High on the Hog

By Kimberly Olson Fakih

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374332096
• ISBN13: 9780374332099
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.8" x 5.5"
• Age Range: 10 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 7

Customer Reviews

I loved it. Tender, literary, amusing.

Family secrets can do damage in a family, and all that has been chronicled in the media. Here's a story that shows not all secrets are bad, and some, upon discovery, can be liberating. Trapp is a girl who goes from self-absorbed, child-centered darkness to a state of illumination as she learns the truth of her ancestry. The contrasts that Olson Fakih sets up are marvelous: stiff photographs and the warmth of a family hug; the vinegar smell of the little-used parlour with the animated center-of-the-home, her great-grandparents' kitchen. She allows the story to unfold slowly, true, but the descriptions are worth lingering over; I've used passages with children to practice sensory writing, with great results. The era of Trapp's farm seems modern, but the story has an old-fashioned kindliness permeating it; everyone is good, everyone looks out for the other, everyone leads complex lives that make answers of black and white nigh on impossible. Not a suspense thriller, but an amble down a country road with a family that leads good and simple, but very rich lives.