From Publishers Weekly
One of six inaugural titles in the Survivors series being released this month, this disappointing novel centers on Tennessee-born Molly, who recounts her three years (1929-1932) riding the rails as she searched for work during the Depression. The framing of the tale is rather hokey: after "Aunt Molly" (with "tears rolling down her wrinkled face") sings "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" to her niece and nephew, she tells them about the time when, at age 14 in 1929, she went to work in a knitwear factory to help support her family. After seven months on the job, Molly impulsively ("Goodness knows what came over me," she says) hops a truck bound for Kentucky, where she finds no work available, then launches a journey as a self-described "tramp," crossing the country on freight trains. There she meets others, including Beanpole, an African-American two years her senior who becomes her closest friend (and later, her husband); Woody Guthrie, Upton Sinclair and Douglas MacArthur, among others, make cameo appearances in this rather choppy chronicle. Despite some dramatic and trenchant moments-including Molly's descriptions of living conditions in a migrant workers' camp in California and a Manhattan Hooverville-too often her chronicle reads as an impersonal, dry travelogue. Ages 10-13.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 4-8-On impulse and without a word, 14-year-old Molly leaves her financially devastated family to strike out on her own. During her travels she befriends "Beanpole," a kindhearted young black man who saves her from tumbling off the top of a moving train. Together they encounter disappointment, hopelessness, and poverty from one end of the country to the other. Riordan describes many of their hardships with relative candor but whitewashes others. At one point, Molly endures the indignity of "wolf whistles and crude gestures" from a gang of unemployed factory workers, and Beanpole gets mixed up in a fistfight, but in general the pair emerge from their cross-country travels pretty much unscathed. Riordan peppers his tale with convenient cameo appearances by celebrity guests like Woody Guthrie and Sinclair Lewis. Lengthy blocks of text are occasionally interrupted by crude, generic line drawings that contribute little to the presentation. The book as a whole reads more like a contrived adventure story about camaraderie and pluck during hard times than a believable novel set in the midst of a horrible global catastrophe.
Catherine Threadgill, Charleston County Public Library, SC
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Catherine Threadgill, Charleston County Public Library, SC
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
