Down Sand Mountain
Watkins, Steve. Down Sand Mountain.
Cambridge: Candlewick, 2008.
336 pp. $16.99 (hardcover)
Steve Watkins has masterfully created a believable character in Dewey Turner, the protagonist of the young adult coming-of-age novel Down Sand Mountain. Dewey, with various attempts to gain attention from his peers, manages to complicate his already difficult existence.
Prior to his seventh grade year, Dewey and his family go the Rotary Club’s Annual Minstrel Show. Observing the success one of his classmates receives for a song and dance routine delivered in blackface, Dewey tries to emulate the minstrel look by applying black shoe polish to his own face. Predictably, the shoe polish doesn’t wash off, and Dewey is forced to start school with shame and embarrassment. The attention Dewey receives from his classmates comes in the form of sneers and taunts, not at all what he had hoped for. While there are several high points to the year, such as his friendship with Darla, the year goes steadily downhill.
The 2009 recipient of the Golden Kite Award, Down Sand Mountain is a captivating story of a white boy’s growing up in a small mining town in Florida in the turbulent sixties. Watkins’ depiction of the painful journey from child to adolescent is masterful. He manages to show racism from a different perspective than most civil rights novels. Rather than approaching the topic from the viewpoint of sympathetic black characters, Watkins gives readers a glimpse of racism from the inside of ignorance. Because of the nature of some of the circumstances, the novel is more appropriate for young adults.
Ellen Ruffin
Curator, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection
University of Southern Mississippi
Entry Filed under: Book Reviews
Posted on: August 10th, 2010
