The Girl Who Saved Yesterday

Gr 2–5—Silence, a girl banished from her village and raised by trees in the forest, is sent on a mysterious quest in this poetic allegory. "'We need you to return to your village and save Yesterday,' Wonderboom, the most ancient of the ancient trees, told her. 'All the Yesterdays,' added Gloomy Night, whose limbs were as thick as sorrow." The trees cannot tell the girl how to save Yesterday, nor do they explain why it must be saved. Readers are told just a bit as ThunderSnow, arriving at the edge of the village, "lay [Silence] gently…at the foot of a tree that had been made ill by Yesterday." Other sickened trees are there, too. In the village center, Silence finds "the mountain which loomed like a memory no one could recall." Unhappy to see her, the villagers leave Silence to endure what seems to be an annual powerful nighttime eruption of vivid light from the mountain. Angel's paintings are bold and often dramatic. The torrid light show, the frightened face of the girl in the midst of it, scenes of her encounter with the angry folks in the village of thatched huts, her subsequent race up the mountain, and the uncovering of the first mysterious glowing round stone are compelling. The large, gnarled trees in the forest and on the mountain, humanized in the text, have enormous, elongated human facial features embedded high in their trunks. The fading light of the morning somehow brings Silence an understanding of what she must do, and her heroic unearthing of the Yesterdays brings the villagers up the long-feared mountain in joyful celebration. There are elusive elements and unanswered questions here and many lush analogies in the prose. In a concluding author's note, Lester notes worldwide cultural practices honoring the dead. "It is important to remember the Ancestors, regardless of whose they are." Some readers will find the vague references confusing and the folksy trees and lighted stones just plain odd. But there's appealing adventure here, and the human/natural world intersection, the courageous quest, and the idea of Yesterday's importance raise thought-provoking questions.