," but where do we draw the line? Needless to say, I did not choose this book for our book club.

Hattie lives in a typical small town in the 1950s and 60s United States--everyone knows all the gossip by sundown. And when Hattie's unknown Uncle Adam comes to stay for a while, the news spreads quickly, as usual. Adam is different--they aren't sure what is wrong with him, other than he has a mental disability. Hattie finds she really likes her young uncle (he's 21, she's 12), and wishes she could help him more. Ann M. Martin has created a realistic world in this book. Throughout, Hattie goes through a range of emotions when dealing with her family. The reader is able to understand where Hattie is coming from, and why she acts and reacts the way she does. Martin also captures history in this book--from the carnival, to the grandparents' idea of what is proper, to the everyday activities of Hattie's life--without making the reader feeling disconnected. Martin also manages to convey that families should talk about issues, instead of ignoring them, without sounding preachy. Overall, this book will move you, if you let it.

My 11 year old daughter was deeply upset by this book after being given it to read by her school librarian. Struggling with similar issues of mood swings, rejection by peers, etc.(what young girl doesn't?) she really identified with the autistic boy, Adam, who later commits suicide. The story, while dealing positively about the relationship between an 11 year old girl and her autistic uncle, has an inappropriate resolution for a book for children and young adults. Adam commits suicide by hanging, and the 11 year old, Hattie, felt responsible. On page 178, Hattie reflects "I...realize that Adam's decision to take his life was not made easily. It took a certain kind of courage. Just not the kind of courage I choose." With the rising rates of autism, mental health issues in youth, and suicide in youth, I don't consider suicide a "certain kind of courage."

I give this book a great review because the author does a great job describing the setting and characters so it makes the reader feel as if they are a part of the story. I would recommend this book because the author makes you want to keep reading because of all the suspensful events.

I thought the relationship between Adam and Hattie was very heart-warming because they shared secrets and enjoyed each other for the people that they were. I also liked it when Hattie learned to make new friends by the end of the story.

Set in the small town of Millerton in the 1950s, Ann M. Martin's A Corner of the Universe focuses on mental illness and family secrets as seen through the eyes of eleven-going-on-twelve Hattie Owen.

At the beginning, Hattie looks forward to a typical summer of reading, taking walks, and helping take care of the boarders living in her parents' home. Instead, she learns that her family-parents and maternal grandparents-have been harboring a secret embodied in the mentally Adam, who returns home from a mental hospital.

Hattie immediately takes to her child-like uncle, but is amazed that the family never mentioned Adam, and is even disturbed by the way her grandparents treat him. Adam's behavior-even his existence-immediately upsets the delicate balance of the universe Hattie's grandmother Nana has worked so hard to create. Most of the conflicts in the novel arise from Adam's conduct in contradiction to the rules prescribed by Nana.

Soon Hattie comes to realize that everything she thought she knew about herself, her family, and the Millerton itself is wrong-or at least grossly inaccurate. Her feelings of confusion soon turn to anger, and Hattie too finds herself at odds with her family.

Following Adam's sudden suicide and funeral-and a great deal of other changes in her life-Hattie begins to come to grips with the lessons learned from the brief time she had with her uncle, especially about lifting up the corners of the universe and poking around to see what's under there.

This novel does a pretty good job of capturing the sudden feelings of isolation and disconnection in early teens regarding friends and family. It would also make a good early connection for later novels which deal with mental illness or with characters who create trouble because they are different and/or misunderstood in some way. (I am thinking in particular of the book Of Mice and Men; A Corner of the Universe even has a character named "Cookie"!).

The summer when 12 year old Hattie Owen first meets her uncle, Adam, he seems a little unusual. Not the quiet freaky unusual, but he's always happy and cheerful. Reciting lines from "I Love Lucy", speaking a mile every second, and constantly saying "Oh, ho ho ho!" Hattie thinks he's great and feels like she's made a new friend. The rest of the town, however, doesn't seem to think so. Adam, who is 21, seems to have a mind of a 6 year old although he can read and speak just fine. Hattie's grandparents are embarrassed of Adam and think he's a circus trick. One of the morals in this book is that you should never be embarrassed of what your child can or cannot do, which is a lesson that Hattie's grandparents eventually learn. Hattie doesn't understand why people stare at Adam, call him names, and hate him when they haven't even gotten to know him. Most of all, she doesn't understand why she has never heard of Adam for the last 12 years. She constantly asks herself: Why is her family hiding Adam from the town and their lives? What is there to hide?

