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Witness

3.7 of 5 stars 3.70 · rating details · 2,055 ratings · 356 reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review

Karen Hesse's Newbery Award-winning skills are put to great use in Witness, a poetic tale about friendship, fanaticism, and the deadly undercurrents of racial prejudice. The story takes place in a small Vermont town in the year 1924, revealing the devastating impact of the Ku Klux Klan on this pastoral, insular community. At the heart of the ta...more The Barnes & Noble Review

Karen Hesse's Newbery Award-winning skills are put to great use in Witness, a poetic tale about friendship, fanaticism, and the deadly undercurrents of racial prejudice. The story takes place in a small Vermont town in the year 1924, revealing the devastating impact of the Ku Klux Klan on this pastoral, insular community. At the heart of the tale are two motherless girls who come to the attention of the newly formed Klan: 12-year-old Leanora Sutter, who is black, and 6-year-old Esther Hirsch, who is Jewish.

Hesse tells her story, which is based on real events, through the eyes of 11 different characters. Each point of view is expressed in poetic form, but with a stark clarity of difference that makes the voices unique and identifiable. There is a fire-and-brimstone preacher whose sermons reveal him as a zealot and whose actions brand him as a hypocrite. There is a middle-aged farm woman named Sara who takes Esther under her wing despite the warnings of her neighbors, trying to help the child understand why the Klan has marked her and her widowed father as targets for their hatred. Esther's only other friend is Leanora, who is about to learn some harsh lessons on tolerance and hatred herself at the hands of the Klan. And linking them all together is 18-year-old Merlin Van Tornhout, a young man struggling to fit in with the adult world and determine for himself the difference between right and wrong. The remaining characters who circle the periphery of this core group reflect the various mind-sets and biases that were common during this era of fear and persecution, even in a setting as bucolic as the Vermont countryside.

Hesse weaves real historic events into her tale, such as the murder trial of the infamous kidnappers Leopold and Loeb, giving the work a definite period flavor. Using prose that is both sparse and powerful, she builds the tension with a slow crescendo of inevitability that ends in violence, but also offers up an unforgettable lesson on the true power of friendship and acceptance. (Beth Amos)

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Paperback, 161 pages

Published March 1st 2003 by Scholastic Paperbacks (first published July 5th 2000)

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Mar 17, 2012 karen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: and-so-this-is-grad-school

this is the way this conversation should have gone down.

"so, i want to write a kid's book about the KKK coming to town and the town's reaction to it from all different perspectives"

"okay, i am listening"

"it will be set in vermont..."

"wait - what?? vermont?? not in the south?"

"no, in vermont. the green mountain state"

"okay, your call. keep 'em guessing, i like it. why pick on the south all the time, sure. everyone thinks vermont is so liberal - we will show them!!"

"okay - and i am going to have s...more

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Jan 31, 2008 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: children-young-adult, minority-author-or-topic, poetry, african-american-and-black

At first, I found Witness difficult to get into, and I was a little skeptical of Karen Hesse's chosen format, namely, writing the book somewhat like a play, insofar as characters switching off in dialog, but poetry because the "dialog" consisted of free verse poems of varying length. Towards the end, I not only grew to appreciate the literary merits of this format, but also grew to like it. Telling the story in this way allows Hesse to convey turmoil that the encroaching Ku Klux Klan, because th...more At first, I found Witness difficult to get into, and I was a little skeptical of Karen Hesse's chosen format, namely, writing the book somewhat like a play, insofar as characters switching off in dialog, but poetry because the "dialog" consisted of free verse poems of varying length. Towards the end, I not only grew to appreciate the literary merits of this format, but also grew to like it. Telling the story in this way allows Hesse to convey turmoil that the encroaching Ku Klux Klan, because the text makes it feel like the varying characters voices are swimming around in your mind, echoing, crescendoing, and fading depending from whose perspective the story is currently being told. Though the words in the book are scant, Hesse manages to develop her characters as well, or better than, many large, full-blown novels, in part because she makes use of poetry structure to increase the audience's ability to empathize with the characters.

