Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush

Description: Fourteen-year-old Tree, resentful of her working mother who leaves her in charge of a retarded brother, encounters the ghost of her dead uncle and comes to a deeper understanding of her family's problems.

Brief description:

Virginia Hamilton's books have won many awards and honors. One of these, the first book ever to win both the John Newbery Medal and the National Book Award, M.C. Higgins, the Great, was also the recipent of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. Her Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush--a National Book Award Finalist, Newbery Honor Book, and Coiretta Scott King Award winner--is another towering classic of young adult literature. The Planet of Junior Brown was a Newbery Honor Book in 1971, and four of Virginia Hamilton's other books have been named Notable Children's books by the American Library Association.

Review Quotes:

"This is Hamilton at her best, with a humane acceptance of people in their struggle, and hope for the power of their love." - School Library Journal (starred review)

"Just read the first page, just the first paragraph, of Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush. Then stop--if you can. The last time a first paragraph chilled my spine like this one, I was sixteen years old, hunched over a copy of Rebecca. It fairly reaches off the first page to grab you. Unique...wonderfully human." - New York Times

"One of Hamilton's deeply felt family stories. Like other Hamilton novels this has its rough edges, but they are outweighed here by the blazing scenes, the intensity of Tree's feelings, the glimpses of Dab through her eyes, and the rounded characterization of Vy." - Kirkus Reviews

"Characters as complex, contradictory, and ambivalent as is life itself: sometimes weak, sometimes attractive, always fiercely human. Few writers for young people are as daring, inventive, and challenging to read as Virginia Hamilton." - Horn Book Magazine

"This is a superb book, convincing and profoundly affecting." - Publishers Weekly