Customer Reviews

Have Courage, Hazel Green

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I bought a couple of Hazel Green books from my local bookstore because they were on sale, and looked interesting -- possibly something to bridge the gap between the "Nate the Great" series (which my 8-year-old son has grown out of) and "Harry Potter" (which he finds too scary). Plus, you gotta love a mystery series with a female heroine, right? Well, not so fast. Some of the characters in this novel are appealing, but the content is not at all suitable for younger children, and possibly for older ones too. There are repeated mentions of how one adult character, an immigrant, comes from a country where his people were "slaughtered like sheep," and there is a description of how another character physically abused his wife. I'm all for teaching children that racism exists, but there are other ways of doing that, and the domestic violence part just seemed way out of place for a book of this level. I'd also like to mention that the language is frequently very repetitive, and scenes go on forever with characters rehashing the same point over and over. Admittedly this is quite useful for putting my son to sleep, but I wouldn't call it good literature.