Story for a Black Night

Story for a Black Night (ISBN 0618494839) is a 1982 family drama novel by Robert Locke, under the pseudonym Clayton Bess,[1] set in Africa.[2] It won the 2002 Phoenix Award Honor Book award.[3][4]

Story for a Black Night
First edition
AuthorClayton Bess
LanguageEnglish
Set inAfrica
PublisherHoughton Mifflin Company, Lookout Press
Publication date
1982
Publication placeUnited States
Media typeprint
ISBN0618494839
Websitehttp://webpages.csus.edu/~boblocke/bess/story.html

Plot

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A 40-year-old man tells a story of his childhood, when he was ten, living with his sister, mother and grandmother.[5] When strangers left a baby with smallpox at the house, the family is affected by the disease.[6][7]

Reception

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The book was included in the University of Chicago's Center for Children's Books' volume "The Best in Children's Books: The University of Chicago Guide to Children's Literature, 1979-1984", which called it "a stunning first novel", "taut and tender, deftly structured, vivid".[7]

There is also a link to the efforts of Rose-Marie Vassallo-Villaneau in her two translations into French. After the English version won the Phoenix Honor Award in 2002 for a book that has endured, she decided that she wanted to do a second translation, this time attempting her own French West African dialect.

Awards

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Play

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Also from this main page is a link to the 2014 one-act play "PURE HEART in Black of Night" with the author now using his playwright's name Robert Locke.

References

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  1. ^ "Tomorrow's Authors are Turning It Out Today". Los Angeles Times. 30 September 1985.
  2. ^ Spencer, Patricia (1990). "African Passages: Journaling through Archetypes". The English Journal. 79 (8): 38–40. doi:10.2307/818823. JSTOR 818823.
  3. ^ "Press Release for Graphia Books published by Houghton Mifflin Company". Houghtonmifflinbooks.com.
  4. ^ Nancy Huse. "Re-Membering Broken Cultures in Story for a Black Night" (PDF). Childlitassn.org. Retrieved 28 March 2022.
  5. ^ Prof. Kirti Y. Nakhare. "The Role of Faith and Ideology in African Fiction for Children and Young Adults: An Analysis of Achebe's Fiction for Children, Purple Hibiscus and Story for a Black Night" (PDF). Standrewscollege.ac.in. Retrieved 28 March 2022.
  6. ^ "Book Reviews, Sites, Romance, Fantasy, Fiction". Kirkusreviews.com. Retrieved 28 March 2022.
  7. ^ a b Zena Sutherland, The Best in Children's Books: The University of Chicago Guide to Children's Literature, 1979-1984, U of Chicago Press, 1986
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