Gr 8 Up-As a religious Quaker, Jubal Shoemaker’s older brother Bud has registered as a conscientious objector during World War II, and suddenly things change for his family. Graffiti labeling Bud a slacker appears on the family department store, longtime employees and customers leave without warning, and the Shoemakers’ marriage becomes strained. Jubal catches the person vandalizing the store-a girl named Daria Daniel, whose father hosts a radio show supporting the soldiers and whose twin brothers are off fighting. He falls in love with her even though he doesn’t always agree with her views, but her father forbids her to have anything to do with him. Tensions increase in town and at the farm where the 13-year-old works until he accidentally kills a mentally ill Quaker while trying to protect Daria and must face the fact that he has taken another person’s life. Bud, Jubal, and their mother hold firm to their religious pacifism, but Jubal is troubled by reports on the radio and from his Aunt Lizzie-a former Quaker now married to a Jew-about the atrocities being committed in Nazi Germany. The characters lack the skillful development found in Kerr’s earlier books. Jubal and his brothers seem flat, and Daria and Aunt Lizzie are far more interesting. Still, Slap Your Sides will provoke thought and discussion about religion, war, and morality.
Lisa Prolman, Greenfield Public Library, MA
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
Kerr demonstrates her command of time, place, and atmosphere. . . . Engrossing and thought provoking. — Kirkus
About the Author
M.E. Kerr is a winner of the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the 2000 ALAN award from the National Council of Teachers of English. She lives in East Hampton, New York, and remembers clearly the hometown boy who chose not to fight when all the other young men, including her brother, were marching off to war.
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