This month's guest blogger is Aubrey! Despite her insecurities, she did a beautiful job summarizing the book and exploring the beautiful themes and characters. Here it is!
Sometimes you read a book and it draws you into its world
and when it ends, you keep finding yourself wanting to go back to that world, you
feel a lingering emotional connection to the place and to the people in the
book. That’s how I felt about Moon Over
Manifest, by Clare Vanderpool. I
thought it was a remarkable book, definitely deserving a distinction like the
Newberry Award. I liked the book so much
that I volunteered to write the review this month, which is a lot for me
because I feel much less literate than the rest of you.
Moon Over Manifest
is great because it draws you in from the beginning with wonderful descriptions
and a great main character. Abilene is a
plucky young girl who is colorful and independent, yet vulnerable. She finds herself sent away from the only
parent she’s ever known, to live in a new place, the town of Manifest. She has heard much about Manifest from her
father, but the town she finds is a shadow of its former self. Abilene sets out to discover the mysteries of
the town, while also hoping to find out more about her father, knowing that he
had spent some of his youth in the town.
The book is neat because it can be appreciated on several
different levels. For the younger reader,
it draws you in with a fun mystery.
Abilene and her friends set out to find a spy who they call the
Rattler. As Abilene and her friends
search the town for clues about the Rattler, she is also searching for clues
about her father. She finds it hard to
get a straight answer from anyone about him and his time in the town. She is left to discover the history of the
town and her father, bit by bit, from the stories of Miss Sadie, the town
fortune teller. The town and many of its
members never recovered from events in 1918.
18 years later as the town confronts these memories through the eyes of
an innocent, curious girl, old wounds are opened and healing begins.
I really loved the idea/theme
that sometimes to heal properly from a wound, it must be opened and cleansed. Sometimes when we go through things, it’s
easiest to just bury them deep and move on.
During this last pregnancy,
especially near the end, I had to confront some issues left over from losing Cecily
last year. I needed to deal with the
loss of a baby and try to find hope for the future with a new baby. Then as I read this book, I was in the
hospital with my new baby, as doctors tried to figure out why he had had some
terrifying spells of not breathing. I
was forced to confront some of the same feelings again, trying to find hope
instead of fear.
I loved how the book ends, with
hope. Hope for the town, hope for
Abilene, hope for Abilene’s father. Hope
for healing and happiness even after everything they had been through. That’s where I’m at now- hope.
So that’s my review. I just highlighted one theme of the book in
my review, but there were a lot of deep ideas in there touching on friendship,
love, race, immigration, and war. I
loved the book and I would highly recommend it. Honestly, I think it can only be fully appreciated
by an older (young adult or adult) reader who understands some of the deeper
themes and has felt real emotional wounds.
But younger readers will probably enjoy it also, especially the mystery
aspect of the book.
