Lois Lowry, author of The Giver, gives poetic glimpses into the lives of World War II survivors and victims in the slim yet powerful On the Horizon.
Lowry's author's note explains the inspiration behind the book: "When I was a child... it was always a treat when we could talk Daddy into setting up the projector and screen and showing the home movies." In one film, child Lois plays on a beach in Waikiki. As an adult, when she showed this movie to friends, one said, "Wait... Look on the horizon. That's the Arizona." In the moment captured on film, the USS Arizona "carried 1,200 men. Almost all of them would soon be dead."
The specific people whom Lowry has chosen to feature in this history in verse--Pearl Harbor sailors and Hiroshima civilians--have an arbitrary quality to them. This haphazard nature and the sparseness of the piece somehow work to magnify the book's purpose. Lowry's inspiration comes from a point in time that seemed like any other; every person highlighted in the work is living an ordinary day before the planes appear, before the bombs drop. It's all brief, senseless chance. Kenard Pak's illustrations enhance Lowry's theme; his gray-scale pencil art has an ephemeral nature that suggests any piece could be erased from the page. The illustrations, whether a person, a watch face or the tricycle buried alongside its child owner, are detailed yet have indistinct borders with edges that blend into the white of the page. Solemn and forceful, On the Horizon displays, with respect and love, the impact a seemingly ordinary moment can hold. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness