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Title details for The Blue Star by Tony Earley - Available

The Blue Star

by Tony Earley
Kirby Heyborne
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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Eight years ago, readers everywhere fell in love with Jim Glass, the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in a tender and wise story of young love on the brink of World War Two.
Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with his classmate Chrissie Steppe. Unfortunately, Chrissie is Bucky Bucklaw’s girlfriend, and Bucky has joined the navy on the eve of war. Jim vows to win Chrissie’s heart in Bucky’s absence, but the war makes high school less than a safe haven and gives a young man’s emotions a grown man’s gravity. When Bucky returns to Aliceville a fallen hero, Jim finds himself adrift in a once-familiar town where everything, including Chrissie, seems to be changing.  
With the uncanny insight into the well-intentioned heart that made Jim the Boy a modern classic, Tony Earley has fashioned a nuanced and unforgettable portrait of America in another time–making it feel even more real than our own day. This is a moving story of discovery, loss, and growing up, showing again that Tony Earley’s writing “radiates with a largeness of heart” (Esquire).

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 11, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415949450
      • File size: 200212 KB
      • Duration: 06:57:06

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In Tony Earley's earlier novel, JIM THE BOY, Jim Glass is 10 years old in Aliceville, North Carolina, during the Depression. In this novel, the world teeters on the brink of WWII, and Jim, a senior in high school, is in the throes of his first love. Alas, the object of Jim's affections, Chrissie, belongs to someone else. Earley offers a simple tale filled with pre-WWII optimism and sage counsel: "Being in love is like getting run over. Sometimes it kills you, and sometimes it don't." Narrator Kirby Heyborne manages to keep things nostalgic rather than ironic, bittersweet rather than sentimental. Heyborne's youthful voice convinces, as Jim learns difficult lessons. Listeners of all ages will enjoy a brief respite with decent folks, in a sweeter, gentler time. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 3, 2007
      The small dramas of teenage love get caught in the crosswinds of a war in this sequel to the 2001 bestseller Jim the Boy
      . It's late summer 1941, and Jim Glass, now a high school senior, has an earnest, unshakable passion for classmate Chrissie Steppe. But as straightforward as his feelings are, the circumstances of his nascent romance are complex: Chrissie's family is indebted to their landlord, whose sailor son Bucky claimed Chrissie as his girl before shipping out to serve on the USS California
      at Pearl Harbor. Throughout Jim's fraught final year at school, he relies on the advice of his uncles, but after Pearl Harbor is bombed, they can't protect him from the war's toll. Questions of patriotism, sexuality and poverty weave their way into a narrative that's deceptive in its simplicity: the growing pains that Jim and his friends experience pack a startling emotional punch.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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