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Breath Golden Kite Honors Donna Jo Napoli Books

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Breath Golden Kite Honors Donna Jo Napoli Books

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Breath Golden Kite Honors Donna Jo Napoli Books Reviews

As usual, Donna Jo Napoli lures you into the world within her pages in the most unassuming way. She paints grim scenes of the Medieval Days, and gives you a history lesson as well! You learn how people dressed and ate and worked what kind of buildings they lived in and how they typically dealt with problems.

The main character in Breath is called Salz S for the salvation of his soul, A for ability and action, L for loyalty, and Z for zeal (salz also means "salt" in Latin- or some such language). He's sweet and willful, tenacious, clever, brave... but Salz's one great weakness prevails over all of his more useful characteristics. Salz is sick quite often. He has a peculiar disease which makes him "salty" and which the townsfolk and farmers of Hameln regard as symbolic that he's from the devil. Besides that, there is an enemy inside him the mucus that fills his lungs and stops the air he needs to breathe. Nevertheless, Salz is strong in the face of any opposition. He is zealous in his coven practices (yes- witches!)and faithful to Catholicism. When things start to go awry in Hameln town, Salz will need every ounce of his tenacity just to stay alive.

Breath is a pretty offbeat re-telling of the legendary Pied Piper of Hameln town. Throughout the book, rats infest houses and churches and barns anywhere where they can sneak to get away from the incessant rain (there's something funny about that rain, TOO MUCH rain... that can't be good). When the whole town starts getting sick, starting with the cattle and the pigs, the people first turn blame upon the rats, those filthy animals known for spreading sicknesses that come from thickly populated Asia. Near the end of the tale, Salz remembers a piper whom he met (in the very first chapter) who could charm animals and who could possibly drive the rats away from Hameln. But are the rats REALLY the problem...

Read Breath to find out!
This story is a rough re-telling of the legend of the Pied Piper of Hameln, but with a lot of twists and turns that will definitely keep the reader interested.

Donna Jo Napoli paints a scary and realistic picture of Medieval Germany. The main character, "Salz" is a twelve year old boy, living in the town of Hameln, Germany in the year 1284. Salz is afflicted with a mysterious disease (actually cystic fibrosis) which hinders him a lot in his life. He is also a member of a papal coven, keeps a black cat as a "familiar", is prevented from a lot of childhood activities, and is shunned by most of his family. You will find yourself cheering for this poor child, right up to the very end.

A lot of this book actually focuses on Medieval culture, religious practices, traditions, food, farming, and family structures, etc. Anyone interested in Medieval history will find this book very entertaining. Some of the scarier activites include; selling children into slavery, excessive drinking, rat plagues, diseases, murder, heresy, religious hypocrisy, witchcraft, and strange, medievel "acid trips", to name a few!

This book is probably not for the squeamish, so be warned... but I highly recommend it as a must read for anyone who loves adventure and fairy tales with deeper meaning. Don't miss it!
Nearly almost all of Donna Jo Napoli's books are based around a simple formula to take a well-known myth, legend or fairytale, and retell the story from the eyes of a certain character (often the villain, allowing them to defend their actions). It has been a technique that has worked brilliantly for several of her stories, such as (my personal favourites) Zel,Spinners and Beast.

In this case, "Breath" draws upon the German folktale of the Pied Piper of Hamilton, though it is not told by the Piper himself. Instead, our narrator is a twelve-year old boy named Saltz, a resistant of the town of Hameln (who is ultimately revealed to be the young boy who is left behind by the piper's music - though you probably guessed that from the start). Though we are not told this till the postscript, Saltz suffers from cystic fibrosis and is named after the sweat that often pours off his body; the "salt" as it were.

He is a perceptive and compassionate boy, a member of the local coven and a friend to the priests of the local churches, who likes to draw his own conclusions about Christianity and paganism, seeing both virtue and corruption in both of them. Living with the rest of his family on a small farm, he is often bullied by his oldest brother thanks to his inability to help with the heavy chores of the place, and so he usually keeps in the company of his grandmother who knows how to best deal with his affliction.

When the people around him begin to suffer under the effects of some mysterious disease, he is the only one to try and rationally understand what might be causing it. Superstition and witchcraft runs rampant, and despite Saltz's best efforts to rid the town of rats and help the townsfolk, those around him cannot help but be suspicious when he is the only one not affected.

The story itself is a little choppy; the blurb would have you believe that the accusation and trial of Saltz on charges of witchcraft is the climax of the story, though in reality this portion of the book amounts to very little. Instead it is more a story of endurance through illness and despair, spotted through with little moments of illumination and hope.

It all accumulates in the famous charming of the children (and in this case, the adults as well) of Hameln, as the vengeful Piper spirits them away into the hills. I couldn't help but feel, when Saltz prepares himself to follow in their footsteps and attempt to find his adoptive sister, that this is where the story should have *started*. The Piper himself, his methods and his destination are left a mystery (something that Napoli generally attempts to unwind in her other novels).

Napoli is very good - almost too good - at describing the effects of the disease that ravages the town the swollen feet, blackened limbs, the insatiable sexual urges, the terrifying hallucinations; and often there are some rather grisly episode - a baby who has its fingers chewed off by rats, a toad that is eaten alive, the bloody murder of a person with a scythe as the murder weapon. After reading this book, I felt like taking a long walk in the sunshine.

As usual, Napoli paints a vivid picture of a time and place unfamiliar to our own; it is hardly a pleasant book to read. (Of course, the counter-argument to this is that it obviously isn't *supposed* to be, but just be warned that this isn't a light bit of holiday reading). Although a postscript tells us what the true cause of the malady was, it hardly alleviates the horrors we've just experienced.

I can't fault Napoli for her atmosphere it's grim, confusing, terrifying but ultimately (even though despair holds sway in Hameln town) Saltz's character provides a glimmer of hope. Is this a good book book? Yes. Is it an enjoyable one? Not really.
Enjoyed the book