Reviews for The Last Safe Place on Earth

The average rating for The Last Safe Place on Earth based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-06-26 00:00:00 Frederic Vigneron I worry a little about posting this as my first contribution to our class discussion because, in general, I think that reviews should be "critical" in the balanced sense of the word. This is hard when you didn't enjoy the book and you had concerns about its message! I read The Last Safe Place on Earth because it was described in our textbook (p. 203) as a good book to use to help students think about issues of fundamentalism and censorship. I thought this might be a book that people in our class would be interested in reading, maybe in conjunction with a discussion around book selection and responding to challenges to books. Unfortunately, I wasn't drawn into the story. Some of the language seemed outdated and, with the exception of Marnie, I didn't really connect with the characters. I think the problem was that I found the characters to be fairly one-dimensional, which also worked against developing nuanced representation of the politics of book selection and censorship in schools. I think what I was looking for in the book was a story that would complicate the idea that there are reasonable people who believe in freedom of speech ("us") and unreasonable people who foist their religious views on others ("them", especially fundamentalist Christians). There are some interesting messages about "community" near the end, but I was still left with a sort of hopelessness about the possibility of working with people of different beliefs... As an aside, I was also concerned by the representation of "C.E." who Peck characterizes as overweight and a compulsive eater. I kept wondering why we didn't know more about this character who Todd considers to be his best friend. (We do eventually learn that there's a reason behind his eating.) At the end of the book, C.E. suddenly dates one of the popular girls, presumably because he is self-confident. Was this supposed to be a lesson to readers--weight/appearance doesn't matter? If so, it would have been more convincing if his weight wasn't his defining characteristic in the book.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-12-01 00:00:00 Faustino Lopez This book touches on a lot of topics: censorship, hypocrisy, freedom of religion, domestic abuse, etc. While it's not the most fantastic piece of literature I've ever read, we are going to use it for our high school book club because it should be an excellent discussion starter.