The Cloud Chamber

Starred review from July 11, 2005
Johnstone's spot-on preteen tone and easygoing, heartfelt delivery are a comfortable fit for Maynard's wrenching coming-of-age novel. Nate knew that hard times on their small dairy farm and mounting debt were taking a toll on his family. But he couldn't know that his father's despair would lead him to a suicide attempt. When the police take Nate's dad away after he wounds himself, Nate must face some difficult new realities as he tries to figure out what really happened that day and deal with the people who turn on him and his family. Mom and little sister Junie worry what lies ahead, but Nate figures that things will surely improve if he can win a spot in the state science fair—which happens to be held near the hospital where his father is recuperating. Throughout, Johnstone's Nate never lets listeners forget how much the boy steadfastly loves and admires his dad, and hopes for a happy ending—even when everything else in life is a painful jumble. Ages 12-up.

June 27, 2005
Maynard (The Usual Rules
) sets her deeply moving coming-of-age novel in rural America during the late 1960s. The story begins with hard-hitting drama: 14-year-old Nate Chance comes home from school one day to find that his father, a struggling farmer, has tried (and failed) to commit suicide. Then, taking on a reflective tone, the book goes on to explore how the incident impacts the family. As rumors about Nate's "psycho" father spread throughout their small community, Nate suddenly finds himself an outcast at school and in town. Even his best friend, Larry, acts distant. To make things worse, no one at home will talk about the incident, and Nate remains separated from his father, who is recovering in a mental institution 300 miles away. Nate finds a welcome distraction in his science fair project, a cloud chamber that will illuminate cosmic rays present in the atmosphere. While planning and constructing the chamber with his assigned partner, Naomi, Nate begins to sort out his feelings for his father, accept the changes that are occurring at home and understand the pain of another shunned student. The author's poignant third-person narrative, told from Nate's perspective, offers an intimate rendering of emotional anguish and a subtly conveyed meditation on survival and forgiveness. Ages 11-14.

October 1, 2005
Gr 7-10 -Fourteen-year-old Nate should have known something was up with his father the morning he left for school. He had shaved his beard and told Nate that he was going somewhere special and needed to look good. When Nate arrives home from school and sees the police cars and his father stumbling through the fields with blood covering his face and spilling through his hands, he realizes just what his father intended to do on the day that changed Nate's family forever. In Joyce Maynard's novel (Atheneum, 2005), set in the 1960's, Nate and his younger sister struggle with the ramifications of their father's attempted suicide and the police investigation into their mother's suspected involvement. Struck by a string of bad luck, bad weather, and a destroyed crop that put the Montana family into financial disaster, Nate and his family are falling apart and he desperately wants to make everything right. Despite feeling abandoned by their father, the dreamer, Nate and Junie still love him and watch helplessly as their mother, the practical one, spins deeper into depression. But Nate has a plan. He will enter and win the school science fair competition by constructing the Cloud Chamber and get to go to the state finals which is near the hospital where his father has been taken. He's paired up with the weirdest girl in class, Naomi, to work on the project. A friendship grows between Nate and Naomi, providing some comfort in a world suddenly turned upside down. Joel Johnstone's narration makes listeners hear and feel the pain, anguish, fear, and hope in the voices and hearts of the characters. Even secondary characters are brought vividly to life through Johnstone's reading of this powerful and emotionally charged coming-of-age story. -"Stephanie A. Squicciarini, Fiarport Public Library, NY"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.