{"id":45259,"date":"2025-05-30T22:56:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T02:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=45259"},"modified":"2025-05-30T22:56:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T02:56:30","slug":"review-of-east-by-edith-pattou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=45259","title":{"rendered":"Review of East, by Edith Pattou"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>East<\/em><\/p>\n

by Edith Pattou
\nread by a Full Cast<\/p>\n

Listening Library, 2005. 10 hours, 48 minutes.
\nReview written May 21, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
\nOriginal Review written December 6, 2003.<\/a>
\nStarred Review
\n2003 Sonderbooks Stand-out<\/a>: #2 Young Adult Fantasy<\/p>\n

As part of #Sonderbooks25<\/a>, celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, my plan was to choose one book to read from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs. But then reading all the reviews, I remembered how much I love these books… And then I discovered several of my favorites available or with a short wait as eaudiobooks with my library… And I’m rereading a lot more than one book per year.<\/p>\n

And I love East<\/em> as much as ever! It’s still a weird fairy tale – “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” – but I love the way the author fills the book with family and friends who help Rose along the way. It ends up being a book about relationships with family and friends and about not giving up despite impossible odds.<\/p>\n

I’m also pleased that after I finished this, I’m able to start right into listening to the follow-up, West<\/a><\/em>, for more about Rose and her White Bear. I read West<\/em> the year I was on the Newbery committee, so I didn’t have the luxury of rereading East<\/em> before I did. This time, I get to read them one after the other.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to write new reviews for every book I reread during #Sonderbooks25. But I like having a pretty new review in place of the ones I wrote before 2006, before I made the new format and added the blog. So here’s a new review for East<\/em>, but I’ll let the old one stand for West<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

If you love fairy tale retellings, as I do, pick up this atmospheric tale about a girl who’s prone to wander, and who goes with a white bear to help her family. After her curiosity causes disaster to strike, she’s determined to make things right for the white bear – and ends up helping other people, too.<\/p>\n

Oh, and this is a lovely Full Cast production audiobook, with separate voices for each character who gets viewpoint chapters – Rose, her brother Neddy, her father, the White Bear, and the Troll Queen.<\/p>\n

edithpattou.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/east.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

East by Edith Pattou read by a Full Cast Listening Library, 2005. 10 hours, 48 minutes. Review written May 21, 2025, from a library eaudiobook. Original Review written December 6, 2003. Starred Review 2003 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 Young Adult Fantasy As part of #Sonderbooks25, celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, my plan was to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,43,9,426,31,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiobooks","category-fairy-tale-variant","category-fantasy","category-sonderbooks25","category-stand-outs","category-starred-review","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45283,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45259\/revisions\/45283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}