Nory Ryan's Song
by Patricia Reilly Giff
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Book Summary Information
Author: Patricia Reilly GiffEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-09-10
ISBN: 0440418291
Number of pages: 176
Publisher: Yearling
Book Reviews of Nory Ryan's Song
Book Review: Irish need not apply
Summary: 5 Stars
"Irish need not apply." This was a common placard hanging in store windows in New York neighborhoods after the immigration of the Irish, following the Great Potato Blight and resulting famine in Ireland, 1845-1852. They arrived dirty, hungry, dressed in rags, carrying no possessions, and speaking a strange Celtic language. Too different from the American Dream to be part of it.
Nory Ryan's Song is a narrative explanation of how and why those Irish left their beloved land, starving and in rags, to claim the largesse America offered. Giff strikes exactly the right chord in balancing sickening details of the famine with respect for the sensibilities of a 9-12 audience.
This is the time of the great English take-over and their relentless effort to drive out the Irish from their own tiny plots of land. Not only did they take the land, they took animals, work tools, everything that gave the slightest hope of survival. No wonder the Irish have no fondness for the English. The expected Irish characters are present: the large Mallon family with an abundance of boys, the Ryans with an abundance of girls and one tiny boy, the feared local herbalist, the horrid English landlord and his henchman. Other books have portrayed famine and starvation with great conviction, but Giff makes us feel Nory's personal hunger and her powerful need to provide for others, like Queen Maeve of Irish legend.
But, oh, the desperation from a total lack of food and the human drive to live, thus the eternal ember of the hearth that Nory learns to tend after her last older sister leaves for New York. Nory Ryan is just a snippet of a twelve-year-old with a lyrical voice that stirs the most surprising people. After members one by one leave, Nory and Patch, her skin-and-bones brother, are left. Anna, the local herbalist, takes them in and teaches Nory healing skills, and wrings out one of the most touching instances of deep love in 9-12 literature.
The landscape, including animals, is just as much a character as the people. Giff's writing is so painterly that the reader is carried away with the saltiness of the winds, the putrid, rotting smell of the blighted potatoes, the wretched taste of the limpets taken from the sea, and the visual imagery of feet caked in dirt, ragged wisps of Patch's nightshirt that he wears 24/7, the razor sharp blades of grass that line the path to the ocean, the claws of the seabirds Nory tries to take from their nests.
Reviewers make much of the last part of the book when Nory finds a way to feed her remaining brood over the weeks they await either return of or word from her father. Her last efforts are no more heroic than the others. Each does what is required. Finally, word comes and she begins her journey to New York and the placards in the windows. She plans to meet milk wagons filled with cans of milk and streets filled with jewels. There is a sequel: Maggie's Door.
The book provides enough detail of the potato blight, the famine, the cruelty of the English for the impetus to read further. An author's delight. Giff's book is highly recommended.
Summary of Nory Ryan's Song
Nory Ryan's family has lived on Maidin Bay on the west coast of Ireland for generations, raising a pig and a few chickens, planting potatoes, getting by. Every year Nory's father goes away on a fishing boat and returns with the rent money for the English lord who owns their cottage and fields, the English lord bent upon forcing the Irish from their land so he can tumble the cottages and clear the fields for grazing. Times are never easy on Maidin Bay, but this year, a terrible blight attacks the potatoes. No crop means starvation. Twelve-year-old Nory must summon the courage and ingenuity to find food, to find hope, to find a way to help her family survive.From the Hardcover edition.
Life is hard for poor Irish potato farmers, but 12-year-old Nory Ryan and her family have always scraped by... until one morning, Nory wakes to the foul, rotting smell of diseased potatoes dying in the fields. And just like that, all their hopes for the harvest--for this year and next--are dashed. Hunger sets in quickly. The beaches are stripped of edible seaweed, the shore is emptied of fish, desperate souls even chew on grass for the nourishment. As her community falls apart, Nory scrambles to find food for her family. Meanwhile, the specter of America lurks, where, the word is, no one is ever hungry, and horses carry milk in huge cans down cobblestone streets.
As Patricia Reilly Giff writes in her note to the reader, the Great Hunger of 1845 to 1852 was a tragic time for the Irish. Enough food to feed double the population was sent out across the sea, while an indifferent government ignored the starving masses. More than one million of the eight million people in Ireland died. Nory Ryan's Song, a fictionalized account based on this terrible era in history, describes the heroic struggles of one girl who refuses to give in to hunger, exhaustion, and hopeless circumstances. Young readers may have heard of the Irish Potato Famine, but they won't truly understand it until they meet Nory. Giff is the author of many beloved books for children, including the Newbery Honor Book Lily's Crossing and the Polk Street School series. (Ages 9 to 12) --Emilie Coulter
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