Burning Up
Fiction
By Caroline B. Cooney
Reviewed by Mackenzie
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Average fifteen-year-old Macey Clare has always loved her quiet life in her well-off Connecticut town. During a visit to an intercity church as part of her community service requirement for school, Macey has a frightening brush with death. She was only trying to make a room in a church in a dangerous neighborhood feel safe for children with bright colored walls, beanbag chairs and some crayons when an arsonist lit the church, sending the people in it into a smoky nightmare. Macey is haunted by the memory of fire which drives her interest in a fire that burned down an apartment in 1959. The apartment belonged to a school teacher. Macey decides to use this fire as the topic for her history report when she discovered that the first, and last, African American teacher in her town had lived there.
Macey is forced to question whether or not segregation is gone or if it is just hidden better in 1997. Was it a good thing to do to give the children at the church used crayons and furniture or was it just saying that they deserved our leftovers because they lived in a crappy town? The worst part of all, Macey thinks that someone in town set the apartment on fire in 1959. The adults in Macey’s life keep claiming that Connecticut has always been more civilized than southern states when it came to the treatment of African Americans; why would they not want Macey to stir up the ashes of the fire that burned a home down so many years ago unless some sparks were still hot?
This book will make you rethink what is right and wrong about how times have changed. Macey is a normal teenager who is trying to make the correct choices in life; she is easy to relate to. Although the main issues Macey faces are racism and segregation, she learns that it is important to stick by family and friends. Caroline B Cooney, also the author of The Face on the Milk Carton, always keeps you wondering what will happen next. You will want to read this book again just to make sure you didn’t miss any of this book’s thrilling details.
