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McKernan, Victoria. THE DEVIL'S PAINTBOX
McKernan, Victoria. THE DEVIL'S PAINTBOXNew York : Knopf, p2009, c2009IL YAISBN 0375937501If you enjoyed playing the computer game Oregon Trail, The Devil’s Paintbox by Victoria McKernan is for you. It takes the grainy greenish picture of the old game and paints a vivid picture of what life on the Oregon Trail might have been like. The book chronicles a young man’s journey into adulthood in the Wild West, starting at age 15, poor and destitute, eating a grasshopper a day if lucky to stay alive- into turning into a man working off a debt to himself and others. Aiden relentlessly tries to protect and at the same time allow for his sister to grow up. Aiden, during the journey, befriends some unlikely candidates and in the end is forced to go against his white society in aid of his Native American friends in the struggle against smallpox -- the devil’s paint. Aiden and his younger sister Maddy endure hardships unknown to readers of today, all the while maintaining an ever-present desire to move onward and upward. The book is not so much uplifting as is it insightful, and even inspiring. The Devil’s Paintbox is a gripping historical fiction that does not gloss over events of old, rather tells of life as an everyday struggle to survive, and survive knowing that you did what you had to do.Prepared by: Jen Seay for South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Nominees, 2010-2011
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