A Corner of the Universe, by Ann M. Martin is about prejudice that is put towards the mentally disabled, and how discriminating against others just because they're different can lead to unfortunate consequences. I recommend this book to anyone who has ever felt like they were superior to someone else or anyone who has been a victim of that. This book is also about Hattie and her family's dark secret. It is that very secret that changes Hattie's life forever and allows her to lift her own corner of the universe. I think anyone who doesn't give this book 5 stars obviously hasn't figured that out.

In the Newbery Honor Novel, A Corner of the Universe, by Ann M. Martin, a heart tearing story comes to life. The novel starts off in October with Hattie, a twelve year old girl looking at home movies taken over the place of the last summer. From the movies, the Author takes us into Hattie's life at the begging of the summer, in the form of a flash back. Hattie is a girl that likes things the familiar way and doesn't want or like change. She doesn't want to think of the big unpredictable world out there, she likes things better in the protection of the families boarding house and its familiar routines. She likes the summer they way it is. Because of that, she was caught off guard when she was told her uncle, that no one has talked about or even told her about, is coming home because his "school" (an institution for mentally disabled) has shut down. Hattie's family must learn to cope with a 21 year old man, coming into their lives, which they have tried to forget about for many years. Her uncle, named Adam, is a guy who has a rollercoaster of moods, child like behavior, and is very unpredictable. What Hattie doesn't know, is that this uncle of hers has the power in him to change the way she looks and accepts life. During the summer, Ann M. Martin takes you on a journey of friendship, trial, and heartache.

At the end of this book I was crying, it touched me in a way I never expected it to. We should all learn from Adam and live our lives the way he did by lifting the corners of our universe. Although Adam had a hard life, he was called a Freak, laughed at, had a lot of things he couldn't understand, and would never have the chance to live a normal life. But he learned to change what life has handed to him, to poke around a little, lift the corners, seeing what is underneath, poking that. Sometimes things would work out for him, sometimes they didn't, but he was always exploring. Life is more interesting and fun that way. We should all learn to live our lives like Adam. I think that everyone who reads this book will finish looking at life in a different perspective, live life to its fullest, and not take little things for granted.

Ann M. Martin has written, to my knowledge, three books now involving autistic characters - a stand-alone novel in the 80s, that BSC book, and now this one.

I like to be complete, so I thought I'd check this one out and compare it against my memories of the others. This review WILL contain spoilers, I'm sorry, because there are a few issues I have with the book at the end.

First, you should note that Adam's characterization clearly reflects increased knowledge of autism. This is as it should be - the other two books are painfully outdated... but it wouldn't be fair to judge her for writing a book in the 80s that uses the knowledge we had in the 80s. Adam is never officially diagnosed, but it's fairly clear from the speculation ("some thought it was autism, some thought it was schizophrenia") and a few specific details of Adam's behavior (he engages in scripted speech, he has the savant skill of calendar counting, he is totally lacking in the social awareness that says do NOT stare at women's chests) that he's intended to be on the spectrum.

How accurate is this depiction? I don't know. I have a hard time believing that you COULD memorize many - much less all! - full episodes of I Love Lucy in the days before VCRs, but then, I didn't live in the 60s. The calendar counting did annoy me. Most autistics are not savants (and only about half of all savants are autistic - Kim Peek, the inspiration for Rain Man, was not autistic, for example).

I was happy to see that Adam is a real character. He has interests and feelings and a life. You get the feeling that he has some greater purpose than to simply provide character development for his niece. This is in contrast to disabled (particularly autistic) characters in many other books, who really are just there so the people they come in contact with can have a renewed appreciation for life or be kinder or I don't know what. Some commenters has mentioned that his behavior is "inconsistent" - he's "sometimes childish, and sometimes adult". This is accurate, though. Adults with developmental disabilities are still *adults*. They still have adult feelings, even if in some ways their understanding isn't up there.

Which brings me to another point, there are some mildly adult situations in this book. Adam stares at his crush's chest, and accidentally walks in on her with her boyfriend. It's not really that bad, but of course every family will have to make its own judgments about appropriateness.

And now we get to the end of the book, and the reason I gave it such a low rating. THIS IS WHERE THE REAL SPOILERS COME IN.

After seeing that he really doesn't have a chance with the pretty young woman who works at the bank (and after a trying few days where he had it made clear to him, again, that his family doesn't really want him to act the way he is), Adam goes and kills himself. And Hattie (who considers herself to be like her uncle in some way, although the reasons why are never given) thinks it over and calls this brave in her mind. Not the sort of braveness she'd like, but brave all the same.

It's not the suicide or the lackluster condemnation of the act that concerns me - actually, it's very clear that suicide has major repercussions for the people you leave behind.

It's the context. And this might be unfair, but I think the context is important. We're not living in a world where people love and accept the disabled. We're not living in a world where this is ONE voice about autism and suicide.

