Early Review

One of the curi­ous things about pro­fes­sion­al writ­ing is that you work on a book for a year or more, but since it’s meant for read­ers, you need to wait longer to see what folks think of it. Only then can you gain a sense of what you have—or have not—wrought. That wait can be a fret­ful time. 

The ear­li­est reviews come from those who have those ARCs—Advance Read­er Copies—sent out by the pub­lish­er for reviews, respons­es, a means to gauge pub­lic reac­tions, and no doubt add to mar­ket­ing plans. 

Because of the wide dis­tri­b­u­tion of ARCs, some­times a kind of unof­fi­cial review comes in very ear­ly. While my next book, Loy­al­ty, is not sched­uled to be pub­lished by Clar­i­on until Feb­ru­ary 2022, here is an ear­ly reac­tion to the book from a blog called “Home­school on the range,” some­thing I nev­er heard of before. 

Home­school on the range 

I high­ly rec­om­mend this book as an addi­tion to the his­to­ry shelf of any mid­dle school or homeschool! 

Avi nev­er fails to dis­ap­point as a young adult author, and in this lat­est release, he does a fan­tas­tic job of mak­ing the old new again. Loy­al­ty is a book of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, told from the per­spec­tive of a teen from a Tory fam­i­ly. His­to­ry is writ­ten by the vic­tors, so it’s not often we have a chil­dren’s book of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War writ­ten from a Loy­al­ist per­spec­tive, which is one of the things I love most about it.

As the book pro­gress­es, we see him grow and change into a young man, chal­leng­ing his beliefs and ques­tion­ing right from wrong. In the end, his loy­al­ty is tru­ly test­ed in a unique way. Avi also draws par­al­lels from the past to the present in pas­sages such as this: “Pub­lic shame. Boy­cotts. Phys­i­cal vio­lence. You saw that in your for­mer home. The Sons of Loy­al­ty oppose so-called tyran­ny with a tyran­ny all their own.” 

That sigh of relief you hear is from me. 

Stay tuned. Hope­ful­ly, more just as gen­er­ous are to come. (You nev­er know.)