Green Boy

by Susan Cooper

Overview

On their idyllic Bahamian island, Trey's little brother, Lou, is different — he doesn't speak and he suffers frightening seizures. But when he and Trey find themselves mysteriously transported to Pangaia, an alternative universe where pollution and over-development have all but destroyed nature, a militant underground environmental group greets him as the prophesied hero who will save their world.
But to realize this prophecy, Lou must take Trey on a terrifying and dangerous mission, with much more at stake than the fate of Pangaia. Does Lou have the power to save their own island home from a future as bleak as the world they've seen in Pangaia?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780689847608
Publisher:	Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication date:	09/01/2003
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	7.48(w) x 5.06(h) x 0.55(d)
Lexile:	930L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Susan Cooper is one of our foremost fantasy authors; her classic five-book fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her books’ accolades include the Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and five shortlists for the Carnegie Medal. She combines fantasy with history in Victory (a Washington Post Top Ten Books for Children pick), King of Shadows, Ghost Hawk, and her magical The Boggart and the Monster, second in a trilogy, which won the Scottish Arts Council’s Children’s Book Award. Susan Cooper lives on a saltmarsh island in Massachusetts, and you can visit her online at TheLostLand.com.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

It was a little fluttering sound in the roof, moving. The living room of Grand's house reaches up high, with beams across it, and one side open to the porch. Along the top beam the little sound ran, very soft, you could scarce hear it. Then at the wall it turned, and came fluttering down a side beam. You could begin to see a shape now. So small: was it a moth? A spider?

Lou was watching. He moved toward it.

"Careful," I said. "Don't touch. Might be poisonous."

The little fluttering thing slid down to the floor and rested there. I saw a tiny foot. It was a bird.

Lou crouched down beside it and put out his hand. Somehow he knew how to rest his finger behind the bird's feet so it stepped onto his hand. Then you could see clear: it was a tiny hummingbird, and it was all wound around with sticky spider-silk, so that it couldn't fly, nor hardly walk. It must have blundered into a powerful big spider's web. Now it was all trussed up, terrified, there on the palm of Lou's hand.

Lou made a little comforting sound at the back of his throat. Slowly and very carefully, with his other hand, he pulled the fine sticky strands away from the bird's legs and wings. His fingers were so small and gentle; after all, he's only seven years old. The bird didn't move.

There it stood on his palm, bright green, an emerald hummingbird. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Its throat was red, and its feathers all different shades of green, gleaming. The spider-silk was all gone now, but still the bird didn't move. It must have been totally exhausted.

Lou gazed and gazed at the bird, and the bird looked back at Lou.

"Take it outside," I whispered. We moved out of the room, across the porch, to the hibiscus hedge, all starred with yellow-centered red flowers like trumpets. Hummingbirds love hibiscus. But the tiny bird still rested there on Lou's hand, not moving; as though it was giving Lou a present, staying so that he could look.

It was so beautiful, I can't tell you.

At last it flew, and hovered beside a flower, and darted away.

"Oh man," I said. I couldn't think of anything else to say, it was so amazing.

Lou smiled at me, and made his happy sound, that's as close as he can get to a laugh.

My brother Lou doesn't talk, and he has a few other problems too. He's different. But I'm used to it. My name is Trey, and I'm a writer, I look after him. I'm twelve years old. This is my book, the story of what happened to Lou and me.

Copyright © 2002 by Susan Copper

Editorial Reviews

"Readers are likely to be pulled in by the sensitive portrayals of Trey and Lous, the mysterious adventures in Pangaia and the whilrwind climax."

“Cooper … writes movingly about the beauty of the Bahamas."

"An intriguing and truly lovely book."

"Cooper...hints at her virtuoso ability to deepen everyday occurrence into resonant mythic narrative."

"The lyrical nature writing evokes the fragility and the power of a spider's silk, the miracle of a seashell, the physical connections of the wind, water, and sand."

"Real moments of near-tangible peace."

From the Publisher

The Barnes & Noble Review
The Newbery Award–winning author of the series The Dark Is Rising brings young readers another adventure fantasy, an encouraging study of the unassuming power children have to change their worlds.

Twelve-year-old Trey and his little brother, Lou, a mute seven-year-old, live a simple, happy life with their grandparents on the fictitious Bahamian island of Lucaya. They have the run of the sea in the boat their grandfather gave them and spend most of their time on Long Pond Cay Island. There, they picnic under the casuarina trees, store favorite rocks and fossils in their secret cave, are friends with the local osprey, and marvel at the unspoiled beauty of their playground. Their world seems idyllic, until a foreign corporation suddenly threatens to "develop" Long Pond Cay into a tourist resort. Then something even more unexpected happens: Between tides on Long Pond Cay one day, the two enter the mysterious "Otherworld" -- Pangaia, a frighteningly overcrowded city-world where the natural environment has been destroyed and where Lou is not merely a mute little boy but the prophesied hero Lugh, born to replenish the world with trees. The boys shuttle back and forth between worlds, amid dangers they've never before known, in order to save Pangaia, their future, and Long Pond Cay, their present. But is Lou/Lugh's power strong enough to prevail, before Long Pond Cay is gone forever?

In Green Boy, Susan Cooper not only tells an action-packed story of personal survival and family loyalty but also presents a powerful social argument for young readers to ponder: What's more important, an unspoiled natural environment or corporate development? In addition, readers will love the sweetness and strength of Trey and Lou, Trey's protectiveness of his little brother, and their obvious affection for each other. (Michele D. Thomas)

bn.com

An environmental message overwhelms the plot in this disappointing time-travel story. Twelve-year-old narrator Trey lives in the Bahamas with his grandparents and seven-year-old brother Lou, who has undiagnosed seizures and never talks. When the brothers' favorite island spot, Long Pond Cay, is slated to become a major resort, their grandfather protests with no success against the developers, who retaliate by secretly destroying his boats. Intensifying the evil of the developers' side of the issue, Trey's negligent father appears as a worker for the developer and threatens to take Trey from his grandparents. In the midst of these disputes, Trey and Lou are mysteriously transported to a city in the future, an environmental horror with no stars, fresh air, or open land. During several trips through time, Lou plays a key part in the future world's survival, in a strange meeting with Gaia, Mother Earth herself, and an even stranger scene in which Lou takes on a mythological role. While Cooper (King of Shadows, 1999, etc.) writes movingly about the beauty of the Bahamas and earnestly about her concerns for the future, she misses the mark here as a storyteller. The present and future worlds aren't meaningfully connected nor do the Celtic mythological references fit the surroundings. The issue of the resort is all too easily resolved; the narrator veers into an adult voice in places; and Lou comes across not as a credible seven-year-old but as a literary device. (Fiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews

Cooper … writes movingly about the beauty of the Bahamas."

Kirkus Reviews

"Cooper...hints at her virtuoso ability to deepen everyday occurrence into resonant mythic narrative."

The Horn Book

"The lyrical nature writing evokes the fragility and the power of a spider's silk, the miracle of a seashell, the physical connections of the wind, water, and sand."

Booklist

"An intriguing and truly lovely book."

The New York Times Book Review

"Real moments of near-tangible peace."

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"Readers are likely to be pulled in by the sensitive portrayals of Trey and Lous, the mysterious adventures in Pangaia and the whilrwind climax."

Publishers Weekly

"The lyrical nature writing evokes the fragility and the power of a spider's silk, the miracle of a seashell, the physical connections of the wind, water, and sand."

Booklist