We are living in a world where prominent autism organizations can make videos where mothers say - in front of their verbal autistic children! - that the only thing that has stopped them from killing those same children and themselves is thinking of their *normal* child. And when called on it, these same organizations can then claim that every parent of an autistic child really wants them dead. (Alison Singer, in the short film Autism Every Day.) We are living in a world where parents who locked their autistic son in a room and set the house on fire aren't convicted of murder. (Christopher DeGroot.) We are living in a world where it is common for people who kill their autistic children, in fact, to be praised for their "courage" and their "love". We're living in a world where there are parents of autistic children who feel no compunction about saying that autism is worse than cancer because at least the children with cancer die. ([...] - actually, the autism - cancer comparison is all over the place, along with the autism - AIDS comparison and the autism - kidnapped children comparison. But at least most of these people don't go out and say that those other kids are lucky enough to die faster than the autistic kids!)

In short, we're living in a world where the lives of autistic individuals (and disabled individuals in general) are not considered as valuable as those of "normal" people.

The suicide in this book could have been handled differently. Our main character could have reasoned that if his family loved him they could have accepted him better instead of hiding him away - remember, she had only found out about him that summer! She could have suggested that if he wasn't so ostracized and patronized, he might never have taken that drastic step. In fact, there is a real suicide risk among autistics, similar to the recently publicized risk among gays.

Or, the "oh, it was brave not to want to live in this world he doesn't fit into" bit could have been made in isolation from a culture which says that all the time.

But it wasn't. Instead, you read the book and her thoughts, and it's hard not to hear it saying yet another variation of "those people are better off dead". This is a message that society does need to hear again. In particular, it's a message that autistic children do not need to hear again. Yes, I said autistic children. In this day and age, we have to accept that you can't assume the only people reading a book with an autistic character are NTs with no idea about autism. Many of them instead will be on the spectrum somewhere. Or they'll be siblings of autistic children - they don't need that message either.

I'm sure the underlying message was not Ann M. Martin's intent. However, unfortunately, intent isn't some magical glitter that removes all wrong. The message is there whether she intended it or not, and it's one that is actively harmful. "Their lives have less worth" is a contributing factor in the murder and suicide of autistics. I really can't advise this book for anybody, unfortunately.

This book is about a girl named Hattie Owen. Shes expecting a normal summer in Millerton. Hanging out with Ms.Hagerty, Mr. Penny, Angel Valentine,and Mom and Dad in her boardinghouse. One day she hears Nana (Hatties gradmother) and her mom talking about the death of Hayden. Thats when her curiosity strikes. She immediately thinks of her Uncle Hayden and thinks about Papa (her grandfather). After a while her Mom and Dad wanted to talk to her. She finds out that she has another uncle named Adam. She asks her mother why she hasnt heard of him before and why her mom hasnt told her about him. Her mom replies that Adam has mental problems. Adam is Nana and Papas son. They took him to doctors when he was little and they say he's autistic and all sorts of things. Hattie's mom says that Adam's "special school" has closed down so he's going to come home and stay with Nana and Papa for a while. When Hattie meets Adam she feels awkward. Adam randomly recites phrases and quotes from I Love Lucy. He also repeats things.He also is in love with Angel Valentine and loves to see her but can't a lot of the times because she works at a bank. Hattie likes that Adam is happy but sometimes she feels like she has to babysit him all the time.As Hattie feels like shes his babysitter, mom, and niece she realizes that she and Adam have a lot of things in common. They both sometimes feel like aliens, like they dont belong.Hattie decides that she wants to go to Fred Carmels Funtime Carnival. While she's there she meets a girl named Leila. Leila works at the carnival and so does her family.Hattie tells Leila about Adam and Leila wants to meet Adam. So Hattie sneaks Adam out of Nana's and Papa's house and takes him to the carnival. Adam doesnt like rides but he wants to try the ferris wheel. When Leila, Hattie, and Adam get on the ferris wheel it gets stuck. Adam starts acting crazy and starts to climb out. So some people call the police and take Adam to the hospital. When he comes back home he comes to Hatties house. They sit on the porch and talk.Adam says that he thinks Hattie is one of the people that can lift the corners of our universe. Hattie doesnt get this and doesnt ask. Angel Valentine is at home so Adam and Hattie go upstairs. Adam goes inside and finds Angel with her boyfriend. He runs away and Hattie assumes that he ran to Nana and Papa's house. But when she woke up she found out that Adam hung himself. Adams death leaves the family with tragedy. In a way Hattie gets what Adam means. We need to lift the corners of our universe see what's inside and I think thats a great way to live. I really liked this book and I think you will too.