The Gift Moves by Steve Lyon

1. Title: The Gift Moves, no awards

2. Author: Steve Lyon

3. Illustrator: N/A

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: Laurel Leaf Books2004

5. Genre: Young Adult, Multi-Cultural, Post Apocalyptic

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 7^th grade onward

7. Will it engage teens?

Teenagers of today’s era will genuinely want to read this book, not only because of the perceptions and various themes, but also because the book takes place in a post apocalyptic society that has “moved on” from the extraordinarily technological world back to an almost Native American background, where people fear holding onto possessions and give everything away while everything is given to them, bartering without the barter portion, which is very different from our society and will entertain them with these differentness. Also, there are a lot of unique things in this book which will gain most teen boys attention without being too sci-fi for teen girls to be turned off by it. For example, trees grow batteries, cats talk, and spiders have emotions. Teenagers would also be interested in this book because it discusses thinking about suicide, mild sexual suggestions, and it is a very “green” novel as everything is recycled and reused with no waste.

8. A summary:

The entire book takes place in North Carolina, beginning at the South Fork of The New River, in “Boon,” short for Boone. This change in name and others like it is a representation of the fact that roughly two thousand years has passed from our current time. In Boon we, as the readers, meet the main character Path Down The Mountain or Path for short. She lives with her family farming and herding sheep, and has been given the opportunity to become an apprentice to Heron, who lives on the coastal beaches of NC. This opportunity allows her to follow her dream of becoming a weaver and allowing the cloth to “own her,” which really symbolizes that by doing this she can develop and utilize her creative gift of color and abstract art. Path’s mother, a former dancer in the city of Rollydee, Raleigh, had came to Boon to share her gift of dancing and met Path’s father, which lead to Path’s birth. Towards the end of the book, we find out that she took Path to Rollydee after living in Boon for the first few years of her life, but the responsibilities of being a mother interferes with her creative dancing so she gives Path back to her father with only a passing phrase, “’The gift moves” said my mother… “It moves” said my father” (174). This event and line are important because it demonstrates her mother’s loss of love towards her and Path’s own decent into depression and abandonment issues. While living with Heron, Path meets Bird and they instantly fall in love as Path paints herself with beautiful colors for him and he states, “No one had ever looked at me like that before. I felt she could look right through me and see the inside of me” (20).This book is also written through the narrative voices of Path and Bird in alternating chapters so the reader has an opportunity to see both the male and female perspectives on many different teen issues such as: a teen boy’s conflict with his mother and bonding with his father; teen girls resistance to authority through her interactions with Heron; and a teen girls vs. a teen boys perceptions of early love.

9. Personal Response.

I find the book to be one of the greatest young adult books that I have had the opportunity to read because it covers many issues that some teens go through and at the same time, I, as an adult can relate to the books interesting themes and suggestions. One thing that stuck out to me in the book was that it takes place in a post apocalyptic world that is actually happy and in most ways better than our own society. I think that the book relates to my experiences in that the beginning of the book takes place five miles from where I grew up. I associate this book as a book of its own and does not really relate to any other book I have read, which is why I love it so very much. I also made a multi-media connection to that of tribal peoples throughout the world.

10. Teaching ideas:

I would teach this book as a world literature piece in English II or an American literature piece in English III. I would us the multi-media approach to teach this to English II students through showing videos of tribal cultures to demonstrate the culmination of those beliefs and practices within the novel itself. An example of this would be through the media videos at http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places.