The Kin [Hardcover]

Peter Dickinson (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

It is two hundred thousand years ago. A small group of children are cut off from their Kin, the Moonhawks, when they are driven from their Good Place by violent strangers. While searching for a new Good Place, they face the parched desert, an active volcano, a canyon flood, man-eating lions, and other Kins they've never seen before. These young Moonhawks are brave, clever, and warmhearted, and all three traits are crucial to their survival.

Told from four points-of-view, with tales of the Kins' creation interspersed throughout, this epic novel humanizes early man and illuminates the beginning of language, the development of skills, and the organization of society.

Winner of a Printz Honor for The Ropemaker, Peter Dickinson has won most of the major British writing awards (some of them twice). With The Kin, he more than lives up to his honored reputation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The dazzling British writer...spins fascinating fiction. (The New York Times Book Review) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Peter Dickinson is one of the UK's most acclaimed children's writers. He has won the Carnegie Medal twice, for City of Gold and Tulku, the Whitbread Children's Award twice, for AK and Tulku, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award for The Blue Hawk. He is the author of many books for children, teenagers and adults. He was one of the three shortlisted candidates for the first Children's Laureate, alongside Anne Fine and Quentin Blake, and was shortlisted for the International Hans Christian Anderson Award in 2000. He lives in Hampshire. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Juvenile (June 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399240225
• ISBN-13: 978-0399240225
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #985,288 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #50 in Books > Children's Books > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > Prehistory

More About the Author

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enchanting..., October 6, 2003

By 

"reader11278" (England,UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Kin (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is probably one of the best books I have ever read. It is about a small group of children who become separated from their Kin, Moonhawk (the Kins are tribes, each named after an animal, for example the Monkey Kin.) They set out to find Good Places, where there is food and water. But a number of terrifying perils face them, including volcanoes, enchantments, and evil demon men. This book is also fascinating. Not a lot is known about this era, and Peter Dickinson has pieced together an enchanting four-part novel from fragments of evidence and his own wonderful imagination.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Kin, October 25, 2009

By 

A Bookshelf Monstrosity (Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Kin (Mass Market Paperback)

After reading a few just so-so books, I really wanted to get lost in a great tome of a story. The Kin was just the ticket. The book is actually four novels published in one volume, weighing in at just over 600 pages. The story is paced really well, so I would look up from reading and realize I had just knocked out 50 or 75 pages in no time. I'm a huge history fan and have always been interested in the history of early mankind. Set in prehistoric Africa, this novel imagines what life was like for the clans of people surviving in the African deserts.

The stories of Suth, Noli, Po, and Mana are interspersed with Oldtales, or creation stories about the Kin's First Ones, which I found to be really interesting and illuminating as to how the characters behaved and reacted to life in the wild. Each First One is an animal, such as a monkey or a pocupine, and each Kin is named after a First One. The mixture of myth and history was just perfect and very entertaining.

A most interesting aspect of this book is how Dickinson imagined communication between speaking and non-speaking humans. The four children the stories follow belong to the Moonhawk Kin, which consists of highly verbal humans. Along the way, they encounter the Porcupine Kin, who are nonverbal but are still very communicative through sounds and gestures. Some of the Moonhawks say that the Porcupine Kin are not really 'people' because they can't speak words, but others, particularly Noli, are convinced that the Porcupine are just as human as anyone else even though they are different.

All in all, this novel is a very interesting and thought-provoking work of 'prehistorical' fiction.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book ever., April 9, 2005

By 

L. Hansen (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Kin (Mass Market Paperback)

This wonderful book used to consist of four smaller books describing the life of a tribe of early humans. I was lucky enough to come across a battered copy of Nora's tale in a used book store. After reading it I knew I had to get the other three books. The books were long out of print and I was unable to obtain any others until now. After rereading Nora's tale countless times, I was overjoyed to find a complete collection of the books in print. I was delighted with the story line which is an original historical fiction with a hint of fantasy. However, this book is by far Peter Dickinson's best. I was ghastly disappointed with all of his others.