"Cassie broke away from her mother's embrace and looked up and down everywhere. She had come home. Tears ran down her face as she drank in the beauty around her."
 |
Child of Far Away by F. C. Young Trafford Publishing
book review by Sheila M. Trask
F.C. Young puts a twist on the standard science fiction adventure story with this tale of interplanetary travel for young readers. The space colonists in Child of Far Away cannot simply overtake a newly discovered planet like so many space opera heroes before them. Instead, they must learn to communicate with Florabal's life forms, animals, and plants alike. Twelve-year-old Cassie and her younger brother Jamie grew up on Jupiter Station, a space module near Jupiter's moon, Io. They have never seen animals running wild or trees growing outside an arboretum. When they are among the first to land on Earth-like Florabal, their awe creates a sense of wonderment for the reader as well.
Young propels the story along at a fast clip with nearly continuous dialogue. The kids have endless questions, and the drive to get the answers. The ecological theme Young explores–how humans and the land can successfully coexist–is a bit heavy handed at times, at least for adults. A nine-year-old reading this book, however, is likely to be more captivated by the story itself, which rests the fate of the planet and the explorers in the hands of these intrepid children and their families. Drawings by Hilbert Bermejo illustrate the tale, but their picture-book simplicity competes with the more sophisticated text, which is appropriate for independent readers. For these older children, Child of Far Away provides an excellent jumping-off point for classroom discussions about relationships of all kinds.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review