Witness

Starred review from February 10, 2003
PW
wrote in our Best Books citation, "Hesse weaves together 11 distinct narrative voices to create a moving account of the Ku Klux Klan's encroachment on a small Vermont town in 1924. Told completely in verse, her quietly powerful novel addresses the inevitable loss of innocence that accompanies the fight for social justice." Ages 9-12.

September 1, 2001
Gr 6 Up-In this remarkable and powerful book, Hesse invites readers to bear witness to the Ku Klux Klan's activities in a small Vermont town in the 1920s. Using free verse as she did in Out of the Dust (Scholastic, 1997), the narrative here is expanded to encompass the voices of 11 townspeople, young and old, of various races and creeds. The story is divided into five acts, and would lend itself beautifully to performance. The plot unfolds smoothly, and the author creates multidimensional characters, all of whom seem very real. One of the least sympathetic is an 18-year-old boy who begins the book by wanting to open a classroom window to let out the smell of the black girl. By the end, he is transformed by circumstances in a thoroughly plausible way. The writing includes vivid images, such as when Leanora, the black girl, sees a burning cross. She hides in a closet: "in that dark and narrow place, /i opened a hole for myself/but no matter how i turned, /the light from the cross/curled its bright claws under the door." It also includes some quiet yet irreducible moments that resonate long after the book is put down. The small details seem just right, and demonstrate that this is much more than a social tract. It's a thoughtful look at people and their capacity for love and hate.-Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL

Copyright 2001 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2001
Gr. 5-9. Using real events, Hesse tells a story of the Ku Klux Klan in a small town in Vermont in 1924 in the same clear free-verse as her Newbery winner, " Out of the Dust" (1997). This time, however, she uses 11 different voices, each one distinct, including two kids who are new to town--Leonora Sutter, 12, who is black, and Esther Hirsh, 6, who is Jewish. Then there are various adult townspeople: the violent Klan bigots (who attack "those who are not like us" in the name of Protestantism and patriotism), the antiracist crusaders, and the bystanders. Most interesting is Merlin, 18, who starts off in flaming hatred but changes. Then there's the affectionate married couple--he's in the Klan; she's against it. Their comic squabbles about it are fun, until you realize how serious the issue is. The story is told in five acts, and, in fact, it will work best as reader's theater. It's more a situation than a straight narrative, with too many characters and too many plot threads that aren't fully developed. But Hesse's spare writing leaves space for readers to imagine more about that time and about their own. The voices personalize the history and reveal how events felt to different people: the daily hurt (like the circus sideshow, where it's fun to take shots at the "nigger's" head); the lure ("the kkk / is looking to rent the town hall for their meetings / why shouldn't they?"); the opposition that refused to allow the Klan to move in. Add this to the Holocaust curriculum, not because every racial incident means genocide, but because the book will spark discussion about how such a thing can happen even now.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)