Run Far, Run Fast
written and illustrated by Timothy Decker, 2007, Asheville, North Carolina: Front Street. (1590784693)
written and illustrated by Timothy Decker, 2007, Asheville, North Carolina: Front Street. (1590784693)
Media: pen and ink
Awards and Honors:
Selected by White Ravens Catalogue – 250 Outstanding International Children’s Books of 2008.
English Language Section – International Youth Library – Schloss Blutenburg, Munich, GERMANY.
First Place Cover/Jacket – Adult Graphic Novel Series – 2009 New York Book Show.
Annotation: A young girl in plague ravaged fourteenth-century Europe flees her family and her town, wandering the villages and countryside alone in search of refuge until she meets a stranger who she hopes will be able to help.
Personal Reaction:
A short and simple tale of one girl's experience is enriched with emotion and historical detail through stark black and white illustrations. Decker deftly employs crosshatched pen and ink drawings and graphic novel formatting in telling his story. Though the text is concise and dialogue is minimal, multiple wordless panels provide the reader with details about the characters, the setting and the devastating toll of the Black Death.
Decker doesn't spare the reader the grim details of the plague; we see churchyards filled with freshly dug graves, shrouded bodies lying in village streets and the baseball sized swollen nodes of plague victims. He also includes historical details (such as a few panels featuring the rats which were vectors of the disease, a group a children playing "Ring-Around-the-Rosie", interiors of abandoned monasteries, and self-flagellating pilgrims) that lend this book to inclusion in lessons about the Black Death.
The tone of the story is bleak. The text is filled with lines like, "The pestilence swept away all the was. When it passed, when the fear and confusion ebbed, only sorrow remained". The characters all have similar featureless countenances with no mouths and sorrowful downturned eyes. Yet we see small reasons for hope when the girl meets a stranger who feeds her and shares with her what little understanding he has of the plague. On the last page of the book we see the girl and her younger brother sleeping in the stranger's house, while he reads quietly in a chair by the hearth. There is a pot on the fire and plants in the window box, yet even in this scene of relative domestic tranquility the stranger's bird-like plague mask hanging on the wall suggests that the characters are not completely secure.
Use of simile: (p. 4) "Every year was the same until her tenth summer. The Pestilence entered the girl's world like a tide."
Use of repetition/ Use of personification: (p. 12) "A soldier told her the gates of the city were locked to keep the Pestilence out. But the Pestilence was already in the city."
Personal Reaction:
A short and simple tale of one girl's experience is enriched with emotion and historical detail through stark black and white illustrations. Decker deftly employs crosshatched pen and ink drawings and graphic novel formatting in telling his story. Though the text is concise and dialogue is minimal, multiple wordless panels provide the reader with details about the characters, the setting and the devastating toll of the Black Death.
Decker doesn't spare the reader the grim details of the plague; we see churchyards filled with freshly dug graves, shrouded bodies lying in village streets and the baseball sized swollen nodes of plague victims. He also includes historical details (such as a few panels featuring the rats which were vectors of the disease, a group a children playing "Ring-Around-the-Rosie", interiors of abandoned monasteries, and self-flagellating pilgrims) that lend this book to inclusion in lessons about the Black Death.
The tone of the story is bleak. The text is filled with lines like, "The pestilence swept away all the was. When it passed, when the fear and confusion ebbed, only sorrow remained". The characters all have similar featureless countenances with no mouths and sorrowful downturned eyes. Yet we see small reasons for hope when the girl meets a stranger who feeds her and shares with her what little understanding he has of the plague. On the last page of the book we see the girl and her younger brother sleeping in the stranger's house, while he reads quietly in a chair by the hearth. There is a pot on the fire and plants in the window box, yet even in this scene of relative domestic tranquility the stranger's bird-like plague mask hanging on the wall suggests that the characters are not completely secure.
Use of simile: (p. 4) "Every year was the same until her tenth summer. The Pestilence entered the girl's world like a tide."
Use of repetition/ Use of personification: (p. 12) "A soldier told her the gates of the city were locked to keep the Pestilence out. But the Pestilence was already in the city."
(p. 18) "A soldier told her the city gates were locked to seal the Pestilence within the walls and thus protect others. But the Pestilence could not be caged."
Curricular Connection: Middle school world history: Black Death/bubonic plague
Curricular Connection: Middle school world history: Black Death/bubonic plague
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