Another reason for which I think that this book bears much merit is the telling of an non-stereotypical story about the Ku Klux Klan. Although we would all acknowledge the importance of the effects of terror the KKK elicited from the black community, it is already a story that has been told many times. Hesse's major contribution to the body of works about the KKK is the insight that she offers into the white community of Vermont in 1924, and the reminder that the KKK's persecution was not limited to blacks, but rather extended to Jews, Catholics, and any whites that aided those groups or whom they thought to be "immoral." In Witness, Hesse chooses not to write primarily from black characters' perspective, choosing instead to show the world mainly through the eyes of Esther, a six-year-old Jewish girl who moved from New York City to the Vermont countryside. In so doing, Hesse may more effectively incorporate her personal experiences as a girl who grew up in the Midatlantic/New England (Baltimore) to weave an authentic story. Furthermore, Hesse's novel stresses human choice in determining whether they are "good," or "bad." Although Witness deals with a serious and fearful topic, it is ultimately a hopeful one, showing that, if individuals and/or the community choose to do so, positive change is possible, and understanding can be achieved so that we don't keep bumping into each other in fear and anger. (less)

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Feb 06, 2010 Madeline rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: assigned-reading, kids-and-young-adult, historic-fiction

I first read this in elementary school and loved it, then read it again recently for my Young Adult Literature class and loved it even more. It reads almost like a play, with each character (all residents of a small Vermont town in 1924) telling their version of events (the Ku Klux Klan rolling in and starting to recruit) in free verse. Characters include the local preacher, a twelve-year-old black girl, the town doctor, the sheriff, a six-year-old Jewish girl, and a woman who runs liquor. Amazi...more

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May 08, 2013 Elliot Lewis rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have read "Witness" by Karen Hesse, and I believe that it was a very good book. "Witness" is about a town in Vermont where the KKK decides to live in. In the front of the book is a character guide, for the book is written in short, narrative poems by a certain character. I enjoyed this format because it made the book easy to read, but also made you think much more about what the characters were really saying and meaning. The main characters were Leanora Sutter (an African-American girl), Esthe...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Gale rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: black-history-ya, survival

“Testing the Conscience of a Town”

Set in 1924 Vermont Hesse’s starkly brilliant novella about the KKK’s attempt to infiltrate this independent New England state packs a terrific punch to the reader’s social consciousness. You will be challenged both emotionally and intellectually by the multiple narratives of a large cast of characters in this dramatic presentation. It helps to make frequent references to the Rogues’ Gallery of many players at the front of the book—in an attempt to memorize na...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Marissa Cunneen added it

My favorite scene was very heart wrenching because it was when Esther wanted to see her mother again, but she couldn’t because unfortunately heaven really is too far away. She came up with an idea, as a six year old that if she could take a train all the way to heaven it would stop and let her off with her mom. So she stood on the train tracks waiting and waiting for a train determined to make it stop and let her on! Other citizens had no idea what she was doing but I guarantee they knew it was...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Sarah Starrett rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book originally caught my attention because of the content. I find KKK stories fascinating. I was not expecting the poetry format but thought I would enjoy because I love other poem format books like Crank and Impulse by Ellen Hopkins. First off I loved the pictures of the characters in the beginning of the book. I think its great to give a face to character especially in books written in verse because you do not get the detailed descriptions of characters like you would in novels.
I did fi...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Nicole rated it 2 of 5 stars

Witness by Karen Hesse was a very interesting book. This book caught my eye just like Crank did and this is because of the way the book is written, in poems. Unlike Crank, this book made it harder for me to stay caught up with the story. I found myself going back and reading pages multiple times until I was fully able to understand what was going on. I almost feel like this book had no ending, after I had finished the book I was still very confused and I was wondering if even the characters stor...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Jennifer Mcmullen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was very interesting. I liked the writing style the author used and the way the words were easy to read. The thing I disliked the most was I was confused. I couldn’t keep track of who the characters were. There were so many stories I found it hard to keep them separate. I wanted the stories to connect in a way and I was hoping to find that but I found it really hard to know how they connected. If each story was its own book, I think this would have been better. If the stories went in m...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Jeanette Yanez rated it 2 of 5 stars

