footprints

I recently downloaded a program that I can virtually check out books on Tolga's iPad.  This has greatly expanded my library - but I still feel greedy and want more books than the ebooks have to offer.

I really want to continue my quest in reading all the Newbery Award winning books . . .

I just finished Moon Over Manifest - the 2011 winner.  It's about 12-year-old girl named Abilene who arrives in Manifest, Kansas; a fictional town during the Depression.  She has been raised by "Gideon" her father whom she doesn't know very well, and to this point they have lived somewhat of a hobo's life.  In Manifest, Abilene searches for some "footprint" of her father - and learns about a whole town.  The town's story is told from three different perspectives in two different eras: by  Abilene and her present circumstance in 1936, from a Hungarian diviner who is recalling stories from 1918, and from Haddie Mae's newspaper auxiliary - a woman Abilene meets and reads about in her old newspaper stashes from 1918.

Manifest is a dusty town "with a past and a bright future" but when Abilene arrives, the sign fittingly reads simply "a town with a past", having the rest of the sign been worn through.  It was a booming mining town of immigrants in 1918 under the heavy control of the mine's owner.  Abilene finds some mementos of the past and hopes to uncover something about her father.  In her search she learns about the people and struggle of those in Manifest, and as the town's name suggests: things unknown are revealed.

The book also touched on the topic of hope, and the risk of hope. The hope of immigrants who have come to America for a better life.  The hope of overcoming oppression, and the haunting defeat of hopes dashed...