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Thea has never seen the sun. Her extraordinary people, suspected of witchcraft and nearly driven to extinction, have retreated to a secret world they’ve built deep inside the arctic ice. As Thea dreams of a path to Earth’s surface, Peter’s search for answers brings him ever closer to her hidden home.
Rebecca Stead’s fascinating debut novel is a dazzling tale of mystery, science and adventure at the top of the world.
From the Hardcover edition.
Stead's debut novel rests on an intriguing premise-that a group of people with unusual powers was forced to flee England generations ago to live peacefully below the ice in the "cold world" of Greenland. Fourteen-year-old Thea is a strong-willed resident of Gracehope, named after the woman who sacrificed her life to fulfill her dream of resettling her community safely under the glaciers. However, Thea, the last woman in Grace's direct bloodline, insists that her ancestor's intention was never to stay in Gracehope forever, but to rejoin life on the surface. Her life is forever changed the day she and her cousin find a secret tunnel to the world above and meet Peter, the 12-year old son of two scientists from New York who are ostensibly researching global warming. Peter is a reticent child who, like his mother, suffers from headaches and unusual ailments. After a long build-up, including a seemingly ancillary scientific puzzle about DNA, the story takes on a livelier pace as the central mystery unfolds-the connection between Peter and Thea. It is a testament to the storytelling that the existence of this parallel world and the convergence of Peter and Thea's stories, told in separate chapters, are both credible and absorbing. Young readers will find this a journey worth taking. Ages 9-12. (June)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
From the Hardcover edition.
Most boys his age had never touched paper. There was little left. Paper was reserved for fine drawing and important documents. Mattias knew even before he could skate that if he were to harm any of it, if he were to crease one corner of one sheet, the consequences would be serious. But Mattias could not resist his mother’s drawing table. He loved the drawers and panels that opened almost without a sound, the bright vials of dye, the immaculate brushes on their small rack, the smooth wooden box of charcoal. And although he was a very obedient boy in almost every other way, he regularly explored the contents of the table when he found himself alone with it. Mattias knew its every measure, including the shape of the black dye stain that had dried inside one drawer before he was born. And each time he approached the table, he expected to find it exactly as he had always found it before.
Today he found something new.
It was a thick paper envelope, closed but unsealed, underneath his mother’s working sketches. Mattias unwound the string closure slowly, being careful to remember the length that should be left hanging when he tied it again. Inside was a square of paper unlike anything Mattias had ever seen. One side of the square glowed with an image in color, almost as if someone had frozen a moment in time and flattened it, capturing every detail. Even his mother, considered the most talented artist now alive, couldn’t create anything like this. Mattias turned it carefully in his hands, holding the square by its sharp corners. It was an image of two women. Sisters, he thought. And there was something else–a glowing blur behind them.
The sun.
Seven Years Later
A headache, Peter thought as he lay in bed with one arm thrown over his eyes, is something you have to experience to understand. No one can describe a headache to someone who has never had one. He rolled to one side and reached for the little spiral notebook on his night table.
Peter’s mother had gotten headaches for as long as he could remember. They sometimes lasted for days, during which she sat in the red chair next to the pull-out couch where his parents slept. She didn’t eat, or laugh, or make the “proper supper” she otherwise insisted upon. She hardly got up at all. “She’s gone away again,” his father would say. “But she’ll be back.” It happened maybe twice a year.
Everyone said how much Peter was like his mother– their skin that was nearly paper white, their all-over freckles, their wavy hair (hers dark, his blond like his father’s), even the way they sneezed (always twice), and laughed (very quietly, after one loud sort of bark). So Peter had always assumed that, like his mother, he would get headaches one day, and that, when he did, they would be headaches just like hers.
Peter paged through the worn notebook. It had his friends’ phone numbers in it, and the names of some video games he wanted if his parents ever let him get a video game, and the address of a company in Oregon that sold old radio parts for almost no money, and a bunch of other things. He flipped to the inside back cover, where he had made a series of slashes.
Just after his twelfth birthday, Peter’s mother began asking him whether he had a headache. She had never asked him that before, and he couldn’t help thinking it was strange she had to ask at all. Wouldn’t it be obvious when he had a headache? Wouldn’t he, too, sit in the living room and never smile or get hungry? But she kept asking, every week or two, always smiling carefully, as if she were expecting bad news. So they waited, together.
Peter got his first headache a few months later. He knew right away what it was, and three things surprised him about it. First, it lasted only a few hours. Second, although it hurt some, he was able to eat the same salt-and-vinegar potato chips he bought after school every day. Third, he didn’t tell his mother about it.
The only person he told was Miles. He and Miles had been in the same class every year since kindergarten. They knew everything about each other. For instance, Peter knew that Miles only pretended to hate the two stepsisters who lived uptown with Miles’s father and stepmother. The truth was that Miles liked them, and that he liked his Monday and Friday nights at his dad’s– he liked how the apartment was full of life, with friends coming and going, and teasing at dinner, and the way they always ate oranges and popcorn while they watched TV together.
And Miles knew that Peter was afraid to tell his mother about his first headache because it had brought him a little closer to knowing what he had already half-known for years: that his mother’s headaches were not headaches at all, but something else entirely. Something she didn’t want to talk about. Something like sadness.
Then Peter had more headaches. He took the stub of a pencil from where he had wedged it into the spiral of his little notebook and made a mark next to the others. He counted to himself, slowly. His ninth. In a month. He replaced the notebook on the table and rolled over so he could look through the skylight next to his bed.
From the Hardcover edition.
kaski002
Posted February 20, 2010
Stead hit a home run in my humble opinion by mixing a science fiction type of thread with an issue that many kids are really concerned about - global warming. The characters are multidimensional and believable. It is not a predictable story line which kept me engaged. The middle school students that I have shared First Light with have all really liked the story a lot.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 2, 2012
This was definitly on of the bedt books that I've ever read...science and secrets..."whats the worst that could happen"?
