Raven Summer [Hardcover]

David Almond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2009

A captivating new novel from Printz Award winner David Almond.

Liam and his friend Max are playing in their neighborhood when the call of a bird leads them out into a field beyond their town. There, they find a baby lying alone atop a pile of stones—with a note pinned to her clothing. Mystified, Liam brings the baby home to his parents. They agree to take her in, but police searches turn up no sign of the baby’s parents. Finally they must surrender the baby to a foster family, who name her Allison. Visiting her in Northumberland, Liam meets Oliver, a foster son from Liberia who claims to be a refugee from the war there, and Crystal, a foster daughter. When Liam’s parents decide to adopt Allison, Crystal and Oliver are invited to her christening. There, Oliver tells Liam about how he will be slaughtered if he is sent back to Liberia. The next time Liam sees Crystal, it is when she and Oliver have run away from their foster homes, desperate to keep Oliver from being sent back to Liberia. In a cave where the two are hiding, Liam learns the truth behind Oliver’s dark past—and is forced to ponder what all children are capable of.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7–9—Liam lives with his father, a famous writer, and his mother, a photographer, on Britain's Northumbrian coast. One day out wandering with his friend Max, Liam is led by a raven to a baby left with a note and some money. When Liam and his parents visit the infant's foster family, Liam connects immediately with two of the foster children, Crystal, a wild-child girl, and Oliver, a refugee from Liberia. Liam's mother falls in love with the baby, and she comes to live with his family. When Crystal and Oliver run away to Liam's secret hideaway, Oliver reveals his true identity, and Liam is forced to explore the darkest parts of his own soul as he realizes the evil he is capable of doing. Raven Summer is set in the recent past against the backdrop of the war in Iraq. It explores how children everywhere are physically and psychologically scarred by violence and brutality that they cannot escape and can be led to do horrible things. Almond's story is a passionate plea for peace, and the putting away of weapons of war. While the question of the book's audience is a valid one, and while there are perhaps a few places where the children seem impossibly wise, and are even perhaps acting as mouthpieces for the author, this book is exquisitely crafted and will make any reader stop and think about the consequences of violence.—Tim Wadham, St. Louis County Library, MO
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Starred Review, Booklist, September 15, 2009:
"The kindness in every chapter is heartbreaking too. A haunting story, perfect for group discussion."

Starred Review, Publishers Weekly, November 9, 2009: “Almond tackles complex questions about humanity
 from multiple points of view; flashes of wisdom—sometimes painful, sometimes uplifting—arrive at unexpected moments”

Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2009: “[A] hypnotic, sensuous foray into the nature of war, truth, art and the savagery of humanity.”

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers; 1 edition (November 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385738064
• ISBN-13: 978-0385738064
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,344,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

author spotlight
"Writing can be difficult, but sometimes it really does feel like a kind of magic. I think that stories are living things--among the most important things in the world."--David Almond

David Almond is the winner of the 2001 Michael L. Printz Award for Kit's Wilderness, which has also been named best book of the year by School Library Journal, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. His first book for young readers, Skellig, is a Printz Honor winner.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Miraculous beings living in a miraculous world . . .
Maybe it comes from my religious upbringing (I grew up in a big Catholic family): I do feel that we are miraculous beings living in a miraculous world. Sometimes the explanations we're given--and the possibilities we're offered--are just too restricted and mechanistic. Stories offer us a place to explore (as writers and readers) what it is to be fully human. I do think that young people are interested in the major questions--Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Is there a God?--and they're willing to contemplate all kinds of possibilities. They haven't yet become tired by such questions.

Brutality has to be allowed its place . . .
Ten minutes of TV news is enough to convince anybody that the world is a pretty brutal place. We aren't yet perfect people living in a perfect world--and we never will be--so brutality has to be allowed its place. But the world also contains great tenderness, joy, hope, etc. I suppose that in my books I explore a world and people that are made up of opposites: good and evil, light and darkness, the beautiful and the ugly. And I hope that in the end, goodness, light, and beauty will have some kind of upper hand.

Stories as a whole form a kind of community . . .
The stories in Counting Stars don't have a straightforward chronological progression, but there are many links between the different stories. They form a kind of mosaic. Themes hinted at in one story are developed in another. Characters are seen in different situations/settings. I like to think that the stories as a whole form a kind of community or family. It's often said that there's a big difference between writing short stories and novels, but I'm not so sure. I think of my novels as a series of scenes/chapters, each of which I write with the same kind of attention I'd give to a short story.

A readership of four . . .
When I began to write Counting Stars, I wanted to write about my sisters and brother, and to use their real names, so I needed their permission. I worried that they wouldn't be happy about the book. So I invited them all to my house for dinner, and afterwards I told them my plans, and I nervously read one of the first stories, "The Fusilier." If they had said no to using their real names, Counting Stars would have been a very different book--and maybe wouldn't have been written at all. But they said yes! Over the next couple of years, after I'd written each story, I sent copies to my brother and three sisters, so that they could see how things were developing. So, in a sense, the book was written for a readership of four people.

Staring out of the window . . .
I write at home, in a little office overlooking the back garden. I scribble in an artist's sketchbook and type onto an AppleMac computer. I work all day--though some of that time will involve staring out of the window and eating apples. But I also travel quite a lot, so I'm used to writing on trains, in hotels, etc.

