The Silver Donkey,<\/em> by Sonya Hartnett<\/p>\nCandlewick Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006.\u00a0 First published in Australia in 2004.\u00a0 266 pages.<\/p>\n
“One cool spring morning in the woods close to the sea, two girls found a man curled up in the shade and, immediately guessing he must be dead, ran away shrieking delightedly, clutching each other’s hands.”<\/p>\n
In fact, it turns out the man is not dead.\u00a0 He is an enemy soldier, having run away from the war.\u00a0 He cannot see.\u00a0 His eyes got tired of seeing the horrors of war, and his vision clouded over.<\/p>\n
He tells the girls not to tell anyone he is there.\u00a0 But how can they help him find his way home, across the Channel?\u00a0 His younger brother is very ill.\u00a0 “The doctors don’t think he has long to live.\u00a0 My mother wrote saying that he wakes at night with a fever, calling out for me.\u00a0 She wrote that I should hurry home.”<\/p>\n
Marcelle and Coco want to help their soldier.\u00a0 But how can two girls help a blind soldier?\u00a0 They start by bringing him food.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The soldier has a good-luck charm, a small shining silver donkey.\u00a0 He repays their kindness by telling them stories, stories of\u00a0donkeys, which, though humble, turn out to be surprisingly noble.<\/p>\n
This book is mythic and powerful.\u00a0 It tells of the horrors of war, but also of the nobility that shines through in difficult times.\u00a0 And the wonder of friendship, across cultures.<\/p>\n
The library copy is in a wonderful binding with high-quality pages, silver decoration on the cover, and a silver ribbon bookmark.\u00a0 Illustrations by Don Powers grace its pages, with a special border on the pages of the stories the soldier tells.<\/p>\n
A simple and beautiful tale.<\/p>\n
This review is posted on the main site at:<\/p>\n
www.sonderbooks.com\/Childrens_Fiction\/silver_donkey.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 The Silver Donkey, by Sonya Hartnett Candlewick Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006.\u00a0 First published in Australia in 2004.\u00a0 266 pages. “One cool spring morning in the woods close to the sea, two girls found a man curled up in the shade and, immediately guessing he must be dead, ran away shrieking delightedly, clutching each other’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","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=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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