Sweet Clarinet
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | James Riordan |
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| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Honors | |
| Billy thought wartime was fun: fiery skies, playing amongst the rubble. Then a bomb falls on the shelter where he and his mother are taking refuge. Waking in hospital horribly burned, he longs for death until a precious gift from a soldier similarly disfigured gives him hope and a reason to live. | |
Billy thought wartime was fun: fiery skies, playing amongst the rubble. Then a bomb falls on the shelter where he and his mother are taking refuge. Waking in hospital horribly burned, he longs for death until a precious gift from a soldier similarly disfigured gives him hope and a reason to live.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
When Billy is hideously scarred by the bomb that leaves him both homeless and orphaned, his only dream is of dying so that he can be rid of the tremendous pain that the physical and mental scars of the Blitz inflicted. But when a wounded soldier makes him the gift of a clarinet, Billy begins to once more face up to life and a future he once believed held nothing for him.
Sweet Clarinet is an affecting and moving story of darkness and light for young, adult readers. Simple and to the point, yet somehow deeply poetic, James Riordan¹s matter-of-fact approach touches the heart as he tells of Billy’s lonely journey to the very pit of despair, bringing him slowly back into a world where music and friendship offer him the sense of hope he thought he had lost as a child in war-torn London. —Susan Harrison