I used to wonder if I'd ever be able to write a novel properly . . .
For many years, I wrote nothing but short stories, and I used to wonder if I'd ever be able to write a novel properly. I wrote the stories in Counting Stars before I wrote Skellig, my first children's novel. I wrote them over a two-year period. As I wrote them, I found myself exploring childhood experience from a child's point of view. I rediscovered the powerful imaginative and emotional nature of childhood. Really, writing these stories changed me into a writer for children/young adults.

Messing about with paper clips . . .
I always wanted to be a writer. I wrote little books and stories as a boy, and wanted to see my books on the shelves of our little local library right next to my favorite books: King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, The Day of the Triffids, and The Adventures of Turkey. But as for writing, I simply like it all--right from creating new stories to messing about with paper clips. The best piece of writing advice I've ever received: Don't give up.

It's often children who read the books with the most insight . . .
I think that children can be much more perceptive, creative, and intelligent than we give them credit for. I see this in the many letters I get from my readers and in the things that they say when I meet them. Some adults assume that children will never "get" the more complex aspects of my books, but in fact it's often children who read the books with the most insight.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of images both alluring and deeply disturbing...the kind of atmospheric novel that will haunt readers' thoughts, December 28, 2009

By 

Teenreads.com (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raven Summer (Hardcover)

David Almond has a reputation for crafting oddly beautiful, thought-provoking books that remain with readers long after the final pages. His newest work holds this same power. Full of images both alluring and deeply disturbing, RAVEN SUMMER is the kind of atmospheric novel that will haunt readers' thoughts.

Liam is all too aware that he is on the cusp of great changes as he spends one last summer of childhood with his friends and family on England's Northumbrian coast. This bleak but beautiful landscape that surrounds him offers plenty of fodder for the imagination; historic artifacts and ancient structures play roles in daily lives, even in the 21st century. Liam and his friends still love to while away their days hiking and playing football, spending long summer evenings playing games similar to hide and seek. But Liam finds that the focus of his friends --- and, at times, he himself --- has turned in different directions, both toward the increasingly attractive prospect of the opposite sex and, in a darker turn, toward violence.

Liam's thoughts often turn toward violent topics; planes bound for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan roar overhead regularly, and several soldiers from his area have died or been kidnapped in wars overseas. His own mother, an artist, has obtained a fair measure of success, in part by photographing abstract images of the wounds on Liam's body in the wake of fights with his friends. These fights grow increasingly menacing as Liam tries and fails to distance himself from his childhood friend, Gordon Nattrass. Nattrass also fancies himself an artist, and his video installation --- which focuses on disturbing reenactments of hangings and beheadings --- inspires Liam and his parents to consider the fine line between art and sensationalism.

Liam's father is a famous novelist who spends most of his time upstairs in his study, rarely engaging with his family's life. That is, until Liam and his friend Max follow a raven to where a small baby girl has been left alongside a note and a jar full of cash. The story inspires Liam's father's imagination and captivates the media as well. When the family later visits the baby's foster family, Liam finds himself drawn to two other foster kids, whose future directions seem somehow fated to be tied up in his own. Both these children come from legacies of violence, which is part of their fascination for Liam. But when all the strands of his story converge in a tense encounter, how will Liam himself react?

RAVEN SUMMER is a novel that will raise as many timeless questions for the reader as they do for Liam himself. What are the origins of evil? Do humans start off as innocents, or are we evil by nature? What are the connections among beauty, truth and art? Is there ever any value in creating or considering images of violence and war? Throughout, Liam's reflective approach to his life and his elegiac contemplation of his own rapidly vanishing childhood will draw in mature readers and inspire them to their own thoughtful considerations.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Evil Seed, March 24, 2010

By 

Ken C. (MA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Raven Summer (Hardcover)

David Almond's RAVEN SUMMER is dark (like a raven) and deals with the age-old (try Biblically-old) question of the demon seed. As Adam and Eve learned the hard way, sinning is easier than you think. And then they raised Cain, who really emphasized the point. Humans -- even children -- possess the ability to do good and the ability to commit evil... unspeakable evil, in fact.

To prove his point, Almond takes an everyday British lad of the Highlands (Liam), adds a nasty neighbor boy who likes to torture animals and bully friends (Nattrass), and injects a Liberian refugee whose parents were murdered and who was trained by the murderers to be a murderer himself (Oliver). Somehow he brings this strange brew together near a place where British soldiers just happen to be playing war games. This sets up the deus ex machina, ending it all quite neatly.

The style is severely clipped with enough short sentences to bring Hemingway to mind. Realism is ignored at times, too, so be prepared for possible eye rollers. A "thinking lad's book," RAVEN SUMMER does not have a particularly gripping plot, so if that is your bread and butter, prepare for a salad. Might make for good discussion material, especially in light of boy soldiers used in Africa and the exploited use of children in both fascist and Communist regimes of the past.

5.0 out of 5 stars Part adventure, part drama, part contemporary folk tale, December 23, 2011

By 

E. Kristin Anderson "EKAnderson" (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raven Summer (Hardcover)

In the eerie, literary voice David Almond is so well-known for, Raven Summer chronicles the life of Liam Lynch, a young man living on the English country side. When he and his friend follow a Raven on one lazy summer afternoon, they're shocked to find an abandoned baby. What unfolds is a chain of events that all lead back to that day. The people Liam meets through saving the baby will change his life, and the life of his family, forever. Touching on current events, the human condition, and coming of age, everyone will see a bit of themselves in these characters. Part adventure, part drama, part contemporary folk tale, Raven Summer is the kind of book that stays with you long after you've read it.