Excellent Character development, historical fiction ( )

“Why do they say she’s a witch?” Prudence demanded, as the two walked slowly back along the path. “Because they have never tried to get to know her. People are afraid of things they don’t understand. You won’t be afraid of her now, will you? You will go to see her when you can, even if I’m not there?”

Sixteen year old Kit has lost all of her family in Barbados. Under some vague circumstances, she hastily gets passage in the first available ship to seek out relatives in the colony of Connecticut. Kits rather privileged upbringing causes an immediate clash with her Puritan relatives, and she seeks out the company of a Quaker woman who has been ostracized from the community some people believe she is a witch. Not all people or things are what they initially seem to be in this story though.

This book was written in 1959 and won the Newbery Medal. The writing still holds up well and is equally readable for adults and children. ( )

Independent reading level: 5+
Awards: Newbery Award

I didn't think I was going to like this book after reading the first few chapters; too many hot-headed religious types for my taste. But I stuck with it, and was pleasantly surprised. I predicted long before how it was going to turn out. But it is sometimes not an unexpected conclusion that makes a book worthwhile, but rather how the author takes the reader to the longed-for conclusion. And there were a couple of surprises after all. I'm glad I gave this one a chance.

"Kit," the teenage heroine, leaves Barbados to go live with her aunt and her aunt's husband and children, none of whom has she ever met. Kit does a colossal job of not fitting in - so much so that the fanatically religious Puritans decide to put her on trial as a witch. But Kit is not the eponymous "witch of Blackbird pond." That appellation belongs to another - a poor, elderly Quaker woman, who is also in great danger from the community. ( )

In this Newbery Medal-winning novel, a girl faces prejudice and accusations of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Connecticut. A classic of historical fiction that continues to resonate across the generations.

Sixteen-year-old Kit Tyler is marked by suspicion and disapproval from the moment she arrives on the unfamiliar shores of colonial Connecticut in 1687. Alone and desperate, she has been forced to leave her beloved home on the island of Barbados and join a family she has never met.

Torn between her quest for belonging and her desire to be true to herself, Kit struggles to survive in a hostile place. Just when it seems she must give up, she finds a kindred spirit. But Kit's friendship with Hannah Tupper, believed by the colonists to be a witch, proves more taboo than she could have imagined and ultimately forces Kit to choose between her heart and her duty.