The entire read is very simple, but the writing is unique in that it combines first person and third person. The chapters following Brent are written in third person, while four chapters are written in first person (Present tense, I believe, but far from the crappy present tense the popular YA books are written in today). These four chapters are about four different people who have some story to tell about Brent (And Lea's) whirligigs, how they affected their life in someway. These four chapters are what makes the book. I would read it again just for those four chapters.
Since the book is so short there's very little chance for any major character development to go on, or any development really. There is some, but if Paul felt the need to make the story longer, it would be even better.
Some of my favorite passages: (SPOILERS)
"The sun had long set. To the west, over the Pacific, the sky was still faintly blue, clinging to the memory of day. Brent moved to a seat across the aisle so as to scan the darker eastern sky, waited through a king stretch if trees, then thought he spotted it: Deneb, in the constellation Cygnus, the swan. He squinted at his book, then out the bus window. Now that they were out of Los Angeles, the... air was much clearer. He looked again and was amazed to make out the shape of a cross with Deneb at its head, just as in the book. He grinned in the darkness, unknown to those around him. He spoke the word Deneb in his mind and felt himself to be Adam, naming the new world around him."
"'Somebody,' she [a Holocaust survivor] said, 'I don't know who, said there shouldn't be laughing after Auschwitz. That nobody could ever want to laugh again after the things that happened there." She rotated her head toward me. "But I was there, kindelah. Yes, very terrible. What I saw you should never dream. But I can also tell you that all those that died want that we should have a life with laughing. Not sad all the time,...They want us to laugh all the laughs that were taken away from them."
"Amazing, and rare. The darkness swallows up most of us."
"Maine summers, like dawn colors, were brief. Darkness and winter predominated. Lea's life had been similarly short. But his clacking, flashing, jingling memorial would give off sound and color all year, holding back the tide of death. It was a kinetic gravestone, painted in ever-blooming greens and yellows and reads. Lea would not be swallowed up."
"He took off his pack. A few nights before, he'd come to the end of Two Years Before the Mast, the author's ship finally returning safely to Boston Harbor. He pulled out the book, felt linked with the writer and Emil and the others he'd met on the trip, and walked back inside the office. He placed it on the book exchange shelf, aware he was nudging and invisible gear forward. He wondered who would read it next. He scanned the titles and decided on The Strange Lives of Familiar Insects. Outside, a warm breeze ran ins fingers through the trees. He started reading while he walked down the road."(That last one...what a great way to end the book. Brent ended his journey with a new fire in life. One being a passion to learn.)
One of the goals for this blog is to provide information for parents and readers alike to find 'clean' reads suitable for their children or themselves. In my reviews I will give a rating and a reason for that rating.
I give Whirligig a rating of PG (suitable for ages 13+)
On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = horrible, 2 = OK, 3 = I liked it, 4 = I really liked it, 5 = I loved it), I would give Whirligig a 3
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