Indigo

Rating:
Summary: An engaging, fable-like story
Review: "Indigo," by Alice Hoffman, tells the story of Martha Glimmer, a 13-year old girl who lives in the inland town of Oak Grove. Her best friends are Trevor "Trout" McGill, age 13, and his brother Eli (known as "Eel"), age 11. The boys are odd outsiders with curious webbed toes and fingers.

Ultimately, the three kids go on a journey of self-discovery. These are three likeable, interesting characters and Hoffman tells their story with a simple, clean prose style that is very effective. Straddling a line between fantasy and science fiction, "Indigo" ultimately remains grounded in the very real theme of young people discovering themselves and their places in the larger world.

Rating:
Summary: An engaging, fable-like story
Review: "Indigo," by Alice Hoffman, tells the story of Martha Glimmer, a 13-year old girl who lives in the inland town of Oak Grove. Her best friends are Trevor "Trout" McGill, age 13, and his brother Eli (known as "Eel"), age 11. The boys are odd outsiders with curious webbed toes and fingers.

Ultimately, the three kids go on a journey of self-discovery. These are three likeable, interesting characters and Hoffman tells their story with a simple, clean prose style that is very effective. Straddling a line between fantasy and science fiction, "Indigo" ultimately remains grounded in the very real theme of young people discovering themselves and their places in the larger world.

Rating:
Summary: Indigo
Review: Ashley May Collins
Indigo
Alice Hoffman

Do you like the ocean? Well if you do you will like this story. This story is about a girl named Martha and her two best friends, Trout and Eli. Martha is a nice, respectful girl who is lonely most of the time. When she is with her friends she is very happy. They all want to live in a city by the ocean, not Oak Grove. But their mothers and fathers will not let them because of the floods. After Martha's mother died, she ran away to Ocean City with Trout and Eli. Then Martha broke her arm and had to go home. This is a adventurous, exciting, magical, mysterious and sad book. The best part was when Martha dances under the moon with her mother's shawl. Ages 8-70 would like this book.

Rating:
Summary: I Loved Indigo
Review: I have always been a HUGE fan of the ocean. I've always been fascinated by it and all the creatures in it. After the first chapter I was like "Hey, mermaid-like people, cool". The story is very charming and has it's cute moments. It's basically about two brothers who happened to love water and act a lot like... fish or something. They happen to live in a place where there is NO water, nobody is allowed to swim because everyone is afraid of the water. At the end of this short, small story, I found myself wishing it had been MUCH longer. This is a good book for kids and adults. I have lent it to a friends before. Not only did they love it, but their parents did too.

Rating:
Summary: Indigo October 19
Review: I think Indigo, by Alice Hoffman, is a interesting book. This book made me think, what was going to happen next, and also made think why were the people so scared water, was it, because of a terrible flood that only happen 15 years ago?

This book Indigo is about a girl named Martha Glimmer and her two best friends Trevor (Trout) and Eli (Eel) Mcgill, who lived in Oak Grove. Martha is a girl that hated people that pittied her after the death of her mother, she especially did not like Hildy Swoon there neighbor who started bring casseroles after the death of her mother's death. Martha also hated the weather at Oak Grove it was always spring. Trout and Eel had different characteristic than a normal child would have, they have fingers and toes that were webbed, and Eel looks like a water snake. Kate and Charlie Mcgill, who were on vacation at Ocean City and also wanted children, founded Trout and Eel. Kate and Charlie Mcgill who were at the Ocean at night and saw a mermaid with her two children, the mermaid was hurt by a motorboat. When Charlie and Kate Mcgill saw the hurt mermaid they went and got her. The mermaid said, "Please take them", and then mermaid swam away. When Charlie and Kate returned they to Oak Grove they had two childs. Kate and Charlie decide to call the older child Trevor, and the younger child Eli. When Trevor went to school kids made up a nickname for him called, "Trout", because of his fish like characteristic, and kids also made up a nickname for Eli called, "Eel" for the same reason. Trout and Martha were both lonely, and with no friends. Pretty soon they have known each other, then they became great friends, then Trevor introduced his brother Eel to Martha and also became good friends. Soon the friends decided to go to Ocean City, a place by the Ocean. Trout and Eel wants to go, because it had always been a dream for them both, to go to the Ocean. Martha wanted to go, because of getting away from her neighbor Hildy Swoon, and she has always dreamt of going to important places like San Francisco, New York, and Paris. On there way to Ocean City, it had started to rain harshly, and Martha broke her arm. This made the trip stop and made Martha, Trout, and Eel go back to Oak Grove. When they arrived back home at Oak Grove there was a huge flood, and using there fish like characteristic Trout and Eel starts saving the people of Oak Grove.

I think that the author is trying to tell us that it doesn't matter how someone looks, they can still be a good friend. This book is worth reading, because it shows great friendship.
This book should have been longer.

Rating:
Summary: Loving it and Wishing it Were Longer
Review: I think that Indigo, by Alice Hoffman, is a wonderful book. It is an adventure story that can really grab your attention.

