The Trial

Rating:
Summary: "THE BOOK, IT WILL NEVER CLOSE"
Review: It's not possible for me to be 'chatty' about this story. Jen Bryant writes in free verse about the year of the "Bruno Hauptmann Trial" ending in February 1935. When I read the story she has embroidered around this event my mind plays a newsreel of all the happenings of those three years following the kidnapping of Anne & Charles Lindbergh's baby son from their New Jersey home. Growing up in New York State the trauma of those times affected me deeply. 'Kidnap' was a scary word, a frightening thought. Men who found their way to our back steps asking to trade their labor for meals also seemed frightening.

How different from today was the media clamor then? The insatiable, dogged press? The celebrities coming to see and be seen? The pseudo souvenirs? The doubts? The inescapable and never-ending suffering of all involved? (The author tells us there are annual reinactments of The Trial even today). And more doubts? Hauptmann who went to the electric chair still claiming his innocence, is quoted as saying, "They think when I die, the case will die. They think it will be like a book I close. BUT THE BOOK, IT WILL NEVER CLOSE"

The author hopes the book will help readers "clarify their own concepts of truth and justice." In the Author's Note, Bryant writes "The economic realities of the Great Depression, the rise of the mass media, the country's fear of war and need for emotional escape, all combined to make the Flemington (NJ) trial a true national spectacle."

The graphics are appropriate and clever; the 'chapter headings' copy old Smith Corona type. 'Versified' stories happen to appeal to me; I hope they do not put off young people (especially boys) who could "osmose" some 1930s history as well as those concepts mentioned above.

Jen Bryant weaves stories into this sad history and has developed them against the backdrop of an ordinary town with characters that are likeable. Seventh-grader Katie Leigh Flynn, who acts as a pinch-hitting court stenographer for her temporarily disabled journalist uncle, has troubled moments, real for her age. She grows through the experience and there is a perspective shared in this retelling that offers some healing.

REVIEWER MCHAIKU suggests that "THE TRIAL" is good reading, and another 'Young Adult' book ripe for adult consumption.