Boys of Blur

Boys of Blur

Juvenile fiction
A few days ago our librarian for teenagers down to Orono Public
Library, Laura, asked me for suggestions for hot off the press books
6th grade boys might want to read over the summer. She was getting
ready for a book talk. It's a good thing I stay on my toes when it
comes to literature. I was able to point her towards the two James
Patterson offerings I just reviewed. Then I picked out a promising
looking volume. Did I ever hit pay dirt with N. D. Wilson's Boys of
Blur!
You know without even opening the book that it's going to pack a
lot of suspense and action (two factors that catch the attention of
many a middle school boy) into its pages. The front cover shows two
boys running as though the devil himself were in hot pursuit. On the
back cover there is a single sentence. "Out on the flats, when the
sugarcane's burning and the rabbits are running, you're either
quick...or you're dead." YOWZA!
What makes Boys of Blur really good literature, though, is the
combining of a wicked (in the Maine sense meaning very) suspenseful
plot involving the ultimate struggle between good and primordial evil
with a richly woven sense of time and place. It's set in a small town
and the surrounding cane fields and sinister mucky swampland. Check
this paragraph out:
"Most Sundays, the little church sees a few cars, and a minister
under a wobbling ceiling fan preaching at old men and women who have
heard it all before. But when this story starts, one of these men has
moved beyond old and straight into dead. There's a whole herd of cars
parked below that white church, and a while herd of people standing
around the rusty iron fence that cages in the graves."
Cages in is an excellent phrase to use in relation to that
graveyard. You know how dead men tend to stay put once they're six
feet under. This one doesn't. The pastor arrives at work the day
after the burial to find his elderly parishoners gathered at a ghastly
scene. The grave is open. The corpse has vanished. A live tree is
growing through the coffin. Symbols have been painted on the white
church in what appears to be dried blood.
Now doesn't that seem to be just what would hook a mystery
loving sixth grade boy into a bit of a summer read?
On a personal note, my Adam is back home. He spent a week in Maryland
at Naval Academy summer seminar. It gave him the chance to see if
it's what he wants for post high school education. Seems like it's a
sensible measure other colleges could do that might cut down on drop
outs. I was thrilled that Adam called me when he had chances to. I
am over the moon to have him back home.
A great big shout goes out to all the young men and women in Adam's
year who are making this momentous decision.
Julia Emily Hathaway



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