Book Pick—The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume I: The Pox Party by M. T. Anderson
From SLJ October 2006 (Starred Review)
Sharon Rawlins, NJ Library for the Blind and Handicapped, Trenton -- School Library Journal, 10/2/2006
ANDERSON, M. T. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume I: The Pox Party. 358p. Candlewick. Oct. 2006. Tr $17.99. ISBN 0-7636-2402-0. LC number unavailable.
Gr 9 Up–In this fascinating and eye-opening Revolution-era novel, Octavian, a black youth raised in a Boston household of radical philosophers, is given an excellent classical education. He and his mother, an African princess, are kept isolated on the estate, and only as he grows older does he realize that while he is well dressed and well fed, he is indeed a captive being used by his guardians as part of an experiment to determine the intellectual acuity of Africans. As the fortunes of the Novanglian College of Lucidity change, so do the nature and conduct of their experiments. The boy's guardians host a "pox party" where everyone is inoculated with the disease in hopes that they will then be immune to its effects, but, instead, Octavian's mother dies. He runs away and ends up playing the fiddle and joining in the Patriots' cause. He's eventually captured and brought back to his household where he's bound and forced to wear an iron mask until one of his more sympathetic instructors engineers his escape. Readers will have to wait for the second volume to find out the protagonist's fate. The novel is written in 18th-century language from Octavian's point of view and in letters written by a soldier who befriends him. Despite the challenging style, this powerful novel will resonate with contemporary readers. The issues of slavery and human rights, racism, free will, the causes of war, and one person's struggle to define himself are just as relevant today. Anderson's use of factual information to convey the time and place is powerfully done.
