FlumeAward – Revolution Discussion page for Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
I just finished listening to this and it was amazing. It will be a challenge for some, due to the complexity and detail of French Revolution history, but the plot is compelling and the characters real. I strongly recommend it for the list.
Kathy Pearce
Oyster River HS
This novel was very well-written and definitely a book for the more prolific readers. I think it’s a tricky book to get into, I almost put it down without finishing. Once you get into the research andn the history part of it though, it is really interesting. I recommend this for the list.
Brittany Moore
Hall Memorial Library
I like all of Donnelly’s books. This one is not getting read as I had hoped, and I think it’s due to what Kathy references above (a lot of history and our kids don’t spend much time on the French Revolution). I think the Flume would give it the attention it deserves.
Kelly Budd
Keene High School
Andi, a teen who is flirting with failure to graduate from her prestigious high school after the death of her little brother consumes her, finds herself in Paris with her distant father after her mother has been institutionalized. Andi and her father are staying with G, a historian interested in building a museum about the French Revolution, while her father inspects the DNA from a heart found in a jar that is suspected to be from the dauphin, Louis Charles – son of Marie Antoinette and and Louis XVI of France. Andi is working on her thesis for her senior project connecting classical and contemporary guitar music. G lets Andi use an old guitar that is one of the artifacts that is being collected for the museum and she finds an old diary in it dating back to the French Revolution. This is a rich story with a lot of historical fact and fancy. The French Revolution is a part of the World Studies classes offered in high schools so students should have some elementary knowledge of the French Revolution. The vocabulary can be rich here and there is a lot to challenge the reader. I think that this should be on the NH Teen Reader list.
Sharon Flesher-Duffy, Nashua High South
I have read Donnelly’s historical fiction for adult and liked them very much. I found this book to be disappointing. It is somehow at the same time very mature, for example the scene in which all of Andi’s friends are getting high before school, and simplistic– isn’t it a bit of a suspension of reality that Andi somehow magically finds journal entries from a member of the French royal family that have never before been found? Overall, it felt like the book was trying too hard and I think teens, in particular, have finely tuned radars to that sort of thing.
Mindy Flater, Salisbury Free Library