Zeely

I read this when I was in elementary school and it kept my attention. This was one of the first books I could relate to and visualize the story while reading it. I probably checked this book out four times in our library. I wanted this for my kids to read one day.

d Zeely as a little girl more than 40 years ago. The book that I just purchased is a gift for a little girl who loves to read I'm quite sure that she'll like it as much as I do

Ok

I love this book

This is the complete review as it appears <a href="http://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2014/12/zeely-by-virginia-hamilton.html">at my blog dedicated to reading, writing (no 'rithmatic!), movies, & TV</a>. Blog reviews often contain links which are not reproduced here, nor will updates or modifications to the blog review be replicated here. Graphic and children's reviews on the blog typically feature two or three images from the book's interior, which are not reproduced here.Note that I don't really do stars. To me a book is either worth reading or it isn't. I can't rate it three-fifths worth reading! The only reason I've relented and started putting stars up there is to credit the good ones, which were being unfairly uncredited. So, all you'll ever see from me is a five-star or a one-star (since no stars isn't a rating, unfortunately).I rated this book WORTHY!WARNING! MAY CONTAIN UNHIDDEN SPOILERS! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!Zeely, believe it or not. is a story about Elizabeth Perry and her brother John who go to the country to spend the summer with their uncle, Ross. On the train there, they change their names to Geeder (soft 'G') and Toeboy for the summer for reasons unexplained.This is a short novel, only a hundred pages or so, and an easy read - not just because of the comfortable writing and leisurely pace of the novel, but also because the story is very entertaining. But don't make the mistake of thinking it's too leisurely. The story moves.Geeder and Toeboy decide to "camp out" at night, and they sleep in a field near the house which has a view of the road through the bushes. One night they see a tall white shape go silently past, and Geeder tells her brother that it's a Night Traveler and he must never talk to it or let it see him.It turns out that the night traveler is really Zeely, the daughter of a guy who rents part of Uncle Ross's farmland to raise "hogs", because naming them pigs is just too real. There has to be a distance between the adorable animal out in the field and the dead meat which we wolf-down from our plates, doesn't there - otherwise it gets personal? So Sheep become mutton, cow becomes steak, pig becomes hog in the field because that sounds more horrible, and it becomes pork on the plate, because hog isn't edible. Pork is. Trust the French to make it palatable.But that's not what this story is about. It's about the relationship which develops between Elizabeth and Zeely. Zeely is a Tutsi, referred to in this novel as a Watutsi, which is a group of people who colonized what is now Rwanda in Africa. Along with the Dinka people, the Tutsi are considered the tallest of all peoples in the world, averaging around six feet in height. By comparison in the US, men average five feet ten, women five feet five, so at this time of year, a tipsy Tutsi would be rather noticeable!Elizabeth, aka Geeder, gets to know Zeely, whom at first, she thinks is an African queen due to an article she espies in a National Geographic magazine. It turns out that Zeely is actually from Canada, and not a queen, but the relationship between them, Geeder's activities, and the chat she has with Zeely about her life, are really well written and fascinating to read. I recommend this novel.