Review: Soul's Child
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 17, 2013
Soul's Child, the 2012 award-winning spell binder by Dianne Gray, unearthed and explored a love/hate relationship between co-dependent father and daughter.  Aurora Jones' life began to unravel after the accident which left her mother and younger sister dead, and Aurora in a coma for three weeks.  Aurora's lonely personal tragedy followed her recovery as the would-be dancer was sentenced to a life-time expectancy of living in a wheel-chair.The accident also gave Aurora an insatiable and uncontrollable urge to draw unnaturally realistic scenes she had never experienced.  Although she hid her drawings, her father, originally Mervin Oswald Jones, discovered their secret meanings, and began to capitalize on them.  Mervin legally changed his name to Clive Soul, and created a Hollywood TV show, "Soul Search", to "prove the reality of precognition, ghosts and demons. p. 1"  The show totally destroyed her trust in her father, when she learned he would do anything to take possession of her drawings.Throughout the book, Aurora sought true friendship, and struggled to find those she could really trust in an increasingly hostile environment.  She finally discovered the significance of her scribblings as her father became more and more dependent on them.  She feared for both hers and her father's life, as the webs between the pictures and real life inextricably entangled.I usually connect book reviews to the Common Core and sometimes the History Social Science Standards.  This is definitely a fiction piece, and it does not specifically teach any social studies.  A strong literature connection exists in which students could analyze the book referring to the Reading Standards for Literature.  For example, asking seventh grade students to work with standard "RL 6 Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text," will help them deeply understand the intricacies of this surprisingly complex novel.I highly recommend this book to mature readers.Soul's Child