Quaking

In a Pennsylvania town where anti-war sentiments are treated with contempt and violence, Matt, a fourteen-year-old girl living with a Quaker family, deals with the demons of her past as she battles bullies of the present, eventually learning to trust in others as well as herself.

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LibraryThing member moorestownmm

"Quaking" is written in the first person by Matt (Matilday, but don't call her that!), a fourteen-year-old who has experienced domestic violence in her parents' home. As a result, she has been shunted from one relative to another and she is confused about her identity when she arrives at the home

of her last remaining relatives, a Quaker couple. In the early chapters some of Matt's observations of Friends are hilariously on-point. As the story moves on, things become deadly serious. Matt is bullied at school and as the faith communities of the town begin to speak out against the war in Iraq, they are threatened by individuals in the town who see them as unpatriotic.

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LibraryThing member MeriJenBen

Matt - short for Matilda - has spent years bouncing from one distant relative to the next. She expects her time with Sam and Matt to be more of the same. However, she is surprised to discover that her new family are Quakers, and that they seem to accept her as she is. Fearful, but intrigued by the

message of love and peace that Sam and Matt share; her new found beliefs bring her into conflict with a pro-war teacher and a bully who uses the Iraq conflict as an excuse for violence.

I liked-not-loved this book. I thought it was an interesting approach to a topical subject, but felt that Erskine was trying to do too much. As a book about Matt or a book about violence against peace demonstrators, this book would have shined. As a mishmash of both, it felt muddled and rushed.

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LibraryThing member Lylee

Foster child deals with both learning how to be in a Quaker family and how that can help her face the truths of her life.

LibraryThing member jothebookgirl

Orphaned Matt (do not call her Matilda!) has reached the end of living with distant relatives. She's now finds herself in a completely different living situation in the home of a Quaker couple in a small Pennsylvania town, Sam and Jessica. They have previously adopted a special-needs boy, who is

five years old but doesn't yet talk, instead he makes annoying noises in Matt's eyes. It doesn’t pay to get attached, Matt has learned, so she keeps every potential family at arm’s length. But Sam and Jessica aren’t put off so easily. As Matt slowly, very slowly, warms to them, she learns they are in danger from the same violent forces bullying her at school in the name of “patriotism.”
This is clearly meant to evoke the first post-9/11 years, after we’d gone to war, though the setting is never made explicit. Matt’s history teacher bullies her but her chief bully is a boy she has dubbed The Rat. Both are drastically opposed to peace for completely different reasons. The anti-peace “patriots” in town are methodically vandalizing houses of worship that promote peace vigils. The teacher Matt calls “Mr. Warhead” assigns papers like, “The Role of Our Great Nation in the Middle Eastern Theater” — with points taken off for “wrong” answers, or actually views he opposes.
Sam and Jessica aren’t perfect, but they are determined to do right by their difficult children. It’s a lovely exploration of the Quaker faith and how it comes to fill a hole in Matt that she didn’t want to believe she had.
To me this was a powerful book that dealt with bulling and discrimination in a way that both angers the reader, but also offers some satisfaction. I was sad when the book ended. I felt I needed to know more about what would happen next, but that probably was my wanting to get revenge on the bullies.

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