Book Reviews by Jamie Morris: Genre 5, Book 2: LILY'S CROSSING by Patricia Reilly Giff

Bibliographic Data

Giff, Patricia Reilly. 1999. Lily’s Crossing. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell. ISBN: 0440414539.

Plot Summary

Lily Mollahan and her grandmother spend their summers in Rockaway, New York each year, and Lily’s father joins them on weekends when he can get away from work. in the summer of 1944, her best friend, Margaret, has to leave Rockaway with her family because her father has to work in the factories in Michigan for the military. Then a new kid, Albert, arrives to Rockaway to stay with his aunt and uncle for the summer. When Lily’s father visits for the first time that summer, he tells her he has to go to Europe for the military. Angry at him, she doesn’t say goodbye, and regrets it. As she gets to know Albert, she learns he’s from Hungary and had to leave his sister in Europe, and he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye either. Lily tells him she’s going to swim out to the ships going to Europe and stowaway so she can join her father. Albert wants to go too! The two form a friendship as Lily teaches him to swim, and tries to find a way to tell him she was lying and they could never swim that far out to the ships.

Critical Analysis

This is a heart-warming story about friendship. Written for ages 9-12, Lily’s Crossing dives the reader into the deep embrace of the coastal town, Rockaway. The author vividly describes the small town in wonderful detail. The reader understands while reading this story how the war caused shortages and how people rationed and sacrificed for the war effort during World War II. Describing how many men were gone to war, and how the missing in action were remembered back at home with prayers, it’s easy to understand the angst and heartache citizens endured during this time period. Through all this, the reader follows two kids who still run about being kids, getting into mischief and devising great plans over the summer. Lily and Albert forge a friendship out of necessity, guilt, loneliness for missing family, and hope.

Lily has a problem with making up stories, and telling lies without thinking to stop herself. When her grandmother and the Orbans, Albert’s aunt and uncle, first suggest that Lily could teach Albert to swim and that they could be friends, she decides to avoid him. She succeeds for a while, but one day finds him trying to teach himself how to swim. She can’t just walk away and leave him to drown, so instead of just standing around watching him all day she decides she’ll go ahead and teach him to swim. As she goes out to him, a big wave comes up and she tries to reach him in time, but instead gets caught in it too. When they both come up, he teases her about her great swimming abilities. To cover, she tells him she plans on swimming all the way out to the boats at sea to board one and take it to Europe. He loves the idea, and wants to join her. She’s surprised he doesn’t call her a liar, and worse that he wants to actually do it! As he explains how he has to find his little sister, Lily feels the least she can do is teach him how to swim. As the summer goes on, though, she realizes he’s a bit of a hopeless case.

Nevertheless, Albert persists by revising the plan and telling her they’ll row out as far as they can, and swim the rest of the way. He’ll even wear a life jacket to help him stay afloat. She finally admits the truth to him, that she was lying because he embarrassed her that first day, and the boats are too far out to reach. He says he understands and drops it. She is surprised later to find him out in a rowboat trying to reach the boats – in a storm! – by himself. She takes their family rowboat out and gets to him right after a large wave capsizes his boat, and rescues him from the churning waters. He tells her he had no intention of going out in a storm, but he’s a bad rower and the storm came up while he was getting out as far as he had gotten, and he didn’t have time to get back to shore. She makes him promise not to try again, and suggests that she can write her dad and send the address he has for his sister to him, so he can look for her if he’s near her.

As luck would have it, her father is able to search for and find Albert’s sister Ruth, and he helps to get her back to him after his relatives return to Canada for the start of school. Lily returns to St. Albans, and rejoices when her father is able to return home too. My favorite part of the book is when Lily’s father tells her how Ruth felt bad for not getting to say goodbye to Albert before she was taken away to the hospital, and he had told her “saying goodbye didn’t matter, not a bit. What mattered were all the days you were together before that, all the things you remembered.” Lily returns to Rockaway the next summer, knowing she won’t see Margaret because her older brother went missing in the war, and her family can’t bear to go there without him. She doesn’t expect to see Albert, but is happy when her grandmother tells her they’re going over to eat at the Orbans because she can at least ask how he is. To her surprise, he comes out of their house, along with Ruth. He introduces his sister saying, “It’s Lily. It’s my best friend Lily.” It’s a wonderful way to end this tale of friendship.

Awards

1998 Newbery Honor Book
ALA Notable Book
Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book

Reviews

School Library Journal: "History is brought to life through Giff's well chosen details and descriptions. ... Despite convenient plot twists to reach a happy ending, Giff's well-drawn, believable characters and vivid prose style make this an excellent choice. A fine addition to collections that include Sonia Levitin's Silver Days (1989)."

The Horn Book: "Even without the dedication ('for Jim, and for the people I loved in St. Albans and Rockaway'), time and place in this World War II homefront novel are evoked with an intensity that suggests an autobiographical story. . . . Details such as snatches of popular songs, movie titles, and blackout precautions are woven with great effect into a realistic story of ordinary people who must cope with events beyond their comprehension."

Connections

Enrichment Activities

Random House provides several enrichment activities for this book:

http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385321426&view=tg

Another enrichment activity website for friendship is at: http://facs.pppst.com/friendship.html

Another enrichment activity website for lying is at: http://humanityquest.com/topic/art_activities/index.asp?theme1=lying

There are many enrichment activities online to learn about World War II: