Throwing Shadows

by E. L. Konigsburg

Overview

' A retired college president is determined to best a young beachcomber

' A store manager accuses a boy of shoplifting

' A tour guide strikes a bargain with an enterprising orphan

' A boy recovering from a broken arm befriends an elderly woman

in an old folks' home

' A widow and her son seize an opportunity presented

by a pair of antiques dealers

In each of these extraordinary short stories from the perceptive pen of E. L. Konigsburg, a chance meeting between two people casts a shadow on what things have been and what they can become, and changes a life forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416949596
Publisher:	Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	09/25/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.62(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1010L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

E.L. Konigsburg is the only author to have won the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year. In 1968, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler won the Newbery Medal and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was named a Newbery Honor Book. Almost thirty years later she won the Newbery Medal once again for The View from Saturday. Among her other acclaimed books are Silent to the Bone, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, and The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World.

Editorial Reviews

"five short stories...all crisp and compactly tailored in setting forth their common theme of self-awareness."

— Booklist, starred review

"Five short stories...all crisp and compactly tailored in setting forth their common theme of self-awareness." — Booklist, starred review

From the Publisher

This 1996 Newbery Medal winner charts the ties that bind four members of an extraordinarily successful 6th-grade quiz bowl team. In a starred review, PW called it "glowing with humor and dusted with magic." Ages 8-12. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 4-6Take four sixth graders; combine them as the Epiphany School team for Academic Bowl; add one paraplegic teacher; toss in formal tea times, grandparents of team members getting married, and some magic and calligraphy. Stir them with Konigsburg's masterful hand and you have an ingenious story. Nadia, Noah, Julian, and Ethan are not the top honor students, but Mrs. Olinski has chosen them for other reasons, ones unclear even to her. As the team beats all odds and expectations and reaches the finals, flashbacks told by each member shape a scenario that's like a bundle of pick-up sticks, each piece touching, supporting, and overlapping with the others, and one move effects them all. Stunning interplay of Nadia's turtle watches on Florida beaches, Noah's role as best man at a senior-citizen wedding, Ethan's discovery of himself through new friends, and Julian's ethical decision involving a bully skillfully wrap their stories into one, with amazing insights. Brilliant writing melds with crystalline characterizations in this sparkling story that is a jewel in the author's crown of outstanding work.Julie Cummins, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

Admirable acts, challenging ideas, and grace notes positively festoon this superb tale of four sixth graders and a paraplegic teacher forming a junior high Academic Bowl team that sweeps away the competition.

The plot is composed of interwoven puzzles. What prompts Mrs. Olinski to choose Noah, Nadia, Ethan, and Julian for the team over the usual overachievers and honor students in her class? What do they know about her, themselves, and each other that puts them so precisely on the same wavelength and gives them such complementary knowledge and experience? Each has a tale to tell, in the course of which all four witness acts of kindness and respect that teach them to find those feelings in themselves and others. In wry prose filled with vivid imagery, information, and often oblique clues, Konigsburg takes her team through bonding, drills, and a series of contests as suspenseful as any in sports fiction; the children and Mrs. Olinski's public triumph mirror inner epiphanies of rare depth and richness. The large cast, looping plot line, and embedded stories with different narrators require careful sorting, but the effort is eminently worthwhile, and Konigsburg kindly provides answers at the end.

Kirkus Reviews