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** spoiler alert ** Dowd, Siobhan. (2008). Bog Child. New York: David Fickling Books.
� 322 pages
� Intended audience: Upper middle and high school, ages 12 and up.
� Awards:
WINNER 2008 - Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book of the Year
WINNER 2008 - Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Books
WINNER 2008 - Amazon Best of the Year
NOMINEE 2008 - Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Novel
� Reviews:
Children's Book Reviews. Review of book Bog Child. (2008, July). Publishers Weekly, 255(30), 73. Retrieved June 23, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1522428401).
After briefly describing the plot, a staff writer from Publisher’s Weekly writes, “Dowd raises questions about moral choices within a compelling plot that is full of surprises, powerfully bringing home the impact of political conflict on innocent bystanders.�

Dobrez, Cindy. (2008, August). Bog Child. Review of book Bog Child. The Booklist, 104(22), 68. Retrieved June 23, 2009, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 1532709141).
Cindy Dobrez from The Booklist is also largely complimentary: “The history, which will likely be as unfamiliar to American teen readers as the story's dialect, may need fleshing out with additional sources, but the intriguing characters and their motivations and sacrifices will translate directly to contemporary readers. The plotlines are braided together into a strong story that is rich in language, setting, and theme.�
� Themes: Choices and consequence; Political protest and Terrorism; Archaeology; Dwarfism; Family
� Main Character: Fergus, a young man taking entrance exams for University
� Setting: Ireland in the 1980s
� Censorship: condoms and the pill, hunger strikes and violence, political protest and terrorism
� Plot (spoiler):
Fergus and his Uncle find a dead body in a peat bog. Thinking it is a young girl, they contact the authorities who determine that it’s a prehistoric body. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Fergus� older brother, Joe is imprisoned for political protest and the mother is worried that Joe will join the hunger strike in the prison. Fergus is in the midst of University examinations as well as worrying about his brother. Fergus turns to running to take his mind off his problems, but that attracts problems of its own. An old acquaintance of Fergus� approaches him about smuggling packets over the border for the local insurgent group. Since Fergus runs that route anyway, the acquaintance figures that a small load wouldn’t be a problem. And it would be in honor of Joe as well.
Fergus ultimately decides to deliver the packets, and does so for several weeks, during which he gets to know the archaeologists investigating the body from the bog. The daughter of one of the scientists begins to attract Fergus� romantic attentions, adding one more layer to his burgeoning problems. Through dreams, Fergus connects to the dead bog child, and the reader learns that she is not a young girl at all, but a dwarf from prehistoric times, condemned to death because of her physical appearance.
The story continues and Fergus� brother does indeed join the hunger strike. Fergus makes friends with one of the border patrol guard that he passes on his daily run. After learning of a bomb that killed several civilians, Fergus decides he can no longer smuggle these packets, opens one in front of the patrol guard and tries to turn himself in. His friend is baffled that Fergus would want to turn himself in over condoms and birth control pills; Fergus is not smuggling what he thought.
Fergus� brother’s condition gets worse, and when he becomes comatose, the family is forced to either respect Joe’s wishes and allow him to die, or hook him up to an IV drip and force him to live. The archaeologist’s daughter tells Fergus she is moving to America, and Fergus finds out he is accepted to University to become a doctor. The story builds to a plausible climax, and then the twist is thrown in when the reader learns that Fergus� uncle is a major player in the political protest and has built and planted bombs that have killed civilians. Fergus must come to terms with his terrorist uncle’s activities and death, and he makes a new beginning on the boat to England, to University.
� Strengths: Plausible, likeable main character who has to make hard choices and live with the consequences.
� Weaknesses: Maybe too many problems; hard to follow all the political acronyms if not familiar with Irish history (I’m not).
� Passage(s): “Fergus stared at the words. Death. Peace. Hate. Principle. Crime. It was as if an older, more seasoned Fergus from twenty years into the future had bent time and returned to the brain of his younger self to write this letter. Surely it was persuasive. Surely anyone would think twice on reading this …He dropped the pen and tore up the letter.� (118)
“He walked out of the toilets and down the corridor, seeing the boxes and the ticks, the grooves into the future and Joe on the narrow prison bed with the blankets over him, retching up nothing. Somewhere off in the distance, under the old Scots pine of the churchyard, a dark funeral party was huddled and� a coffin was being lowered.� (110)
“He looked down towards the plain, the place he’d lived all his life. The past rolled out before him. The family trips, the laughs, the squabbles� He saw the recent weeks: the packets, exam papers, the counting-off of days as Joe fasted. The condoms and pills, himself and Cora lying like two question marks, and Mel, the laughing, living Mel of his imaginings. And he saw the funeral party� And then he knew.� (314)
� Library Pomotion: A nice book from another country, would work well in a display or unit on world lit; could start some good discussion on political protest and the role of young people during political strife; archaeological aspect could jive well with other archaeological units or research.
� Personal Reflection: Without much familiarity of the situation in 1980s Ireland, the abbreviations and different factions were a little over my head. But the story came through loud and clear and Fergus was my kind of character. He experienced just enough strife over the situations he was in, he sometimes made bad choices and sometimes good ones, but he always came around to see what he should have done.