Great story

This is a fun story! I loved the computer game back in the 80s and always thought it should be a book. I just discovered it was actually part of a series. If you like fantasy, you will love this book !

The Zilpha Keatly Snyder went up the waterspout....
Just had to get that out of my system

Bought Below the Root and And All Between for Madison from the used bookshop in Napanee over Christmas, and reread them both while I was there. Wish they'd had Until the Celebration; the trilogy needs an ending.

I can't have been much older than Madison when I read them last. 20 years ago? I remembered them vividly. I was a little surprised to find out that they read very much like my memories of them. Often when I reread childhood favourites I find that my imagination filled in details that I remember as if I'd read them, but can't find within the printed pages. Like, well, I can't find an example, but I know it has happened, books that seem so _thin_ on reread.

But these were very like. Only my perspectives had changed.

An interesting comparison with Pamela Dean's Dubious Hills; both are about societies restructured by some long-ago cabal in an attempt to eliminate the potential for violence. There's an unusual theme..

This is the first book in The Greensky trilogy that just absolutely made my mind soar as a child and can still touch my heart as an adult.

A group of people inhabit the tree tops called Kindar. They are vegetarians and float from branch to branch using glider packs called Shubas. Some are gifted with powers. The power of teleportation and telekenesis (called kiniport in the books), the power to make trees grow (called grunsprek), and the power to read minds (called pensing). These children are ushered into a special school who are a part of a religious cult, the sole purpose of whom are to keep the Kindar safe from the evil creatures lurking beneath the ground, the Erdlings. A young acolyte questions his orders and finds his world turned upside down when he realizes the Erdlings are not the monsters he's been led to believe.

A story about religion and politics and social standing where children need to question their elders and question the rules that guide their society. A wonderful read that can open minds and teach that absolute obedience is not always a good thing.

This was one of my favorite books when I was younger!! It was really inspiring, too - I used to sit in my room and try to move things with my mind :)

Hmmmm, hard for me to give a star rating to this one. I remember loving it when I was younger and basically devouring all three books of the Green Sky trilogy as fast as possible, but on rereading as an adult there were a lot of things that made me go "Eeeeeh..."

I think I'll go for a list review here.

Likes:
-Setting in a tree-living society. Especially loved that the Kindar's clothes let them glide down among the trees, because it's fun to imagine doing. Barely even bothered me that it's totally impractical.
- Raamo, the MC. A goody-two shoes who is just flawed enough not to be a "Marty Stu".
- The pace. Action, action, action! Keeps the book as a real page turner.
- Some complex themes, that aren't too complex for a sophistocated young reader. One theme in particular is conveyed through nudges of the reader's attention toward the fact that every good comes at the cost of something else - I like the style. There are also strong hints that balance is key/too much of a good thing is harmful, but I appreciated the subtly. It feels like Snyder respects her young readers' ability to think.
-The female characters are strong.

Dislikes:
- Some fixed mindset undertones.
- Authority and tradition are given homage, but also implicated as chains blinding (mixed metaphors there, I'm aware) citizens from the truth.
-Plot twists are fairly obvious. Granted, I had read the book before, but that was many years ago and I'm not usually good at remembering details. I saw things coming, and I'm not usually so quick to catch these things.
-The ending is not a proper ending! It is a "go get books 2 and 3 right now if you want any sort of closure" ending!

So, on that note: I think I'll have to reread books 2 and 3 before deicding if I can recommend this series.

Cross-posted from my blog where there's more information on where I got my copy and links and everything.

This was freaking weird. But that’s probably most likely a me thing more than anything. This kind of science fiction is just not really my thing and this one didn’t do much to sway me that way. However, I did research into this as well, and it was quite popular. There was even a video game made based on these which was apparently pretty good and somewhat unique in its features at the time.

And it has also been re-released on Kindle in 2012, which is probably really great for anyone who loved the books as a kid and wants to re-read them or just have them in their collection. They have cool covers, and they’re only about 6 dollars which is probably what you’d spend buying a used copy unless you happened to find one specifically.

This is just really a me thing. This has a bit of a Giver or Chrysalids vibe, and I totally get people liking these, remembering them fondly, and even liking them now, but I just wasn’t into it. I’ve enjoyed a lot of books from Snyder, and I would totally read more as an adult, but this one’s not just for me. I’m not even going to rate it, because it’s so much a “not for me” book that it wouldn’t be fair.

Don’t let my opinion stop you if you think this sounds interesting. I’m gonna pass this one along and hope it finds a home with someone who likes this genre a bit more.

I read this book over and over as a child. I used to climb my own apple tree and read for hours, and reading it now was like stepping back into that childhood world.

I longed then to go gliding through the light and rain filled air between the trees, and felt that childhood longing again.