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Peter Solemn will be leaving his life behind as he accompanies his family to Greenland. His father is a glaciologist and is going to research the ice caps and the effects of global warming.
Thea already lives in Greenland - although not freely. The people in the society she lives with, Gracehope, all fled Europe because of persecution, hiding underneath the ice, unable to go above to see what this new world has to offer.
Curious as she is, Thea has always wondered what it's like above all of the ice. Even though her grandma, who just so happens to be the leader of the society, does not allow it, Thea is going to do all she can to see what exactly is happening on top of her world.
With the help of a map, Peter and Thea discover one another. Two people from two completely different worlds...and yet somehow both are connected to each other.
Without wanting to give away too much, Peter and Thea's world collide, sometimes for the best, most of the times for the worse.
Odd and captivating, FIRST LIGHT is one of those books that you just have to read in order to understand the brilliance and imagination. Another plus is the mentioning of global warming, which some may believe in while others do not. However, regardless of beliefs, FIRST LIGHT is one novel you want to experience.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.BSeeg
Posted September 18, 2009
I Also Recommend:
My son and I read this book over the summer with some of his friends in a kid's book club. All the boys in the club really enjoyed the book. It was a great read for both parents and kids.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 1, 2008
This book is a good and exciting book for the whole family I'm a kid who loves to read and I just found this book in the libary at school and thought i might check it out and it turns out i just plain love this book is so good
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 18, 2012
I have read this book 3 years ago..... checked it out from the library
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Posted May 15, 2012
Hello, I really liked the book! THANK YOU 4 READING My review
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Posted April 29, 2012
Lots of typos
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Posted March 16, 2012
I would reccomend this to sixth or seventh graders because some of the words are hard to understand. FYI I am a 6th grader.
-LovePink86
Anonymous
Posted March 6, 2012
If you want to talk to me let me know i enjoy the fans!
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Posted January 6, 2012
This is a good book. And if you like this book you might like Rabecca Steads other book when you reach me. That book is good too.
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Posted January 5, 2012
This is a great book so far. I also think you should read "When you Reach me."
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Posted January 1, 2012
Great love it could not live with out her writing i love it soo much
From someone u do not need to know
Anonymous
Posted September 13, 2011
This book is very hard 2 put down! I love it soooooooo much! Buy it!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I'm not mujch of a reader, so I thought I wouldn't enjoy an over 300 page book! I proved myself wrong, when I picked up this book and started reading it. First Light is a MUST READ!!!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.7838262
Posted April 14, 2011
a awesome story how 2 worlds colide makes you belive it could really happen!!!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted March 11, 2011
Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'?
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.The concept of a group of people with special characteristics living under the ice of Greenland is unique. The idea of the melting ice pack as a result of global warming is fictional at best and is just another way to put the wrong ideas into a child's head by indocrinating him or her with this flawed and dishonest theory. I give the story five stars and the global warming nonsense one star. Parents should warn the children that is, indeed, fiction. It is not suitable for any child under the age of 12.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 27, 2010
I Also Recommend:
I thought that this book was amazing! It was extremly suspenceful and I couldn't put it down! I loved the discriptive words and all of the personification and similies! Although fictional, this book seems like it could be real, the way Rebecca Stead describes the modern time period and the "real" characters. I would recomend this book to anyone 10+! This book has two main characters, a boy named Peter, and a girl named Thea. Peter is from modern times New York and is going with his parents on an expidition to Greenland. While Thea lives in a secert world under the ice called Gracehope. This book is about how their two very different worlds collide with an interesting, new twist! This is the best book that I have ever read and I'm looking forward to reading all of Rebecca Staed's other books too! I had already read her book called, "When You Reach Me", and I would also recommend that book as well! I have loved all of her books and thought that they were awesome!!!!
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Posted December 10, 2009
First Light
By: Rebecca Stead
Yearling Publications
Ages 10-12
Copyright 2007
Thea could've found out of her icy home in a glacier. As Thea and her cousin Mattias search for the passageway out of Gracehope they actually find it. When Thea reaches the surface she saw a boy, and with him a dog. Thea had dreamt of the surface her whole life and now someone was here to hunt her down. At least that's what she thought. A boy with golden hair was the one with the dog. She never knew hair could be different colors. As Thea realizes later she has a connection with the boy.
When Peter goes searching for the Second Volkswagen Road in Greenland he finds something in the ice. The thing that was sucking the life of his mother. Mitochondrial DNA. His mother is a biologist studying
DNA. Now as his mother starts drawing in her notebook he sees a drawing of mtDNA. He knew his mother was seeing the bracelet somehow. As Peter looks for a sound he hears he finds a tunnel and in the tunnel a person. The girl had pale white skin and long brown hair. He never knew he could find someone in the middle of Greenland
In this suspenseful story fantasy intertwines with reality. As the clues reveal all of your mind-boggling question you wonder how the story will end. With many conflicts happening between several people the story makes you have to turn each page and keep it in your face. First Light showed a positive light on following your heart and never giving up.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Overview
Peter is thrilled to join his parents on an expedition to Greenland, where his father studies global warming. Peter will get to skip school, drive a dogsled, and–finally–share in his dad’s adventures. But on the ice cap, Peter struggles to understand a series of visions that both frighten and entice him.Thea has never seen the sun. Her extraordinary people, suspected of witchcraft and nearly driven to extinction, have retreated to a secret world they’ve built deep inside the arctic ice. As Thea dreams of a path to Earth’s surface, Peter’s search for answers brings him ever closer to her hidden home.
Rebecca Stead’s ...