Cobwebs

by Karen Romano Young

Book Overview

A girl walks across the Brooklyn Bridge, a backpack full of knitting slung over her shoulder, a green fish kite in her hand. A boy balances on the bridge's crisscross webbing, waiting for the girl to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060297611
• ISBN13: 9780060297619
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.3" x 7.4"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 and higher

Customer Reviews

Completely Stunning Book

I was shocked to see how many poor customer reviews this book has recieved, then I actually read them, and I realized why. Cobwebs is the curl-up-under-the-covers kind of book that only true readers can appreciate. You have to ignore the fact that the book is a little bizarre, because that makes it all the more enjoyable. If you're looking for something along the lines of "The Sisterhood Of The Travelling Pants" or "TTYL" don't even bother with this book. Its deep, poetic prose and mysterious plot leave a lot to the imagination. Sadly, not everyone is turned on to a book because of that. Cobwebs has also been called "confusing" or "weird". It is neither. It is simply a book written by an author who saw another way around the generic "girly-girly" books that female readers seem so captivated by. Nancy and Dion's relationship is not what you would expect of two teenagers, and all the characters have an old-timey appeal which is completely beautiful. Cobwebs made me cry, but it also made me think deeply, which is the sign of a great book. If you have an imagination and if you are open to something more than your average book, read Cobwebs.

Summary and Review from a book enthusist

Review on Cobwebs Book By: Karen Romano Young In the book Cobwebs, Nancy, a 16 year old teenager living with her family of spiders, has yet to find a place in her own world. She wants to be a spider, one like her fun loving father, but she'll have to get over her fear of heights first. Nancy is unfortunately caught in between her ground-dwelling mother and her roof-dwelling father, getting the wrong end of the gene pool stick. With her mother's fear of heights and her father's fear of being underground she finds it difficult to belong anywhere in her family's world. Nancy can knit well for a girl her age but, sadly, she thinks knitting will be the only thing she'll be able to do that is even close to being a spider. Her spider self hasn't shown up in Nancy, and so she feels as thought she won't ever become the spider she wants to be. Nancy's life gets even more complicated during this story. When a mysterious boy, named Dion, pulls on the threads of Nancy's heart, he draws her into his life that is inexplicably already a part of her own. An unknown man with many aliases demands that Grandpa Joke and Granny heal his ill wife or else he'll reveal her family's deepest secret. The woman Joke must help seems to be stealing the life right out of Nancy's grandma; the thing about it is granny's supposedly only there to visit the patient and help as Joke's assistant. To top it off there are stories of an Angel of Brooklyn stopping crime all over the city from the roofs above the streets. What is a young spider to do? Karen Romano Young has truly made mastery work. She's spun a story fit to delight and reader, beginner or avid. Its many twists are sure to make every reader devour the whole thing in one sitting. The ending is beautifully sad but satisfying in a way that in the end you know see the end of every thread spun into the story. The detail is just right without leading you blind but not over doing it. The whole story shows the beauty in all things; even the bald boy perched on the bridge rail, and leaves in those uncomfortable, gritty things, for instance: the feel of rust and sweat on Nancy's palms. The characters in the story are so real you can connect with them, feel for them, and ultimately fall in love with them; even with the unrealistic situations presented into Nancy's complicated life. The characters themselves to the reader is like the spider to the fly, they draw you in, and don't let go till the last few pages. There were some minor infractions about the story. In the book, Karen Young jumps from person to person: Dion to Nancy to Rachel {Nancy's mother}, then back to Dion, etcetera. Other people, that I have asked what they thought of the book, have said it is confusing and hard to follow. I'm not sure if everyone has had the same issues with the book because I've read it and was able to understand it easily with the first read. That issue varies, I guess, from reader to reader. That being the case, for those reasons, you as a

A must read! Really! You must read it!!

Cob Webs is such a beautiful book that deserves the praise of kings. This book was so heart-stoppingly breath-taking, it is one of my personal favorites that's so very close to my heart. the characters are both real and completely unreal and the plot of the heroine trying to find herself and who she is, mixed with inevitable romance, is classic yet Karen Romano Young truely made it stand out. I can't believe it only got so very few reviews its that wonderful...

Thoroughly reccomended

I picked up Cobwebs randomly in B & N, being rushed out of the store by my mother, and I am too pleased that I happened to choose this book. The protagonist, Nancy, is a wonderfully drawn character, the kind every teenage girl can identify with, despite her remarkably different problems than the average teenager. Dion, the boy who haunts playgrounds and rooftops in Brooklyn and has a growing interest in Nancy, is also a beautifully developed character who intrigues the reader. The plot is spun as tightly, seamlessly and intricately as the spider webs it revolves around, twisting real-life Brooklyn with fantasy, involving spiders and angels, journalists and healers, among much else. Not only is the story captivating and the characters realistic and interesting, the prose is lovely, with a soft touch to it, dulling the edges, so to speak, and making the novel "feel" more like a fantasy novel even as it describes the rough-and-tough, teenager-confusing lives of Brooklynites Nancy and Dion, as well as their families. Two days after gobbling this book in one gulp, I am still carrying it around and rereading passages--this book grabs you and doesn't let you go! Read it now, or you will be sorry!

Brooklyn from the Rooftops

An edgy 'coming into herself' story with a twist -- Cobwebs creates a parallel universe out of Brooklyn, a place of rooftops and water towers, of angels who protect strangers and romance between a tender-hearted skinhead and a dark, tangled girl who tromps the streets in her Doc Martins because she can't fly. This marvel of a book is magic realism at its best.