Moon Over Manifest

Vanderpool, C. (2010). Moon over Manifest. New York: Delacorte Press.

Book Summary

Moon Over Manifest is the story of a young train jumper, Abilene. While she’s spent her life travelling the country with her father, this summer he’s sent her to live in the small town of Manifest, Kansas. Abilene makes it her mission to discover why this town means so much to her father and what he was like when he was a young boy around her age. In doing this, she discovers a box of old letters that tell the tales of Jinx and Ned, two boys in Manifest. In a parallel storyline, Abilene and her friends search for a local spy, the “Rattler,” while Ned and Jinx get into their own scrapes in the past. As Abilene discovers more and more about the stories of Ned and Jinx, she learns the truth of the people of Manifest and her own father.

Impressions

This book is a good example of an engaging historical fiction novel for elementary school readers. Abilene is a precocious but loveable character. As the story develops and more details come to light concerning Manifest’s past, the reader discovers secrets alongside Abilene. The characters in the down are fully developed and offer insights to what it was like to live in the U.S.A. during Prohibition and World War I. I listened to this book as an audiobook and the narrator was an appropriate age to be reading the story of a young girl. The use of accents and local slang was well done and brought the reader into a small southern town as they listened.  

Professional Review

Parked for the summer of 1936 in the small town of Manifest, Kansas, twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker goes looking for clues to her father's past and ends up finding her own future. In contrast to the many secrets and mysteries Abilene discovers—some revolving around letters she finds from 1918, others centered on present-day Manifest—she herself is an endearingly transparent character, and narrator Lamia channels her to perfection. Lamia differentiates characters with subtlety and skill, while any confusion arising from the time shift is eliminated by switching to different (equally engaging) narrators for the chapters set in 1918. A commendable audiobook production of Vanderpool's multi-layered, openhearted Newbery Medal winner.

Parravano, M. V. (2011, November 1). The Horn Book.

Library Uses

This would be a great book club book. It won the Newbery Award in 2011. In addition to book clubs, I’d include this on readers’ advisory lists for historical fiction and audiobooks for families. Although Abilene is a young girl, the inclusion of Jinx and Ned (and Abilene’s own adventurous nature), makes this a book that would appeal to both boys and girls.