As I was looking at the three novels offered for us to read I thought I would like this one the best. I liked the style it was written in, or at least the visual appeal of the words and how easy it seemed to read. For the most part I was wrong. Throughout the majority of the novel I was just plain confused. There were so many stories and so many characters I struggled to keep each of them separate. I was expecting that by the end each of the characters stories would connect and there would be an...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Damarcus Henley rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book is about a small town in Vermont that already has the presence of racism and discrimination. Shown by the dislike of Leanora and the Sutter family, things escalate with the appearance of The Ku Klux Klan. The organization based on hatred split the inhabitants of the town. Some of the characters embrace the arrival of the KKK and some disapproved of it. We see the effects of the KKK through the eyes of the main characters of the book. One of the main characters, Leanora Sutter, was direc...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Melissa Rotti rated it 3 of 5 stars

Witness by Karen Hesse is a book is not your average book. Hesse’s books differ from the standard young adult books because Hesse wrote her book from 11 different perspectives as opposed to one. The Witness is also written in verses instead of just general narratives. To me, the Witness would best be taught in a 7th or 8th grade classroom. I feel like 6th graders would not be able to differentiate the 11 perspectives in the book. The Witness could easily be tied into a history (context) or poetr...more

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Nov 21, 2012 Zephaniah Galloway rated it 5 of 5 stars

Alright so I read this book a few years ago ( about 3-4 ) and I absolutely fell in love with it. Since I was about 10 then, I had to re-read some parts to understand what was going on. When I did, it came down to these main parts:

PLOT: With this book there wasn't just 1 main plot. You get taken through many different scenarios based on what character you're reading. The quote " I am nothing yet I am everything" really goes into effect with this book since even though the problems with each chara...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Phil rated it 2 of 5 stars

Witness was definitely written in a unique format, and I think there is definitely some value for teaching this book nearby or possibly in a poetry unit. I do, however, think there are other books YA books written in a similar format which better explicate poetic form and diversity. The book obviously has a value in terms of the issues presented. There are some really unique transformations seen in story’s characters as the tale progresses. The variance in perspective is a really nice element. H...more

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Oct 31, 2012 Pritchie Brown rated it 3 of 5 stars

Witness by Karen Hesse is a very original novel. The novel paints a picture of a small Vermont town in 1924 plagued by the Ku Klux Klan. While the plot is somewhat original in its own right what makes this novel so creative is the way it is presented.

Witness is narrated by not 1 but 11 different characters all of which have vastly different perspectives on the events taking place. Also Witness is not written in prose form but rather in verse. As far as the way it is structured I find it comparab...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Leketha Outley rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was not a bad book to read. It speaks about how the Ku Klux Klan impacted the lives of the citizens living in Vermont in 1924. The town was actually torn apart by the split in opinions and their views about the KKK’s decisions and tactics towards racism among the people living there. The story line was told in a narrative format with a poetic theme to it. It has short snippets of thoughts and views of some of the characters. The most focused characters were two little girls who became...more

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Oct 25, 2012 Patrick Allen rated it 3 of 5 stars

As a future teacher of English, I am growing concerned over the ability of students to comprehend difficult literature, and infer what happened from what they just read. When I say "difficult to read" I mean exactly that. "Witness," present itself in various forms of writing, none of them especially conducive to easily figuring out the flow of the action for the average middle school student. By having them work through this, it leaves them more prepared for attacking other "difficult to read" w...more

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Oct 19, 2012 Maria rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was not necessarily what I expected: I thought that Hesse would place far more emphasis on the actions of the Klan, rather than the community's response to it. But ultimately that focus just serves to paint a more nuanced portrait of a town being torn apart by racism and hate:

