- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday Canada (Mar 3 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385666373
- ISBN-13: 978-0385666374
- Product Dimensions: 13.9 x 1.2 x 20.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #252,813 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Quill & Quire
“Educational time travel” describes this story of a girl’s summer sojourn in Charlottetown, P.E.I. When her parents decide to renovate their Toronto house, Darby is sent to hang out with unfamiliar grandparents. There she has to peel spuds, pick raspberries, and wash dishes without a dishwasher, so it’s little wonder that she strikes up an acquaintance with the mysterious Gabe, a neighbourhood boy. Gabe leads Darby through a stone window frame into various places and periods in the past. She witnesses the Inuit crossing the Bering Strait, spends a while on a “coffin ship” of ailing Irish immigrants, and sees her Scottish great-grandfather import a new-model printing press to P.E.I. Amidst these adventures, she warms up to her grandparents and comes to mourn her grandfather’s rapidly progressing Alzheimer’s. The novel also throws an infant death, a new baby, and Darby’s grandfather’s sudden passing into the mix. Dyer conveys the lesson that Canada is a country full of people with mixed pasts and heritages, and that one’s “parental units” and grandparents are people who have their own stories. But in keeping her narrative voice close to Darby’s perspective, she limits herself to banal language, a graceless rendition of contemporary “teen talk.” Darby’s exclamations of “sheesh” and “for Pete’s sake” make awkward bedfellows with the attitudinal “as if,” another favoured expression. More pervasively, mundane language and clichés (“eyes drawn like magnets”; “spread like wildfire,” etc.) often prevent what should be grand, exciting events from becoming vivid or compelling. Darby’s guide, Gabe, is rather overly generous with information, turning Darby’s time-travelling adventures into something more akin to history lectures, rather than developing them as lived experiences or occasions for deepening character and relationships.
Book Description
If you had a chance to step through a window to the past, would you take it?
A Walk Through a Window is the story of Darby, a young girl forced to spend the summer with grandparents she doesn’t know in a place she feels she can never belong. But when a boy down the street extends a hand, it is more than friendship he offers. Together they discover a magical stone window frame that transports them to the very centre of the dramas of our past: the Underground Railroad; the coffin ships of the Irish Potato Famine; and even the Inuit as they crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America.
Over the course of the long, very strange summer, Darby is forced to question part of own her life. And as tragedy threatens her family, that magical walk through a window offers Darby new insight into the people she has always taken for granted – and changes forever her perception of Canada.
A Walk Through a Window is the story of Darby, a young girl forced to spend the summer with grandparents she doesn’t know in a place she feels she can never belong. But when a boy down the street extends a hand, it is more than friendship he offers. Together they discover a magical stone window frame that transports them to the very centre of the dramas of our past: the Underground Railroad; the coffin ships of the Irish Potato Famine; and even the Inuit as they crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America.
Over the course of the long, very strange summer, Darby is forced to question part of own her life. And as tragedy threatens her family, that magical walk through a window offers Darby new insight into the people she has always taken for granted – and changes forever her perception of Canada.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
best book yet,
By
This review is from: A Walk Through A Window (Paperback)
I had the opportunity to read a pre-pub edition of A Walk Through the Window and I just loved it. kc dyer always does a fantastic job with her research and her time travel stories, but this novel is the best. Fantastic character development. Stellar writing. A real page-turner. This will be a classic.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
2.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
2.0 out of 5 stars
Slow Moving and Repetitive,
By Virginia Bluis - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: A Walk Through A Window (Paperback)
The premise sounded so intriguing! Unfortunately, the book didn't live up to expectations. While much of the story is repetitive (Darby practicing her skateboarding for example), the descriptions are disjointed and confusing. I spent a lot of time wondering what was happening. During Darby's first trip back in time, she visited the Inuits and landed in an igloo. It took a visit from a polar bear several pages later for me, the reader, to figure out that's where she was. Her visits to other times and places were no clearer. I have the sequel and hope it's a much better read. Meantime, I'd stick with Charlotte Sometimes for a YA book on time travel.
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