Melissa's review
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume One: The Pox Party
by M.T. Anderson
Melissa's review
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume One: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson
Melissa's review
rating:
The only reason I read (or listened) to this book was because it won the freakin' National Book Award for children's literature. The only reason I finished it is because it's only seven CDs. It started out incredibly slow and boring, crescendoed into flat-out dull, before ending with a surprise twist that gave me newfound respect for the author and the story. The passages that really set me back were the long stretches of story told through letters by Revolutionary War soldiers.
I just so happens that I read a transcript of the author's speech accepting the Printz award, and he made the point, that I obviously missed during the slog through discs 1-6, that modern people assume that the mistakes of history were made by unintelligent people. In this book, the torturers of slaves and defenders of the institution of slavery were intellectuals - brilliant men who owned Octavian in order to do experiments on the capacity of a "negro" to learn. Of course, they were bad scientists...more
I just so happens that I read a transcript of the author's speech accepting the Printz award, and he made the point, that I obviously missed during the slog through discs 1-6, that modern people assume that the mistakes of history were made by unintelligent people. In this book, the torturers of slaves and defenders of the institution of slavery were intellectuals - brilliant men who owned Octavian in order to do experiments on the capacity of a "negro" to learn. Of course, they were bad scientists...more
