Awake and Dreaming

Lorraine Douglas is the youth services co-ordinator at the Winnipeg
Public Library.

Award-winning author Kit Pearson has again written a compelling fantasy
for the upper- elementary level. Nine-year-old Theo lives in squalor in
Vancouver with her abusive single mother, Rae. Her only escapes are
reading about happy families in classic books like Swallows and Amazons
and daydreaming about another life. Rae meets an old friend, Cal, and
they begin dating. Rae plans to dump her daughter with a relative in
Victoria, but on the ferry ride Theo meets the family of her
dreams—the Kaldors—and is mysteriously “adopted” by them. Her
new life is filled with happiness until the day she feels the family
ignoring her and this world begins to slip away. In a satisfying ending,
the identity of the “ghost” who acts as a narrator in the beginning
is revealed.

Pearson presents the themes of loneliness, abuse, and dislocation with
a realism that is tinged with hope. Theo’s emotions and the patterns
of family relationships are particularly well realized. Readers of
Pearson’s time-slip fantasy, A Handful of Time, will enjoy this
imaginative, well-written, and multi-layered work of fiction. Highly
recommended.