Grace by Morris Gleitzman
Viking, 2009. ISBN 9780670073900.
(Ages 10+) Highly
recommended. When
young Grace hands in her project on her family, using Biblical
terminology and
rather cleverly making it sound like chapters from the Bible, her
grandfather,
an elder in their church takes action. Within her church school she is
isolated
and questioned, and finally comes to understand that she is to be
expelled.
Expulsion means being separated from her family. She is devastated, and
asks
for forgiveness, promising to be a more compliant and better person who
will
confirm more closely to the church's teaching, but she is still unsure
of what
she has done wrong.
In
this remarkable story, Gleitzman shows us how Grace perceives the
events around
her. She is totally powerless. Her cult religion allows no dissent,
women stay
at home, never cutting their hair, showing obedience to their husbands
and
other male members of the group. Most live within a closed community,
sending
the children to their school, shunning anyone not within their
community as
outsiders.
When
Grace finds it is her father who is expelled in a most cruel way, she
takes
action. Enlisting the help of a tow truck driver, she ensures that he
knows
where she is, and when her grandfather, drugs her mother and kidnaps
the
children, she phones her father, allowing them to find out where they
are.
It
is a story of children alienated from their families, a story of a
religious
group that takes the Bible literally and sees themselves as the chosen
few, a
story of a little girl, bewildered and frightened, but above all,
wanting her
family to be together. And Gleitzman, astonishing writer that he is,
cloaks it
all in the naive Biblical language that Grace has been brought up with,
underscoring the group's isolation from the norm as well as her youth
in
believing all she is told.
If
I had qualms about Grace or her father not calling the police, or still
having
to hide from the cult after they escape, then these are over ridden by
the
story of a child wanting her family together and at peace, with which
every
reader will be sympathetic. This novel will engender many conversations
and
debates within classrooms and amongst children who read it.
Fran Knight