Wednesday, May 4, 2016

City of Orphan Book Review

City of Orphans
By Avi
                City of Orphans is about a boy named Maks that is a newspaper salesman on the streets of New York in 1893. His sister, Emma, is imprisoned. She is being accused of stealing because she is poor and the poor steal, but this poor young Emma doesn’t steal, however she is accused of doing such a thing. On the other side Maks is standing on the street when he sees the Pugg Ugly Gang walking up to him. He makes a run for it and winds up in an ally way and meets a girl, Willa. She beat up the Pugg Ugly Gang with her wooden stick. As a favor, Maks gives Willa a job and shelter and while Willa does Maks’ job for him, Maks goes and finds a lawyer or detective to save Emma from jail (a.k.a. in this book it is called, “The Tombs”). This book has the right amount of suspense to hold your attention.

                When I was reading the book, I noticed that I could follow the plot and it also made sense. Avi has expertise in this subject, life in 1893 in the tenement buildings. While I was reading the book it created a feeling of being in the time of the book. The author writes like he is talking to the reader. I could visualize what was going on in the book. The author was very descriptive. Since the book appealed to me then obviously it would appeal to other teens too. If I was going to choose the audience of this book, then I would definitely pick middle school because even though I liked it, there was some hard vocabulary in the book. If I was a librarian, I would totally have this magnificent book in the library collection. Sehajveer D., Teen Reviewer