In one sense this book is relatively clean, especially considering its length. With that being said, there are several things that you will want to address with your young reader if you choose to let them read this title. The first three items we discuss below are the most important in this list of things to address.
The first piece of concerning content is one we see a lot in books today. The two main characters, a young boy and girl, have a chance to have a wonderful relationship forged by trial. Instead the author offers up a very mixed bag, where there is a lot of time/words spent taking shots at each other, bickering, making fun of each other, etc. While none of it is particularly concerning in isolation, the overall effect is very disappointing, as it comes up constantly.
The second main concern that should be mentioned is around alcohol. There are a handful of mentions of cocktails and brandy. The reason this is elevated in concern in our mind is because the author has one of the best characters in a scene start to “guzzle” brandy. At one point someone is called an “old drunk”. To make this worse, it really gets presented as this wonderful and positive thing during this short scene (e.g., “savoring every sip”). There is also some smoking, mostly by ‘bad guys’.
Third, there are a few points where the dialog gets quite a bit more serious than the lighter feel of the rest of the book. The term ‘murder’ is mentioned a handful of times. At one point we meet a character who was supposed to kidnap the main character when he was a baby and dispose of the body. While he gets cold feet and instead drops him off at an orphanage, he vows to go through with it now.
Other Items to be considered:
Common to many books of this type, there is a long list of deception and lying that is presented as “understandable”. There is a heavy dose of this at the start, where there is a group of orphans in an absolutely terrible situation that includes a 75-page rule book. The book says that some rules were meant to be broken and that this was the only way the orphans survive. This gets worse when the author indicates that they did what they were told and got away with what they could. This happens throughout. The worst of these instances comes when the two main characters sneak on a train and one says, “you are as devious as I am” to which she replies, “you are just noticing?”.
Our version of the book has a gold seal award on the front that has a strange image. It shows a woman surrounded by children. She appears, at least to us, to be shirtless, but then her chest appears “blank”. We included this version of the cover here so you can see. Obviously this is not ideal for any book, but especially one for children.
We should also mention that this book has sections where the dialog feels choppy and not very well put together. This combined with it being a bit longer may frustrate some. This is worth considering for your particular reader.
The terms “stupid” and “idiot” are used sporadically throughout. Relying on luck is mentioned a couple times. At one point Tom wonders why a woman was ever born. A character makes a stereotype comment that boys have no sense of culture.