Status
Available
Call number
Call number
F Har
Collection
Publication
Cambridge, MA : Candlewick Press, 2002.
Description
A young woman, looking back on her childhood, recounts her farm family's poverty, her father's cowardice, and her younger brother's obsession for digging tunnels and living underground.
Original publication date
2000
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User reviews
LibraryThing member tandah
A YA story set during the depression years, narrated by the youngest daughter of a family struggling, and often failing, to hold themselves together. The 'Thursday's Child' of the title is the family's mysterious son Tin, who from the age of 4, spends his life underground burrowing/ tunnelling
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initially under the family home before travelling much further afield. It's a lovely read, simply told, but very visual and with complexity and real character development. The story reveals great weaknesses and strengths in nearly all of the central characters (aside from Tin) as they grow up and adapt to what life deals them. Once I commenced the book, which I was able to get through in a few sittings, I lost any awareness that I was reading YA. What I liked about the book was that there was some ambiguity with the characters and their circumstances not being painted as black and white. Show Less
LibraryThing member mcgarry
Adult Fiction.
Through the long years of the Great Depression, Harper Flute watches with a child's clear eyes her family's struggle to survive in a hot and impoverished landscape. As life on the surface grows harsher, her brother Tin escapes ever deeper into a subterranean world of darkness and
Through the long years of the Great Depression, Harper Flute watches with a child's clear eyes her family's struggle to survive in a hot and impoverished landscape. As life on the surface grows harsher, her brother Tin escapes ever deeper into a subterranean world of darkness and
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troubling secrets, until his memory becomes a myth barely whispered around the countryside. Show Less
LibraryThing member dalzan
A story about an Australian family's struggles during the Great Depression. Harper Flute, a seven-year-old girl at the time of the story's inception, recalls the remarkable story of her life from the vantage point of a young woman of 21 who is finally able to come to terms with her strange
Harper takes her little brother Tin to a nearby creek while their little brother Caffy is being born. A mud avalanche buries Tin, but their father arrives to rescue him just in time. From that moment, we see Tin withdraw silently into his own world of digging under the family's shanty home, where he stays practically day and night. Harper shows an unusual degree of insight for a child when she tells her parents that "... he's not digging tunnels. He's just changing the shape of things." When the shanty caves into the tunnels Tin has dug, the family must depend on their neighbors to donate both housing materials and labor. The proud and independent Flutes must accept charity from those who have belittled them in the past. There is suspense in this story when Caffy falls into a well and older sister Audrey is forced to endure abuse from a sinister neighbor. In both cases, Tin mysteriously surfaces to the rescue from his subterranean dwelling. The Flute family is finally able to escape from the prison of their poverty when Tin finds a huge gold nugget that he presents to the family before disappearing forever.
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childhood and accept it for what it was. Harper takes her little brother Tin to a nearby creek while their little brother Caffy is being born. A mud avalanche buries Tin, but their father arrives to rescue him just in time. From that moment, we see Tin withdraw silently into his own world of digging under the family's shanty home, where he stays practically day and night. Harper shows an unusual degree of insight for a child when she tells her parents that "... he's not digging tunnels. He's just changing the shape of things." When the shanty caves into the tunnels Tin has dug, the family must depend on their neighbors to donate both housing materials and labor. The proud and independent Flutes must accept charity from those who have belittled them in the past. There is suspense in this story when Caffy falls into a well and older sister Audrey is forced to endure abuse from a sinister neighbor. In both cases, Tin mysteriously surfaces to the rescue from his subterranean dwelling. The Flute family is finally able to escape from the prison of their poverty when Tin finds a huge gold nugget that he presents to the family before disappearing forever.
Show Less
LibraryThing member debnance
(I don’t think there is any way I can explain this amazing story. I will try, but I will fail.)
Harper Flute and her family struggle during Depression times in rural Australia. Her little brother Tin takes to tunneling as life for the family gets more and more desperate. As Tin spends more and
How would you classify this story? Historical fiction? Maybe. Science fiction? Maybe a little of that, too.
In any case, it’s truly a story like no other that I have read.
Harper Flute and her family struggle during Depression times in rural Australia. Her little brother Tin takes to tunneling as life for the family gets more and more desperate. As Tin spends more and
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more of his time tunneling, the family begins to let Tim go.How would you classify this story? Historical fiction? Maybe. Science fiction? Maybe a little of that, too.
In any case, it’s truly a story like no other that I have read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Vivl
A veritable page-turner.
It's a bumpy but exhilarating ride as the fortunes of the young female narrator's family alternately soar and plumb the depths.
This was my second Sonya Hartnett. My first, Surrender was let down, to my mind, by a mind-bogglingly strange/ludicrous ending. Even then the
This time I found myself wondering where exactly on the roller-coaster of fortunes we were going to end, and was pleased with the way it was managed. An appropriately satisfying ending to a very good read indeed.
It's a bumpy but exhilarating ride as the fortunes of the young female narrator's family alternately soar and plumb the depths.
This was my second Sonya Hartnett. My first, Surrender was let down, to my mind, by a mind-bogglingly strange/ludicrous ending. Even then the
Show More
overall quality of writing made it a 4-star read. This time I found myself wondering where exactly on the roller-coaster of fortunes we were going to end, and was pleased with the way it was managed. An appropriately satisfying ending to a very good read indeed.
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LibraryThing member electrascaife
This one follows the story of a young girl and her family in Australia during the Depression, living in a rough shack and barely getting by. The writing is good, but there issues for me with the plot: one of her brothers lives almost exclusively in the system of tunnels that he digs (starting when
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is only something like 5 years old) under their house and spreading for what seems like must be miles. I can't quite put my finger on what didn't work for me; the story seems a little directionless and I just couldn't quite be okay with that tunneling brother or his part in the story. However, the suspense of the thing kept me reading despite my quibbles. Show Less
Pages
261