I thought that the story of Sara Chickering was an important look at how a child's being born into a home filled with injustice causes them to grow into an adult harboring prejudice-and how that can be conquered...more

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Oct 17, 2012 Kelly Breeden rated it 2 of 5 stars

Witness by Karen Hesse is a very interesting book. It is written in prose, so it really is not as long as it originally seems to be. This is one of the reasons that middle grades students probably would not mind reading this book. While the short poems that constitute as “chapters” make reading the book a rather quick task, it can be difficult at times to keep up with the characters and what is going on in the story since the book jumps from character to character so quickly. However, if the rea...more

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Oct 17, 2012 Blake Medford rated it 3 of 5 stars

I think that the witness would be an alright resource to use in the classroom. The only issue that I would have with the book is that it’s in the form of a poem. I’m not positive if I could say that no child at that age would have seen a book like Witness before but, I think the book would be harder for them to grasp at first. The book wouldn’t give nearly as much information in the text as a novel would and the students would more than likely have to be fully involved the during the entirety of...more

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Oct 09, 2012 Mk Moore rated it 5 of 5 stars

I believe that Witness would be a great book to teach in a Middle grades classroom because even though it is not written in the typical sense of a book it still gives off the essence of a story and events happening. Written in free verse this book takes us back to 1924 when the Ku Klux Klan moves into a small Vermont town and tensions rise especially when it deals with Leanora (an African American girl) and Esther (a Jewish girl). There is only one issue I have with the book…The descriptions of...more I believe that Witness would be a great book to teach in a Middle grades classroom because even though it is not written in the typical sense of a book it still gives off the essence of a story and events happening. Written in free verse this book takes us back to 1924 when the Ku Klux Klan moves into a small Vermont town and tensions rise especially when it deals with Leanora (an African American girl) and Esther (a Jewish girl). There is only one issue I have with the book…The descriptions of the character. Typically throughout a book you have a detailed description of what a person looks like and then a general one throughout the rest of it. In Witness you only have a picture and sometimes you have to flip back to look at them to figure out who is saying what, and who that voice belongs to. Yet, I believe that is could be a book to kind of ease the way into the issues of race, history, and the troubles that both brought with them. In essence I believe it would be a great book to open up with before you started to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Another reason is that though it is written in free verse may make it a more interesting for the class. It would be an interesting novel to open about the strength and weaknesses of humans as well as the value of staying neutral, positive and the side of negativity throughout history and maybe in the students life. An interesting way to teach this is through the discussion and activities of pivot phrases. Pivot Phrases are those phrases that you can take out of a poem and possibly place somewhere else in the same poem, or just delete it altogether. It alters the meaning of the poem. By finding pivot phrases you can then create a Dialogue Poem where two characters from the same book, through different media, music, etc. and have them ‘talk’. For an example of Dialogue Poem in Witness you could pair Leanora and Merlin together. It would be like if Leanora and Merlin were locked in the room what would they have to say to each other if they had anything to say at all. The results could be endless. I believe that Witness would be a good book to challenge students to think outside the box on how to not only read a book, but how to perceive the characters in said book. (less)

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Oct 09, 2012 Melissa Jackson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Witness, by Karen Hesse, is a story that takes place in a Vermont town in 1924. The tale follows 11 different characters as the Ku Klux Klan tries to take over the community. Each character has a unique way of speaking and an interesting personality. Two of the main characters are Leanora Sutter, a 12-year-old black girl, and Esther Hirsch, a 6-year-old Jewish girl. The book has a very interesting layout similar to a group of poems. The story follows the community as they experience episodes of...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Katie Hill rated it 4 of 5 stars

