| Booktalk
#1
"Blindness is purity.
Blindness is unity. Blindness is freedom." All his life, Jacob
had been taught to believe this. And the community of Harmony was
founded on these basic principles. As Jacob gives his school report,
we learn that "the Foundation was created in 2102 by Francis and Jean Aldrick
from the city of Toronto in a nation knows as Canada. ... Both Francis
and Jean had been born blind. They wanted their children to be a
part of their way of life, so they decided that their children would share
this trait, creating the first generation of children intentionally born
with what some considered a disability. The publicity generated by
the event persuaded several other couples in Canada and the United States
to do the same." From those beginnings, a new society was formed.
And now, the isolated colony of Harmony lives by the laws of the community.
Or do they? When something amazing happens to Jacob, he begins to
"see" his utopia in a brand new light.
Booktalk #2
Jacob is growing up in Harmony
Station. This colony was established on a distant planet by an association
of blind people who have had themselves genetically altered so that their
offspring will be blind, too. Jacob is approaching his pivotal 13th birthday.
It is then that a series of severe headaches leaves him with his sight.
He sees the natural beauty of the world around him, but also realizes that
people are not what they seem. Sentenced to surgical blinding after his
secret is revealed, Jacob flees into uncertainty. (Pennsylvania
Young Reader’s Choice Awards nominee, 2008-2009) |
