The whole idea of YA historical fiction was terribly unappealing to me, but I really made an attempt to get through it. But when I was forewarned in class that, "the first 1/3 or so of the book is tough to get through, but then it's excellent!" I was just not pleased. I continued to try, but when other work piled up, I just could not make it a priority.
Though we like to think that our students are only taking our class and that our class is the most important, that simply is not the case. And I would have a really hard time pitching a book where I recognized that the first THIRD of the book was "tough to get through". Personally, I don't care how good the book turns out when over a hundred pages are not that great. A good author shouldn't take so long to draw a reader in- I believe that a good author draws the reader in right away. I also am more of a page-turner kind of reader, but I think most of my young students might feel the same way.
So I hope that if I want to teach this kind of a book in my classroom or encourage my students to read historical fiction, I can find a better option for them. I would not rule out this book entirely, because I'm aware that not everyone reads like I do, but I'd say that if a student is looking for YA lit, this is not quite what they're looking for.
