The Other Side of Silence
by Margaret Mahy
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Description
As a member of a gifted, idiosyncratic, and argumentative family, twelve-year-old Hero chooses mutism until she reconciles the true with the real in her life.Tags
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Member Reviews
I'd say I was about 12 or 13 when I read this and the story has stayed with me since then. The smiling face of her sister in the newspaper. Having an older brother she could talk to. Losing her identity in nature and being nameless.
My poor mother had to deal with me experimenting with silence after reading this. I don't know how Hero managed to do it. I can't remember ever doing anything that upset people so much as my two or three forays into selective mutism, and the guilt I felt was immense every time.
My poor mother had to deal with me experimenting with silence after reading this. I don't know how Hero managed to do it. I can't remember ever doing anything that upset people so much as my two or three forays into selective mutism, and the guilt I felt was immense every time.
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Author Information
286+ Works 13,501 Members
Margaret Mahy was born on March 21, 1936 in Whakatane, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. She received a B.A. degree from the University of New Zealand. She worked as a nurse, an assistant librarian, and a children's librarian in England and New Zealand. Her first book, A Lion in the Meadow, was published in 1969. She became a full-time author in 1980. show more During her lifetime, she wrote more than 120 children's books including The Haunting, The Changeover, Memory, The Seven Chinese Brothers, The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate and A Summery Saturday Morning. She won the Esther Glen Award five times, the Carnegie Medal of the British Library Association three times, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Hans Christian Andersen Award, and in 1999, she won the New Zealand Post Children's Book Award in two categories, Picture Book and Supreme Award. She died after a brief illness on July 23, 2012 at the age of 76. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1995
- People/Characters
- Hero Rapper; Miss Credence; Rinda Credence
- First words
- I can't remember the first time I heard the scream, but I know I did hear it from time to time as I scrambled from one tree to another in the forest around Squintum's House.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And a little later, Sammy and Hero jogged off side by side, down Edwin Street, leaving the fire in the stove upstairs to finish its feast, and to find, on the other side of that feast, a silence of its own.
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- Members
- 118
- Popularity
- 275,126
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.64)
- Languages
- Dutch, English, Finnish, German
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 1
