Shane
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He rode into our valley in the summer of ’89, a slim man, dressed in black. “Call me Shane,” he said. He never told us more.There was a deadly calm in the valley that summer, a slow, climbing tension that seemed to focus on Shane.“There’s something about him,” Mother said. “Something . . . dangerous . . .”“He’s dangerous all right,” Father said, “but not to us.”“He’s like one of these here slow burning fuses,” the mule skinner said.“Quiet . . . so quiet you forget it’s burning till it sets off a hell of a blow of trouble. And there’s trouble brewing.”Jack Schaefer is best known for this timeless classic.Children's LiteratureThe cover illustration sets the stage—a lone rider on his horse travels a dirt road into a stark, compelling landscape. That rider is Shane; he is about to change the lives of a homesteader family—Joe Starrett, his wife, Marian and their son, Bob. It is young Bob who first spots Shane as he nears their property, and the child finds him fascinating—"He rode easily....Yet even in this easiness was a suggestion of tension. It was the easiness of a coiled spring, of a trap set." The Starrett family befriends Shane, and Bob's father asks him to stay on as a hired hand. But he warns his son not to become attached because some day Shane will move on. Shaeffer's novel—his first—was published in 1949; this Wild West tale became a classic western movie. Afterward, Schaeffer adapted his novel for young readers. It is this adaptation that Wendell Minor illustrates with loving thoroughness. Minor visited Wyoming, consulted artist-cowboy friend Geoff Parker, studied early illustrators of Western genre such as N. C. Wyeth and Maynard Dixon for inspiration, even talked to Schaeffer's son, Carl. Minor, in his moving introduction recalls that Schaeffer dedicated his novel "to Carl, my first son, my first book." Wendell's dedication is also to Carl Schaeffer. This book is a fine way to start—or renew—that 1950s addiction to the American cowboy. 2001 (orig. 1949), Wendell Minor/Houghton Mifflin, $22.00. Ages 12 up. Reviewer: Judy Crowder
