Time-Traveling Black Kid Earns Praise for New Novel, "The Black Canary"

"The Black Canary" (McElderry Books, Simon & Schuster) has attracted early plaudits for its young black hero from Pittsburgh and his unexpected plunge into the past trapped in Elizabethan London. Almost-thirteen James struggles to keep his head above water in an unfamiliar world as, time after time, he fails in his desperate attempts to make his way back to his own time. What he finds instead are music, danger - and himself.

(PRWEB) February 16, 2005 -- A starred review in Booklist (2/15/05) has highlighted "The Black Canary" (McElderry Books, Simon & Schuster), a new time-travel adventure from award-winning author Jane Louise Curry. Noting that the novel is "One of the few time-travel fantasies for children with an African-American character, let alone protagonist," Booklist says of its young hero that "readers will gladly follow him through the portals for the pleasure of his company as well as the need to know what will happen next."

"The Black Canary" has more surprises for young-and adult-readers than its unexpected turns of plot. Its hero, James Parrett, a biracial almost-thirteen-year-old who feels alternately smothered and neglected by his close-knit family, is in search of himself. Most of us are, or were, at almost-thirteen. James, however, finds-and very nearly loses-himself not in the here and now, but four hundred years in the past, in the London of the first Queen Elizabeth. And this is not your parents Elizabethan London. Splendid and exciting it may be, but it is crowded, turbulent and dangerous, too; it is dirty, and often stinks; its politics are treacherous; its winter is bitter and dark; and, astonishingly, children are stolen off the streets in the queens name. James, snatched along with young Thomas Clifton (an actual historical kidnapping, this) to be pressed into the queens service as an actor-singer, is drawn-not entirely against his will-dangerously far into this new life. You hold your breath, and follow.

The novel gives readers portraits of real Elizabethans, from the boy singers and actors of the Chapel Royal to the tempestuous poet-playwright Ben Jonson and soon-to-be-doomed Earl of Leicester, but of particular interest in Black History Month is the realization that the London of Elizabeth I had a significant population of free "blackamoors," both African and English-born, who were for the most part servants, but also merchants, musicians and entertainers-including the black servants, musicians and dancers of the queens court. These Londoners of color often married white English wives and husbands, and they persisted or even thrived despite periodic rumblings of "Send them back where they came from." Offstage, of course, London merchant adventurers were gearing up the profitable Africa-America slave trade, which was to build huge private and commercial fortunes-a cultural schizophrenia that would persist until Parliaments abolition of the slave trade in 1807. (The books web site, theblackcanary.com, provides links to a number of U.K. Black History sites of interest to general readers as well as to teachers and students.)

Played out against so rich a background, young James Parretts search to regain the world he has lost is made more desperate and more poignant, and readers will share his deepening fascination with the new world he has gained.

"The Black Canary," by Jane Louise Curry.

McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division, 2005, $16.95. ISBN: 0-689-86478-7.

For additional information, visit www.theblackcanary.com.

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