Indigo is about two boys, born with webbing between their fingers and toes, and their friend Martha. They live in a town that is mortally afraid of water. The boy's desire for salt water leads them on a journey to the ocean. But when rain starts flooding the town, will they turn back to save their friends or will they continue towards their dreams?

Indigo may be short, but don't judge a book by its cover or length! The book is beautifully written using vivid description. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a book they can read quickly and totally enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Indigo
Review: I think that the book Indigo, by Alice Hoffman, is a pretty good book! This book kept me interested. It kept me wondering what was going to happen the whole time.

This book is good for anyone to read who is 10 and over. It is a short book about two boys and there best friend Martha. The two main characters Eel and Trout were adopted. Their adopted parents found them (on a vacation), in the water next to their dead mother. They were born with webbed feet and hands. Everyone made fun of them and did not like them because they were different. Their only friend was Martha. Martha was very lonely due to the death of her mother. Martha, Eel and Trout were best friends. The three of them were searching for friendship and identity. They were each others only friends. In the town that they live in, it never rained. In fact, nobody in the town liked water, and they were afraid of water. Eel and Trout loved the water. They even drank their water with salt in it. They also loved fish. Eel and Trout always wanted to know what the water was like, so they ran away to the ocean. They had to come back because Martha broke her arm, and it was raining terribly bad. They came back so that Martha could get her arm fixed. When they got back the town was flooded and the boys saved a kid that was drowning. They were able to save him because of their fish like characteristics.

I think the author's message was about the importance of friendship and that even if you are different you can help. I liked this book, but it should have been longer. There was not enough time to give all the information needed and develop the story and characters.

Rating:
Summary: Indigo
Review: I think that the book Indigo, by Alice Hoffman, is a pretty good book! This book kept me interested. It kept me wondering what was going to happen the whole time.

This book is good for anyone to read who is 10 and over. It is a short book about two boys and there best friend Martha. The two main characters Eel and Trout were adopted. Their adopted parents found them (on a vacation), in the water next to their dead mother. They were born with webbed feet and hands. Everyone made fun of them and did not like them because they were different. Their only friend was Martha. Martha was very lonely due to the death of her mother. Martha, Eel and Trout were best friends. The three of them were searching for friendship and identity. They were each others only friends. In the town that they live in, it never rained. In fact, nobody in the town liked water, and they were afraid of water. Eel and Trout loved the water. They even drank their water with salt in it. They also loved fish. Eel and Trout always wanted to know what the water was like, so they ran away to the ocean. They had to come back because Martha broke her arm, and it was raining terribly bad. They came back so that Martha could get her arm fixed. When they got back the town was flooded and the boys saved a kid that was drowning. They were able to save him because of their fish like characteristics.

I think the author's message was about the importance of friendship and that even if you are different you can help. I liked this book, but it should have been longer. There was not enough time to give all the information needed and develop the story and characters.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful fantasy, serious reality gaffe
Review: I want to love this book. The characters, a lonely motherless girl whose best friends are a little different and homesick for an ocean they barely remember, are great. The plot is good. The writing has a simplistic, spare beauty. Where else can you find passages such as "They were both thinking of people who had disappeared and never been found again, and how hard it was to leave behind the people you loved, even if the life you wanted wasn't the one they could give you."

This is a fantasy, but the rules of this type of fantasy are everything is reality except the boys' origin and identity, and certain exaggerated actions and events. However, the events of this story hinge around a flood. Once the flood was over "Oak Grove seemed brand new, as if the floodwaters had washed everything clean." Call me a spoilsport, but I've lived through minor floods and the image I remember the most is trees where the dirt around the roots have washed away. The roots look like bare, witch arms. As for more serious floods such as the one described in this book: I had a friend whose family was in the Grand Forks flood in the mid '90s. Instead of leaving the town "washed clean," sewage backed up into the streets. There was a shortage of clean water. All sorts of flood-related illnesses were happening. The basements and furniture smelled of mold and damp, and much of it had to be thrown out. When we asked what we could do to help, we were told not to come up because there was no place to put us -- which was true. People had been forced out of their homes and places to sleep during the night were far too few. Instead we were to send cleaning supplies with the Salvation Army. The town had been swept dirty, not clean.

Sad. I want to love the story, but she didn't give a nod at all to the reality. She didn't have a miraculous ending where the sun came up and undid all the damage, and she didn't acknowledge the damage, except for a few mentions of muddy furniture and some turned ankles at the doctor's office. Hoffman didn't succeed in walking that fine line of realistic fantasy. She either had to acknowledge more of the realities, or add a few more miraculous events. What a disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Indigo
Review: If you like books with strange kids this is the book for you. Indigo is about two boys whose mother was a mermaid, but she died in a boat accident. The boys have thin layers of webbing between every finger and toe. They've even earned the nicknames Eel and Trout for their lighitning speed in water. They've dreamed about swimming, but their father forbids it. He forbids it because he once had to save the town from a tragic flood. [He doesn't trust water.] The boys are planning on running away to ocean city. Will they or will they not?



BY ALANZO