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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Solid, but occasionally annoying..., May 20, 2004
I am a college student at home on summer break, and because my mother is a teacher, we have a variety of children's books sitting around the house. I just spent an enjoyable afternoon reading through Mary Pope Osborne's Standing in the Light.Though the book is targeted at 4th - 7th grades, it is well-written enough to appeal to older readers. I found several passages of the book to be particularly poetic, and the simple, clear writing, while making the book easy to read, was quite elegant in its brevity. Many adult writers could learn from Osborne's style. The story was certainly compelling enough, if a bit slow at the beginning. Perhaps because I'm an older reader and was able to zip through the book fairly quickly, I didn't find the rest of it to drag at all, and I became increasingly absorbed in the story. While this book is very good (I give it three stars not because I think it is deficient, but because I'm very sparing with four and five star ratings), I would like to mention that conservative Christian parents might want to be aware that the underlying worldview of this book is very inclusivist, with the implication that all religions are equally valid. Religious tolerance is certainly a good lesson, and it is an important theme of this book. At the same time, Osborne's angle on it seems to me to be an affirmation of the equality of all religions. While I think we can agree about the equality of all people, clearly, most people who actually believe in a religion consider it unique. That said, I certainly wouldn't say that parents shouldn't allow children to read this book; it could possibly be a good springboard for discussion on both tolerance and the uniqueness of Christianity. (The above comments, of course, were directed solely toward Christian parents who might want to be aware of such things, and were not meant as an absolute criticism on the book. Please don't be offended if Osborne's view is the same as yours. I'm not in the habit of disliking books just because the point of view disagrees with mine, but I write simply because I know parents like to know such things.) I also have to mention another thing that slightly annoyed me throughout the book, which was the incorrect use of "thee" and the absence of the word "thou." Now, perhaps I should look this up to confirm it, but I do not believe that the Quakers used "thee" as a nominative pronoun. The characters in this book, however, say things such as "Thee is" and even "Thee are." The problem, here, of course, is that the subject of a sentence should be "thou," not "thee," and also that "thee" is a singular pronoun, not a plural. Also, the correct verb with "thou" is "art," not "is." Sometimes, also, Osborne uses the "thou" verb conjugation (adding an "st" at the end of the verb) with a third-person subject, such as "God dost," which is also completely incorrect. Now, if the Quakers actually spoke with incorrect archaic English, then I am certainly incorrect in my criticism. However, the constant misuse of the pronouns in the dialogue did continually grate on my nerves. These long criticisms aside, however, Standing in the Light is a well-written book.
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