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A Handful of Time (Penguin)
Kit Pearson's A Handful of Time (Penguin 1987) is a junior novel that explores the psychological aspects of time shift fantasy.
Twelve year old Patricia is a shy, reserved Torontonian suffering from the conflicts of her parents' impending divorce. Upon joining her cousins at their summer cottage and feeling like an unwelcome outsider, Patricia enters a second time period 35 years earlier. The talisman or device which initiates the travel is an old pocket watch. But the force which propels Patricia into the past is really her own emotional turbulence.
During her visits to the past Patricia observes the hardships of her mother when she was on the brink of adolescence. An invisible and ghost-like witness at these times, Patricia sees her mother struggling within a family that expected girls to be subservient and docile. Seen as a highly intelligent and fiery rebel, the mother wins her daughter's understanding and compassion as never before.
A Handful of Time is the story of three generations of women: the dominating, manipulative grandmother, the tense mother who works as a CBC TV host, and Patricia. The details of canoeing, horse back riding, summer hijinks and conflict with cousins are the perennial stuff of many a summer adventure story. But the time travel element is what makes this novel special. It is treated with the same quiet restraint and subtle control that is exhibited in the writing style.
With this book Pearson has become only the fifth B.C. writer ever to earn the Canadian Library Association's Book-of-the- Year award. Since children's librarians began presenting the prize in 1947, the other B.C. recipients have been Roderick Haig-Brown, Catherine Anthony Clark, Christie Harris (twice) and Ann Blades.--by Judith Saltman
[BCBW Summer 1988]
Twelve year old Patricia is a shy, reserved Torontonian suffering from the conflicts of her parents' impending divorce. Upon joining her cousins at their summer cottage and feeling like an unwelcome outsider, Patricia enters a second time period 35 years earlier. The talisman or device which initiates the travel is an old pocket watch. But the force which propels Patricia into the past is really her own emotional turbulence.
During her visits to the past Patricia observes the hardships of her mother when she was on the brink of adolescence. An invisible and ghost-like witness at these times, Patricia sees her mother struggling within a family that expected girls to be subservient and docile. Seen as a highly intelligent and fiery rebel, the mother wins her daughter's understanding and compassion as never before.
A Handful of Time is the story of three generations of women: the dominating, manipulative grandmother, the tense mother who works as a CBC TV host, and Patricia. The details of canoeing, horse back riding, summer hijinks and conflict with cousins are the perennial stuff of many a summer adventure story. But the time travel element is what makes this novel special. It is treated with the same quiet restraint and subtle control that is exhibited in the writing style.
With this book Pearson has become only the fifth B.C. writer ever to earn the Canadian Library Association's Book-of-the- Year award. Since children's librarians began presenting the prize in 1947, the other B.C. recipients have been Roderick Haig-Brown, Catherine Anthony Clark, Christie Harris (twice) and Ann Blades.--by Judith Saltman
[BCBW Summer 1988]
Submitted on December 9, 2003 in By David.
