Bookverdict.com

Gr 7 Up—In a time when a young woman's exterior life can be stifling and dull, Faith Sunderly's interior life is cavernous. She has a sharp mind; a keen interest in the scientific research that has made her father, the formidable Reverend Sunderly, famous; and an irresistible impulse for sneaking, spying, and skulking around. Faith's curiosity about the world around her, which she must keep hidden, is a source of personal shame and the one thing about herself she longs for people, especially her father, to notice. When the Reverend is ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Everything in this audacious novel is on the cusp or in limbo, setting up delicious tensions and thematic riches. The time is nineteenth-century England just after Darwin's theory of evolution has thrown the scientific world into turmoil; the setting is the fictional island of Vane, between land and sea; the main character is a fourteen-year-old girl caught between society's expectations and her fierce desire to be a scientist. Faith Sunderly regards her intellectual curiosity as an "addiction"; "There was a hunger in her, and girls were not suppo...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Everything in this audacious novel is on the cusp or in limbo, setting up delicious tensions and thematic riches. The time is nine...Log In or Sign Up to Read More