Amos and Hannah

About the Book

Hannah finds returning to the Maine island of her mother’s ancestors even harder to deal with than being the middle one in the family… being a girl… trying to be a good artist. Brother Hossley is Mom’s “man of the house” and football buddy with Hannah’s friend Duane; precious little Sally is everyone’s pet. But though Hannah thinks she knows what she wants to be, she doesn’t know who she is. No one understands until Amos appears.

He comes to the island for mysterious and terrible reasons of his own, but the only one he talks about is his determination to continue carving the local birds; this special skill had been inspired, he says, by a famous Down East carver he had known years ago. In spite of almost everyone’s disapproval, Amos becomes Hannah’s art mentor, father figure and good friend, and life moves seemingly smoothly until a nearly tragic event rips open the mysteries of the past and suggests a new future. An added cause of stress for the islanders is the stealing of Duane’s dad’s lobster catch from their underwater holding tank – a serious crime in the fishermen’s world.

To get hints of Hannah’s progress, the reader can consider the significance of the yellow chickadee, the touch-football scrimmage at Redmond’s, and the live lobster on the woodland path. The Maine setting is vivid and authentic. This is a good read for a spectrum of ages; teen and adult alike will delight in the glimpse of the bird-carving world and will find reading between the lines suggests many questions to ponder on life and love in today’s confusing times.

About the Author

Elizabeth McKey Hulbert is an author and artist who lives on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. Her books for children include Out and In (Scholastic); I Love to Ski, The Memory Quilt, Milkweed and Winkles – A Wild Child’s Cookbook (all Windswept House); and A Fisherman’s Daughter (MOEF). Her articles have appeared in Down East, Yankee, Catskills Quarterly, Chip Chats, WoodenBoat and New Hampshire Profiles, and in newspapers in Maine, Delaware and New York. For many years she worked in the editorial, advertising, and museum fields. She enjoys books, writing, art, her children and grandchildren, hiking, cooking, travel and gardens.