[HPforGrownups] What to Read After Harry Potter

Denise gypsycaine at yahoo.com
Mon Sep 4 20:22:28 UTC 2000


No: HPFGUIDX 980

It showed up in my mail box via Yahoo News Alerts, and I thought I would share it.  Actually, I don't recall ever hearing of these books before!

(Of course, I only skimmed the list quickly, and didn't read for details--perhaps I skipped one or two)

Dee
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sister Mary Lunatic 
  To: HPforGrownups at egroups.com 
  Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 12:21 PM
  Subject: RE: [HPforGrownups] What to Read After Harry Potter 



       
       My Groups | HPforGrownups Main Page | Start a new group!  


  This is the oddest list of "what to read after HP" books I've ever come
  across.  These are all historical novels -- what do they have to do with a
  fantasy like Harry Potter?  Most of these kinds of lists recommend books
  that are at least in the same genre as HP.  Strange.


  -----Original Message-----
  From: Denise [mailto:gypsycaine at yahoo.com]
  Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 7:55 AM
  To: HPforGrownups at egroups.com
  Subject: [HPforGrownups] What to Read After Harry Potter

  Monday September 4 8:01 AM ET
  What to Read After Harry Potter

  By Ellen Freilich

  NEW YORK (Reuters) - A month after the release of J.K. Rowling's ``Harry
  Potter and the Goblet of Fire,'' any Potter fan worth his salt has finished
  the 734-page book, an international publishing phenomenon and the fourth
  volume about the plucky young wizard's apprentice.

  So what can a youthful book-lover read in August?

  Plenty, it turns out. Books about nature and summer itself seem particularly
  apt for the season. But the key element of a good summer book is for the
  reader be drawn in so completely that he doesn't want to come up for air
  until the last page is finished.

  One such tale is Gary Blackwood's ``The Shakespeare Stealer'' (Puffin
  Books). Set in Elizabethan England, the Shakespeare stealer is a young
  apprentice, Widge, who is ordered by his master, an angry former member of
  Shakespeare's acting company, to sneak into the Globe Theater and copy down
  the words of ''Hamlet'' so it can be performed by his rival acting company.

  In the process of carrying out his master's orders, Widge is drawn into the
  company of the Globe players, who begin to train him as an actor and treat
  him as a friend. Widge's predicament of being charged to steal from his
  newfound friends keeps the reader in suspense while giving us a taste of
  what it might have been like to work at the Globe with the Bard himself
  present.

  ``Mary, Bloody Mary'' by Carolyn Meyer (Gulliver Books, Harcourt, Brace &
  Company) is set in a slightly earlier historical period, during the reign of
  King Henry VIII. Mary ascended to the throne of England six years after her
  father's death, and after her death she was succeeded by her younger sister,
  Elizabeth.

  Mary, Mayans And Monday

  History has accorded Mary an unflattering nickname, but this book is most
  sympathetic to a young girl and woman who was treated by her father, Henry
  VIII, as nothing more than a high-priced piece of property and a pawn in the
  king's bitter fight with her mother, Catherine of Aragon.

  A Mayan city in the 9th century provides the setting for Chris Eboch's ``The
  Well of Sacrifice'' (Clarion Books). Eveningstar Macaw lives in a Mayan city
  that appears prosperous until its king dies and is succeeded by the High
  Priest. The priest orders the sacrifice of Eveningstar's beloved brother,
  along with many other young male nobles.

  Eveningstar's attempt to rescue her brother puts her own life in jeopardy
  and she must escape the city to save her life and rescue her family. This
  fast-paced tale, narrated by its heroine, is rich with details of
  9th-century Mayan life.

  Eleven-year-old Monday de Groot is the protagonist of Sharon Dennis Wyeth's
  ``Once on This River'' (Knopf), set in colonial New York. Monday has known
  nothing of slavery all her life until she leaves the safety of Madagascar
  and sets sail with her mother for America, where her mother hopes to rescue
  Monday's uncle, a free man who has been illegally enslaved by a wealthy
  Dutch family in New York.

  Wyeth repopulates downtown New York with the people who inhabited the city
  in the mid-1700s, including a community of free blacks who lived there at
  the same time enslaved Africans were being sold at a place called the Meal
  Market.

  Pioneers, Settlers And Soldiers

  Joseph Bruchac's ``Sacajawea'' (Silver Whistle/Harcourt Inc.) is set half a
  century later, in the early 1800s, during the carefully recorded expedition
  of Lewis and Clark, two explorers who were authorized by President Thomas
  Jefferson to explore the land from the Mississippi River to the Pacific
  Ocean.

  The story is told from alternating points of view -- the diaries of William
  Clark and the fictionalized voice of a young Shoshone woman, Sacajawea, who
  at age 16 served as translator, peacemaker, caretaker and guide for Lewis
  and Clark on their historic explorations.

  In 1870, on the flat, open prairie of America, the two pioneer sisters of
  Frances Arrington's ``Bluestem'' (Philomel Books) must survive without their
  parents when, with their father away, their mother falls strangely silent,
  unable to cope with the loneliness of the prairie and the loss of her baby
  during the winter.

  Although frightened, 9-year-old Jessie and 11-year-old Polly manage to ward
  off the intrusions of an unsympathetic neighboring family who would be happy
  to grab their land, and the girls survive until, at last, their father
  returns. ''Bluestem'' effectively portrays both the emptiness and the beauty
  of the prairie.

  In Sara Harrell Banks' ``Abraham's Battle: A Novel of Gettysburg'' (Atheneum
  Books for Young Readers), Abraham Small, a free black man and the caretaker
  of a Gettysburg estate, meets Lamar Cooper, a poor, white Confederate
  soldier who has never known a slave, before the historic battle ensues.

  Their paths cross during the battle, Abraham now a member of a Union
  ambulance corps and Lamar a critically wounded soldier. It's a juncture that
  forces Abraham, and the readers of this novel, to discern when people's
  common humanity supersedes their differences.

  Marisa, a Polish Jew whose blond hair and blue eyes allow her to pass as a
  Christian, is the heroine of Carol Matas' ``In My Enemy's House'' (Simon &
  Schuster Books for Young Readers). With her family either scattered or dead,
  Marisa makes her way to Germany, hoping to survive the war as a Polish
  worker. There she finds work in the household of a high-ranking Nazi and is
  befriended by his daughter, all as she hides in plain sight in her enemy's
  house.



  [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


  To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
  HPforGrownups-unsubscribe at egroups.com





  To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
  HPforGrownups-unsubscribe at egroups.com






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





More information about the HPforGrownups archive