Though the history behind this story isn't something that is a time/place that I'd normally be interested in, Speare is very talented and I could hardly put the book down. I wanted so much for Daniel to be ready to give up his vengeance and have something more in his life, and I read eagerly, hoping for that. Daniel had a lot to learn about the world, and it was a relief to watch him learn it. ( )

It is a mixed pleasure sometimes when you revisit a book you loved as a child. There is always the fear that it won't be as good as you remembered, that your childhood innocence painted the book with its own colors and made it more than mere entertainment to you. Elizabeth George Speare's The Bronze Bow is one such book for me. On a whim, I decided to reread it for the first time in years.

The Bronze Bow is the story of Daniel bar Jamin, a young Galilean Jew living during the time of Christ. His father and mother died at the hands of the Romans, and his younger sister Leah has been left traumatized and empty. Daniel is a Zealot and lives in the mountains with the rebel Rosh, who he believes will raise an army to rout the Romans from Israel. When his grandmother dies, forcing Daniel to come down to the village and take care of Leah, he hates the cage of responsibility and longs to do something active against Roman rule. But Rosh doesn't seem to share that urgency... Is this wandering preacher, Jesus, the strong leader that Israel has been waiting for?

Speare does a good job keeping the story light enough for young readers but dark enough for more mature minds to imagine the backdrop. Daniel's father was crucified along with five other men for trying to rescue his brother-in-law from slavery. Leah's traumatization occurred because as a five-year-old child, she stole out and saw the gruesome scene of her father's crucifixion. The grandmother's death scene is shown, and some of Daniel's friends are killed during a rescue mission. Looking back, I see that I unconsciously took all these darker elements as a compliment from the author to me, the reader: even so young, I could handle them. And these sad pieces of reality are probably what gave the book its resonance, why I have remembered it with such affection all these years.

The characters are well drawn. Daniel especially is a very complete character, but the others are very good too. I found Rosh particularly intriguing. Daniel thinks the Romans are the villains, but slowly we come to see (along with him) that Rosh is a parasite too, using the Romans as an excuse for his own pillaging. The lessons about misplaced hero-worship and the growing awareness that comes with maturity are subtle but unmistakable. Thacia, Joel, and Leah are also quite vivid people to me.

Sometimes the writing seemed a bit stiff, and other times it was just perfect. It reminded me of the style of Ann Weil's Red Sails to Capri; I don't think there was as much emphasis on avoiding "telling" in favor of "showing" in the 1960s. Some sentences and adjectives were so right that I remembered them even now; the Roman soldier standing in the "broiling sun" always stayed with me. The last scene of this story is perfect to a word. It's a fantastic culmination of character development and all the themes — vengeance, justice, forgiveness, grace — that have been brewing from the beginning of the book. Powerful stuff.

The Bronze Bow richly deserves the Newbery Medal it won in 1962, and it is a book I look forward to putting in my children's hands and minds. Highly recommended. ( )

publisher's summary: "This winner of the 1961 American Newbery Medal is the brilliantly imagined story of Daniel, a young Galilean boy who is obsessed with hatred of the Roman conquerors who crucified his father. He joins a band of young Jewish guerillas up in the hills in order to seek revenge, but he hears a gentle preacher called Jesus, and as time passes he comes to accept his teachings."

Life in Palestine under Roman occupation during the time of Jesus.

Major error: Chapter 22 starts “On the fifteenth day of Tishri, the Day of Atonement, ...” and it should read the “tenth day of Tishri”. ( )

Let me first say that I really liked this 1962 Newbery winner, and I wasn’t expecting I would. Set during the time of Jesus, the main character, an 18-year-old Galilean named Daniel bar Jamin, fled his home and blacksmith master five years before and has been living on a nearby mountain with outlaws who are supposedly preparing for the day the Jews will rise up against their Roman masters. Daniel’s hatred of the Romans is especially strong, given that they crucified his father, which led to his mother’s death and younger sister Leah’s regression into fear and solitude.

As the book opens, Daniel meets a brother and sister, Joel and Malthace (also called Thacia) who become a major part of the story, as does his friend Simon the Zealot, who becomes a disciple of Jesus. Daniel eventually meets Jesus and it ultimately changes his life. It’s a wonderful coming-of-age story, with the additional message of love and peace over hate and war.

The title of the book comes from Psalm 18, verse 34 (also 2 Samuel 22:35): “He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze” (p. 87). Daniel uses a drawing of a bronze bow as a sign to Joel and Thacia that he is hiding in their house in Capernaum. The verse becomes a touchstone for Daniel and a metaphor for his own internal struggle.

Written at a fifth-to-sixth grade reading level, the content is most appropriate for those ages and up. Narrator Mary Woods does a good job creating individual characterizations by voice without resorting to caricatures or accents.

In her Newbery acceptance speech, Speare explained that she wrote the book while teaching Sunday school because she "longed to lift the personality of Jesus off the flat and lifeless pages of our textbook. I wanted to give my pupils, and others like them, a glimpse of the divided and turbulent society of Palestine, an occupied country with many parallels in our own day. And I wanted to stir in them some personal sharing of what must have been the response of boys and girls who actually saw and heard the Carpenter from Nazareth….I longed to have them see that the preacher who walked the hills of Galilee was not a mythical figure, but a compelling and dynamic leader, a hero to whom a boy in any age would gladly offer all his loyalty."

Reading this (and the rest of her speech), it’s not surprising to learn that the book has been challenged when used as part of the curriculum in public schools. While not anti-Semitic or demeaning toward Jews, critics said it glorifies Christianity while portraying Judaism and its rabbis in a negative light.

Recently, a group of parents in San Rafael, California, was able to convince their public school district to drop the book as required reading in seventh grade in a unit on ancient Rome (but had no problems with the book being in the library). After reading the many links on their website, I can understand their position. As much as I liked this book and would recommend it to others, and don’t think it should ever be removed from any library, I believe it should be optional supplemental reading rather than required in public schools. ( )