#BookReview: Hunger: A Tale of Courage by Donna Jo Napoli

About the Book:


It is the autumn of 1846 in Ireland. Lorraine and her brother are waiting for the time to pick the potato crop on their family farm leased from an English landowner. But this year is different—the spuds are mushy and ruined... just like last year. What will Lorraine and her family do?

Then Lorraine meets Miss Susanna, the daughter of the wealthy English landowner who owns Lorraine’s family’s farm, and the girls form an unlikely friendship that they must keep a secret from everyone. Two different cultures come together in a deserted Irish meadow. And Lorraine has one question: how can she help her family survive?

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Recommended Age: Middle Grade 

Genre: Historical Fiction

How I Acquired this book: Edelweiss

Overall rating: ★★★
Goodreads | Amazon

About the Author:
Donna Jo Napoli is the acclaimed and award-winning author of many novels, both fantasies and contemporary stories. She won the Golden Kite Award for Stones in Water in 1997. Her novel Zel was named an American Bookseller Pick of the Lists, a Publishers Weekly Best Book, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon, and a School Library JournalBest Book, and a number of her novels have been selected as ALA Best Books. She is a professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband. Visit her at DonnaJoNapoli.com.


Noteworthy experiences while reading this book: Really wanted to like this one 

Check out author's other books? Maybe 
Recommend this book? No

Notes and Opinions: For me this one just didn't work out. I love some middle grade but not all of them and this one just didn't work. I did like the main character as she was 12 and I am 13. The author did a great job showing her situation and how bad it was. As well as the beautiful descrptions of the world around her.  I loved the setting of Ireland along with the historical aspects of the story.  The issues I had with this one were that the story and plot really seemed like there wasnt one.  It slightly felt like it was all over the place and just didn't know where it wanted to.  I wanted to love all the characters but even some of them felt flat to me as well.  For me this book felt more like a draft that still needed polish than a finished story. 

Go Into This One Knowing: Needs work

 

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Posted in: 3 Stars, Middle Grade, Review