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The Black Canary
by Jane Louise Curry
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2005. 279 pages.
Reviewed by Christy Risser-Milne
Books about time travel typically fall into one of two categories: fantastically amazing or BLECK. And as much as I wanted the story of a young mixed-race boy falling accidentally into Elizabethan England to be fantastically amazing, it wasn’t.
Although Curry has written more than thirty books for children, she really misses the mark with this one. There were so many opportunities for though-provoking situations, or personal growth in the characters that just passed by as the page was turned.
Twelve-year-old James comes from a family of artists and musicians, but his own angst about his direction in life leads him inexplicably through a time portal to the year 1600. This could be a really cool twist, but the way he gets from his bed to the portal is not magical or mystical, but rather is based upon a rather contrived noise that was bugging James (despite the fact that he was two floors up from the source of the noise).
Curry does, however, know her Elizabethan London. She manages to name-drop long-dead playwrights and musicians from the era who did not write Romeo and Juliet. This is, perhaps, the strongest attribute of the book. While her descriptions of London at that time in history did not come to life for me, she did capture the relative helplessness of the lower classes when they were noticed by the rich and powerful.
James is taken into the choir that entertains Queen Elizabeth (the first one). Not invited. Taken off the street. The up side is that poor children with amazing singing voices (such as James has) end up getting a free education, regular meals, and clothing. The down side is that they are taken from their families without warning.
For James, this means an added challenge in trying to reach the 1600 end of the portal that will take him home. But the way he met that challenge was uninteresting, as were the supporting characters with whom he had either conflict or friendship.
The Black Canary strikes one as if Curry tried to take the best parts of the Harry Potter books, A Wrinkle in Time, and Great Expectations and/or Oliver Twist and turn it into a modern classic. But it just doesn’t work.
I was also unimpressed by the cover art and packaging of this book. The boy whose face is shown on the cover looks in no way bi-racial. He looks wholly African-American, and this creates some cognitive dissonance from the start. The photo used on the other half of the cover is from the first part of the twentieth century. The artist who designed it would have been better served by actually reading the book.
I wanted to like this book, because I really enjoy time travel fantasies. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen this time.
Christy Risser-Milne is an editor and writer living in New England.
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