From School Library Journal
YA-- It's tough being an eight-year-old boy living in a small Scottish village around the turn of the last century. At least young Art finds it so. Among the many growing pains he encounters, his exclusion from his older siblings' adventures, the school bully, and the birth of a brother after eight years of being the youngest of a large family loom large. Art's friendship with old Hector, the village sage, helps him to overcome the hurdles of childhood. Hector, for his part, shares with the boy the excitement of youth without the pain one experiences the first time around. This is a book with which YAs can identify. The childhood fears and the relationships are realistically described, while the use of myths and legends adds to the appeal. Once read, this book will not be easily forgotten.
- Pamela B. Rearden, Centreville Library, Fairfax County, VACopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The fifth posthumous US publication for Scottish novelist Gunn (1891-1973) is a charmingly low-key turn-of-the century coming-of-age story. Eight-year-old Art Macrae--youngest son of a family that includes his fisherman father and brothers Duncan and Donul and older sisters Morag, Janet, and Neonain--and 80-ish Hector Macdonald are best friends: Old Hector tells Art fairy tales, listens to his complaints about his new baby brother Henry James, and accompanies him on quiet adventures. In a series of episodes reminiscent of Faulkner's The Unvanquished, Art runs messages between Morag and Shepherd Tom, feels pangs when Henry James is taken ill (after Art has wished that he would go away), stumbles on a still in the care of a circle that includes Donul and Old Hector, watches as Old Hector bests the officers sent out to find it, and finally comes to terms with Duncan's marriage and Donul's departure as he's sent to a farmer in the great world beyond. Though Gunn's characters can be a little monotonously quaint, they share with their landscape a fairy-tale magic, and the writing, shorn of the metaphysical excesses of The Key of the Chest (1988) and The Other Landscape (1990), is as refreshing as a sip of spring water. Slight, old-fashioned, and utterly captivating. --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
