On Yore Side

Excellent Modern Children’s Literature, July 10, 2007

This is a superbly written YA fantasy which tells a highly original story, rare nowadays in the genre, and melds it with stark social and political criticism, obscure but important real word facts, and important life lessons for early teens in todays difficult social structure.
Brennan manages to propose groundbreaking theories, divulge little known facts, teach children to think outside the box, and to cope with the pains of a parental divorce very effectively within a short novel. Originality and character development are paramount, but Brennan is also an absolute master os suspense, in a league with even the bestsellers of the suspense genre itself, and teenagers and adults alike will be hard put to get to sleep on time when reading this one.
As for those who have deemed it inappropriate, I would counter that it’s a YA book, not a children’s book, and that covers ages 12 to 18. I’m sorry but Harry potter is a bit patronizing to many teenagers. Perhaps what the marketing may have meant is that if you have read all of the Harry Potter books, you just might be a year or two older than when you started them. This is certainly much tamer than what the average 13 year old is bombarded with every day in school and on television. And it no way shape or form suggests in any part of the book that everyone has had a homosexual relationship, despite what the previous reviewer erroneously stated. The reviewer may have misunderstood the words of a ten year old minor character in the novel, whose ignorance of the world and reality were made quite obvious by the author.

J. Lyon Layden
The Other Side of Yore