As soon as you open Witness, you have high expectations for a dialogue poetry novel that will make you think and get your creative mind exercising. My favorite books are those that use vantage point and playful perspective switching to tell a common or just simple story. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is a classic example of this, as well as Bronx Masquerade for YA readers, and Catch-22. I was a little nervous to read this for a potential teaching tool among YA students. Because books like th...more As soon as you open Witness, you have high expectations for a dialogue poetry novel that will make you think and get your creative mind exercising. My favorite books are those that use vantage point and playful perspective switching to tell a common or just simple story. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is a classic example of this, as well as Bronx Masquerade for YA readers, and Catch-22. I was a little nervous to read this for a potential teaching tool among YA students. Because books like this require more in-depth reading comprehension, I had the same initial concern from when I finished To Kill a Mockingbird: if students can't grasp the language on the page or the format, they will not be able to go in-depth and have intelligent conversations, and in some cases they will give up reading it all together. However, I picked up the book, started reading, and realized that Karen Hesse knew exactly what she was doing. I had a few hours to get work done in the library a few weeks ago, and read Witness in one sitting. I thought the level of comprehension was spot on for a middle grade students. Although they will consciously have to pay closer attention than if they were reading for pleasure, but I think they would be able to understand the type of text they are consuming as well as be able to have intelligent conversations about not only how the book is written, but what it is about. As a teacher, I am concerned about that FINE line between giving a student a text that is a little above their comprehension ability, but not pushing too hard that they feel defeated and put the book away. I would honestly rather a student consume lots of texts that are spot on their reading level without much challenge than challenge him or her so much that they give up reading books at all. Reading is that important to me. Anyway, I only gave it four stars because I am not in love with the topic; in other words I would choose to teach multi-genre or perspective over historical context with this book. Also I think certain characters were irrelevant, in that they should have had more of a role to the story or none at all (although I do understand that the story is supposed to be told in a cold and unaffectionate way). Overall, I would teach this book, and I am so enthused about it that I hope students would feed off of that energy.(less)

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Sep 28, 2012 Anna Steele rated it 3 of 5 stars

Karen Hesse's novel "Witness" is a unique way to tell the story of people living in a small town infested with the Ku Klux Klan. It gets unique perspectives from both women,men,black, white, Jewish, and members of the Klan. While I read this book on my own, I did not really enjoy it because it became very cumbersome to keep up with all the separate characters, and I found myself continually keeping track of who was who and who they were connected to in the community. I did find it somewhat refre...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Miles rated it 5 of 5 stars

My daughter Gavriella suggested this poetic novella of life in Vermont in 1924. Esther, a Jewish girl age 6, and Leanora, a "negro" girl, age 12, both from New York, confront prejudice and violence directed at them and their families as the Ku Klux Klan comes to a rural Vermont town. Set against an historically realistic background of prohibition era small time rum running, the Leopold and Loeb murder in faraway Chicago, the election of Calvin Coolidge, and the rise of the Klan in the 1920s, the...more My daughter Gavriella suggested this poetic novella of life in Vermont in 1924. Esther, a Jewish girl age 6, and Leanora, a "negro" girl, age 12, both from New York, confront prejudice and violence directed at them and their families as the Ku Klux Klan comes to a rural Vermont town. Set against an historically realistic background of prohibition era small time rum running, the Leopold and Loeb murder in faraway Chicago, the election of Calvin Coolidge, and the rise of the Klan in the 1920s, the poems that tell this story are remarkable for their attention to historical context. (The Klan in the 1920s wasn't just a southern phenomenon - its xenophobic racist nativism was widespread, including Vermont, and, as the book notes in passing, Oregon.)

The principal characters are helpfully laid out on the first page with pictures (photographs selected by the author to represent her characters) and descriptions that can be referred to as we read the story, solving what for me is always a pressing difficulty in any work of fiction - how to remember who is who?

The story itself is told through a series of interwoven page-long poems in the voices of different characters in the town. The feel of Vermont small town life is vivid. There are some unambiguously evil characters, and some undeniably good eggs, but the author also manages to portray people who exist in the nether region between good and evil, who might do the right thing for terrible reasons, or who may do the wrong thing and pay no price. Hesse manages to capture ethical murkiness as well as moments of stark moral clarity. The story is wrapped up with a picante twist that is just right, but which shall not be revealed here.

