Awake and Dreaming: Puffin Classics Edition

by Kit Pearson, Kenneth Oppel (Foreword by)

Overview

Theo and her young, irresponsible mother seem trapped forever in their miserable, poverty-stricken life … but Theo can’t stop dreaming of belonging to a “real” family. When she is mysteriously adopted by the large, warm Kaldor family, her dream seems to be coming true. But as time passes, the magic of Theo’s new life begins to fade, and soon she finds herself back with her mother. Were the Kaldors real or just a dream? Who is the shadowy figure who haunts Theo’s thoughts? And, most importantly, will Theo ever be able to find a real home with a family she can truly call her own?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143187882
Publisher:	Tundra Book Group
Publication date:	11/05/2013
Series:	Canada Puffin Classics
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 6.99(h) x 0.79(d)
Lexile:	650L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Kit Pearson worked as a librarian for many years before publishing her first novel, The Daring Game (1986). She went on to write the linked novels The Sky Is Falling (1989), Looking at the Moon (1991), and The Lights Go On Again (1993), published in 1999 as The Guests of War trilogy, and Awake and Dreaming (1996), which won the Governor General’s Award. Pearson lives in Victoria, close to Ross Bay Cemetery, one of the settings in Awake and Dreaming .

Editorial Reviews

"This is not a 'quiet' book. It is noisy with the most important kinds of struggle, because you and I face them every day: the quest to find our place in the world, to belong to a family and group of friends, to be loved." - Kenneth Oppel

"Pearson's gift is to always write straight from the inner well of childhood feeling." - Toronto Star

From the Publisher

Theo, nine, has not had a gentle life. The joys of clean clothes, a warm bed, and enough to eat are elusive, and her too-young, borderline-abusive mother provides little emotional support or structure. Theo escapes via daydreams and voracious reading ("she remembered that the ugliest books in school libraries were often the best ones"). The heart of the book, set in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, is an awkwardly constructed fantasy sequence that places Theo in the center of a large and affectionate family, the Kaldors. When the dream ends, Theo finds the family—less idealized, with no answering memory of her—and also finds the ghost of the writer, who once lived in the Kaldor house, and who has an explanation for Theo's experiences "awake and dreaming." While parts of the tale are clumsily drawn, Theo's longings are unmistakably clear, and the shaky shifts in point of view won't matter to readers, for this is a real page-turner.

Pearson (The Lights Go On Again, 1994, etc.) has some lovely notions about the relationship between dreams and reality, the value of friends and family (however flawed its members), and the acts of reading and writing as talismans of hope.

Kirkus Reviews