Eclipse

by Andrea Cheng

A serious young boy has to learn to take a stand for his own well-being. In 1952 eight-year-old Peti's Hungarian relatives come to live with his family in America. His older cousin Gabor is a sullen boy who argues with his parents and bullies Peti. Peti's only escape is to the local library, where he reads about everything from the solar system to pinhole cameras and secret codes. Peti wants Gabor to move out, but Uncle Jozsef can't find a job, and Peti's mother has to find work instead. The landlady is threatening to evict them, and the boys in the neighborhood are dreaming up trouble. To top it all off, Peti's mother worries constantly about her father, who is behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary. When the librarian invites Peti to go with her on a tour of the Rankin House, once a stop on the Underground Railroad, the day trip turns into much more than a chance to get away from tension at home. Peti comes back with a new understanding of friendship and family, new insights about human nature, and a new resolve to stand up for himself.

136 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Andrea Cheng is a Hungarian-American children's author and illustrator. The child of Hungarian immigrants, she was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio in an extended family with three generations under one roof. Her family spoke Hungarian and English at home. After graduating with a BA in English from Cornell University, she went to Switzerland, where she apprenticed to a bookbinder, attended a school of bookbinding called The Centro del Bel Libro, and learned French. Upon her return, she returned to Cornell to study Chinese and earned an MS in linguistics. Now she teaches English as a Second Language at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. Her children’s books include Grandfather Counts, Marika, The Key Collection, Honeysuckle House, Where the Steps Were, The Bear Makers, and Brushing Mom’s Hair. With her husband, Jim Cheng, she has three children: Nicholas, Jane, and Ann.

Reviews

[Guacamolen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfulfilling book, but it's a slice-of life-story and life is seldom fulfilling, so maybe that makes sense.
To the author's credit, the protagonist talks a lot like my younger sons, so he does seem like a real character and not an adult-as-child character that I've seen from other writers. But unfortunately the story was an overall miss for me.

[Megan Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting parallels are drawn, but the writing feels clunky (yes, I do realize she was writing from a child's point of view, but one can do that and still have it seem polished--see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas). There was a bit of the older-reader-understanding-what's-happening as I read, particularly with certain things the older boys did, which would allow for some interesting classroom discussions. The history involved would also invite discussions and research. However, this story feels rushed, and I didn't feel like I knew the characters very well by the end of it. Their motivations and personalities were not clear; aside from Gabor, whose history became slightly clearer through inference, everyone was static. Not a terrible book, and certainly one I'd have in the classroom, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to my students unless they were looking for something specifically about immigrants and the Cold War.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emma insists I read about one of every 20 books she reads. (For background knowledge, she set her summer reading goal at 200 books.) I usually try to pick them up if she's serious about it (i.e. says so more than once, for example). And given that my to-read shelf is pretty dry because I'm quarantined, I was happy to try Eclipse.

And then I spent the whole book (mostly read after she was in bed for the evening) wondering what she'd liked about it.

Set in the early 1950s in Ohio, a young Hungarian boy and his immigrant parents must house new immigrant family members. It's a pretty painful read -- the boy's older cousin and neighbor kids beat him up and steal from him, his grandfather (back in Hungary) has gone missing, his only friend is a tolerant librarian who teaches him about the Underground Railroad. (Hmm, some parallels, maybe?)

It was a touching, painful book. And Emma loved it. So did I.

[Kata · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a short story for younger children, but it was interesting to read about an 8 yr old Hungarian immigrant boy, PETI who tries to understand his family situation. The family is torn between dealing with life in America, and helping their family in Hungary behind the "Iron Curtain".