River Boy
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Tim Bowler |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Honors | |
| Grandpa is dying. He can barely move his hands any more but, stubborn as ever, refuses to stay in hospital. He's determined to finish his last painting, 'River Boy', before he goes. At first Jess can't understand his refusal to let go, but then she too becomes involved in the mysterious painting. And when she meets the river boy himself, she finds she is suddenly caught up in a challenge of her own that she must complete - before it's too late. | |
She didn’t know how fast the current was moving her. It could take many more hours yet, perhaps more hours than she had the strength for. But she must not stop. She must keep going. She must try to catch the river boy, even though she was frightened at the thought of what he was.
Jess’s beloved grandfather has just had a serious heart attack, but he insists that the family travel as planned to his boyhood home on the river so that he can finish his painting, River Boy. As Jess helps her ailing grandpa with his work, she becomes entranced by the scene he is painting. Then she becomes aware of a strange presence in the river—a boy who asks for her help and issues a challenge that will stretch her swimming talents to their very limit. Jess knows that Grandpa and the river boy are connected, but how? Can she take up the river boy’s challenge before it’s too late for Grandpa?
Tim Bowler’s gripping narrative flows like a river itself—gentle and calm at times, turbulent and deep at others, always fluid, always alive. Readers will be swept along by the magic of the river and the mysterious river boy—and changed forever by Jess’s unforgettable journey.
Reviews
Amazon.com
Tim Bower’s tense and sensitive River Boy is, quite simply, an excellent book that deservedly won the Carnegie Medal in 1998.
Jess, a talented and obsessive swimmer, finds it difficult to come to terms with her grandfather’s impending death but at the same time cannot understand his refusal to let go until he has finished his final painting “River Boy”. On a family holiday, which takes Jess and Grandpa back to the places of his childhood, Jess too becomes involved in the mysterious painting and finds herself drawn to the real River-Boy who leads her into a challenge that she must complete before it is too late.
Written with a sense of calm amidst the brooding atmosphere of the story it tells, River Boy is a well-crafted, poetic novel written by a man whose talent for creating visual images with the use of a few, carefully chosen words will surely help to make it a modern classic.
Hot on atmosphere and strong on characters this haunting book, which so delicately yet so profoundly looks at the very nature of life and death, the past and the future, deserves a place on every discerning readers bookshelf. (Ages 10 and over).—Susan Harrison
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“She needed to swim. To be deprived of swimming would be like a perverse kind of drowning. She loved the sensation of power and speed, the feeling of glistening in a bed of foam.” Jess is a passionate distance swimmer, and has been looking for a unique water challenge to test her endurance. But when her adored grandfather, an irascible artist, suffers a heart attack, she focuses all her energy on making him well.
Though weak and perhaps dying, her grandfather insists that the family still take their planned vacation—a trip to the rural countryside where he spent his boyhood. There, Jess finds a river that is perfect for swimming, the same river that is the inspiration for her grandfather’s latest painting, titled River Boy. As the shadowy image of a boy takes shape on her grandfather’s canvas, Jess encounters her own river boy, a mysterious young man who seems to be able to swim as well as she does. In discovering how the two “river boys” are related, Jess finds both the swimming challenge she has been searching for and a graceful way to cope with her grandfather’s passing.
British author Tim Bowler gently illustrates the fear of a loved one’s passing by using a river’s timeless flow as a metaphor for the journey of life. Teens will relate to Jess’s frustration with her lack of control over her grandfather’s situation, while being moved to a better understanding and acceptance of death. River Boy is the winner of the 1998 Carnegie Medal for excellence in children’s literature. (Ages 11 and older) —Jennifer Hubert
