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Young Adult Fiction General

Medina Hill

by (author) Trilby Kent

Publisher
Tundra
Initial publish date
Oct 2009
Category
General, Europe, General (see also headings under Family)
Recommended Age
12 to 18
Recommended Grade
7 to 12
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780887768880
    Publish Date
    Oct 2009
    List Price
    $21.99

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

In the grimy London of 1935, eleven-year-old Dominic Walker has lost his voice. His mother is sick and his father’s unemployed. Rescue comes in the form of his Uncle Roo, who arrives to take him and his young sister, Marlo, to Cornwall. There, in a boarding house populated by eccentric residents, Marlo, who keeps a death grip on her copy of The New Art of Cooking, and Dominic, armed with Incredible Adventures for Boys: Colonel Lawrence and the Revolt in the Desert, find a way of life unlike any they have known. Dominic’s passion for Lawrence of Arabia is tested when he finds himself embroiled in a village uprising against a band of travelers who face expulsion. In defending the vulnerable, Dominic learns what it truly means to have a voice.

Trilby Kent brilliantly handles a far-off time and place to present a story of up-to-the-minute relevance.

About the author

Trilby Kent, PhD. read Modern History at Oxford University and Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She has written for The Guardian, The National Post, and The Globe and Mail and has taught in Canada and England. A winner of the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Prize and shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award, she lives in Toronto with her family.

Trilby Kent's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"… What had every promise of being a lazy bucolic idyll turns into Dominic’s coming-of-age summer. Maybe it’s too much to expect this youngster to help turn the town’s tide against expelling the Gypsy community from its borders, but Dominic does manage to gradually find his voice and his courage in Kent’s highly original debut."
— Starred Review, Booklist

Librarian Reviews

Medina Hill

It’s 1935, and 11-year-old Dominic Walker has stopped speaking. Home is London’s grimy docklands where his father is unemployed and his mother is ailing. When Dominic and his sister spend the summer with their uncle in a boarding house populated by eccentrics, the children discover a free-thinking, unstructured way of life and Dominic discovers what it truly means to have a voice.

Source: The Canadian Children’s Book Centre. Best Books for Kids & Teens. 2011.

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