Independent reading level: 5+
Awards: Newbery Award

I didn't think I was going to like this book after reading the first few chapters; too many hot-headed religious types for my taste. But I stuck with it, and was pleasantly surprised. I predicted long before how it was going to turn out. But it is sometimes not an unexpected conclusion that makes a book worthwhile, but rather how the author takes the reader to the longed-for conclusion. And there were a couple of surprises after all. I'm glad I gave this one a chance.

"Kit," the teenage heroine, leaves Barbados to go live with her aunt and her aunt's husband and children, none of whom has she ever met. Kit does a colossal job of not fitting in - so much so that the fanatically religious Puritans decide to put her on trial as a witch. But Kit is not the eponymous "witch of Blackbird pond." That appellation belongs to another - a poor, elderly Quaker woman, who is also in great danger from the community. ( )

In this Newbery Medal-winning novel, a girl faces prejudice and accusations of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Connecticut. A classic of historical fiction that continues to resonate across the generations.

Sixteen-year-old Kit Tyler is marked by suspicion and disapproval from the moment she arrives on the unfamiliar shores of colonial Connecticut in 1687. Alone and desperate, she has been forced to leave her beloved home on the island of Barbados and join a family she has never met.

Torn between her quest for belonging and her desire to be true to herself, Kit struggles to survive in a hostile place. Just when it seems she must give up, she finds a kindred spirit. But Kit's friendship with Hannah Tupper, believed by the colonists to be a witch, proves more taboo than she could have imagined and ultimately forces Kit to choose between her heart and her duty.

READING LEVEL: 5.7 AR POINTS: 9.0
(10 years, grades 5-7)
Winner of the Newbery Award

A classic originally published in 1958, and won the 1959 Newbery Medal.

I thought this was going to be a fantasy novel about witches and sorcery. I wanted to read it because 1) It's a classic; 2) It's pretty highly rated; and 3) I'm looking for good books for my grandies.

No worries here. This is a great historical novel based on the true facts about how the early Puritans so easily labeled women who didn't conform to their liking as "witches". Such ridiculousness! And, it is actually a sweet and innocent coming-of-age, and finding love, kind of novel. Young love is so fresh, innocent and beautiful. The author captured it perfectly. You know what I mean...when she's betrothed to one snarky, rich man but suddenly makes a connection to someone else who she has so much in common with and not much else to give...but he's the one you're rootin' for. Unfortunately, the very end fell just a little bit flat for me. ( )

How did a free spirit survive in Puritan New England? Speare imagines an answer to that question through the vibrant character Kit Tyler. The narrator for the book assumes each voice in the story with ease and I was transported to a time and place radically different from my own.
Classic memorable tale. ( )