I have always loved the idea of epistolary novels, because of the time they give to each character to develop his or her thoughts, and the way in which they also inject multiple (albeit fictional) authorial voices into the telling of a story. In some ways the brevity of Hesse's poems even improves on the epistolary form (which I associate exclusively with letters and e-mails, but have never seen done with poems). Here, we have opportunity to watch the author summon worlds into existence through a very few well chosen words. In quick sketches the author captures whole personalities and a sense of place and history for each character. She then allows each of them to describe his or her shared reality from his or her own perspective, while moving the plot forward. It's a marvelous effect and a literary achievement. The plot of this book could be an outline for a much longer story, but it didn't need to be longer to convey its truth. Brevity is part of its beauty.

Needless to say, to receive such a fine reading recommendation from my 12 year old daughter only enhanced the pleasure I took in this young adult book. We had a very interesting discussion about how the author used language to portray the age of the 6 year old Esther. I think any adult, particularly if he or she is interested in the craft of writing and the sketching of characters through voice, would find this book to be heartfelt and fascinating.

And would every author, from this day forth, learn from Karen Hesse and please provide an illustrated list of characters at the beginning of every book? I would be forever grateful.(less)

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Aug 16, 2012 Catherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adolescent-books, historical-fiction

Like Hesse's Out of the Dust, this story is told in prose, only with several different narrators. I wasn't sure if I would like having so many different narrators, but it works. Hesse writes prose so well. She uses such vivid words and paints pictures in words for the reader. I loved Mr. Field - he was so spunky!

The verses when Leanora saves Esther from the train are so powerful. Leanora, ". . . but there was esther, looking up, still as a rock, gazing at that big train, rushing down on her, exp...more

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Jul 19, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: children-and-or-young-adult-books, summer-2012-childrens-ya

Although "Witness" never quite reaches the sames level of greatness as "Out of the Dust", Karen Hesse's poetry throughout is always of the highest quality. She gives voices to a whole range of characters, and even though I had to turn back to the (very helpful) cast of characters page during the first section to remember who was who, by the second or third section of the book I had a very clear idea of who each person was, what they did, and what they thought.

Tension builds slowly as we see a to...more

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May 17, 2012 Taylor rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-with-reviews, my-favorites

Witness is a true story. It takes place in Vermont and there are many things going on in the story. You get to see this from everyone's point of view. In the beginning, all of the characters are deciding whether to be a part of the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) or not. That was the major part of the story-the KKK. Leonora Sutter is a young teen, and she's also black. She only has one friend, Ester, who is six years old, and she's pretty much the only child that doesn't want to be involved with the KKK in t...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Danielle Pitts rated it 4 of 5 stars

Witness is a novel written by Anne Hesse. The book takes place in the 1920’s amidst the Prohibition. The book is characterized by the heavy influence of the Ku Klux Klan and how each of the characters feels about it. The readers see racism, unlikely friendships, hardships, and realizations throughout the novel.

The book is arranged into five acts, with about ten different speaking characters. Other characters are referred to by the main characters, like Ira Hirsh, but have no speaking parts. Eac...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Courtney Ballantine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Witness is a novel set in a small town in 1924 Vermont. It is told from eleven different characters’ points of view. The Ku Klux Klan moves into this town leaving the citizens to decide how they feel about the Klan’s presence. Each of the characters has their own perspective. While some immediately have doubts, fears, or anger, some are looking to the K.K.K as being of strong family values and hope for their community. However, after being asked to do some morally questionable tasks as well as t...more

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About Karen Hesse

Karen Hesse is an American author of children's literature and literature for young adults, often with historical settings. Her novel Out of the Dust was the winner of the 1998 Newbery Medal and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. In 2002, Hesse was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

For more information, please see http://us.macmillan.com/author/karenh...

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Books by Karen Hesse

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