I did not realize, then, that this was if the vein of post- apocalyptic fiction, and the theme of the utopian society hiding dark secrets that must be exposed.

Whether or not the story would have affected me so much had I not adored it as child, I can't say. But I will reread the others as well.

Interestingly, as I read, I kept feeling echoes of other books I loved at that time, in particular The Dragonbard books by Shirley Rousseau Murphy, and I'd have to remind myself that, no, that was Teb, not Raamo.

This book was a haunting mystery from my childhood, and I'm so glad I finally found it and read it again!

This is a really great book. I had always wanted to read it and then once I started listening to The Story of Simon Simopath by the UK band Nirvana and the album reminded me of this book, so I picked it back up after putting it down for years. Truly a great, whimsical read.

I read this as a kid and loved it. So I thought I would revisit the series. I read them out of order as a kid and never knew it, so when i got the actual first book I was a bit suprised. This is technically the second book, but you can switch them and it is no big deal....

This was the first book I ever checked out of the Library. I picked it up purely for the cover, and fell deeply in love with it. A couple of years later I got the Windham Classics video game as a birthday gift, and fell in love with the world all over again, but I came to it already loving the world of Green-Sky.


[Review contains minor to significant spoilers!]


Some people reviewing this book and its sequels recently have criticized their originality and called out their trope of human colonists living a low tech and agrarian lifestyle built on social views popular in the sixties and seventies, who discover the same cultural issues led them to leave earth in the first place and must confront the true origins and technology of their historical founders. Ground that has been covered by Anne McCaffrey, Larry Niven, and others from books to cartoons to Star Trek episodes over the last few decades. Let's be clear here, these books were written in the early 70s and were trope-building. This is where some of those ideas came from.

Children's Literature is often earnest and slightly obvious in it's themes, and that is appropriate for books aimed at developing intellects. It seems odd to criticize a book for not having a level of character or thematic complexity that would be discouraging to its target audience.

The world-building here is first rate. The characters are well drawn within the confines of the world they inhabit, and the storytelling mechanism was original (or at least unusual) for its time.

This is a book (and a series) about social themes, personal responsibility, and taking on the mantle of responsibility for ourselves and the society we are a part of as we grow up. The characters begin with simplistic views about good and bad, right and wrong, and what it means to obey they rules.

Watching the characters discover the realities of oppression, deception by government for the perpetuation of government, and the complicity of those who are ruled accepting negative things happening to others for the sake of the status quo was astounding as an eight-year-old. These are heady concepts, and they were handled deftly at the intellect level of children.

The issues faced by the characters defy simple fixes, and have lasting consequences for themselves and the people that they care about. Lessons about moral and ethical choices, loyalty to friends and societies (and the conflicts between those things), and what happens AFTER we do the "right" thing and who it affects are all lasting lessons that I'm very glad to have discovered in these books.

I can't really recommend Below the Root and its sequels highly enough, and I hope that these classics of children's literature return to print and library shelves. They are timeless, and as a parent of children in the target age group, I haven't found anything better to introduce to my kids.

I was disappointed in this series because it wasn't what I expected from reading The Changeling by the same author. It The Changeling is set in contemporary (~1970) California in the real world, but Ivy and Martha play imagination games about the heroine Princess Wisteria and the usurper Queen Oleander in the Land of Green Sky, a planet whose gravity is so light people can wear special garments and glide like flying squirrels. This trilogy that starts with Below the Root is called Green Sky and it IS set on that planet, but there are no queens nor princesses. Despite my disappointment, it's still worth reading.

The society that does live in the Land of Green Sky features implausibly well-functioning socialism (though not labelled as such), considers violence so horrible there are no (polite) words for it, and uses rituals to keep people focused on Peace, Joy, and Love. They are ovovegetarians and allow free love for the young (and the priestly class, oddly.) There are also gifts of the Spirit (not to be confused with Christian meanings of that phrase) like reading each other's thoughts and telekinesis, though these gifts seem to be fading away from the population. Some people chew a soothing berry if they aren't able to feel Peace. The leaders prescribe a young person's career and no one seems to complain about it.

So what's wrong with this utopia? Only that the ruling priests lie to the people about both the past and the present - in order to protect them. Those who persistently ask too many questions or find out things they aren't supposed to know are apt to vanish. These disappearances are blamed on the monstrous Pash-shan who live below the magical Root of the Wissenvine which contains them in underground dens. It's not quite clear whether they eat the vanished ones or enslave them.

The story focuses on three young people newly appointed to the priesthood and their unsettling discoveries, and on a child found on the forest, apparently escaped from the Pash-shan.

Although this is the first of a trilogy it ends reasonably well, in a victory for truth, though it seems fragile to me.

Note that this book and its sequels are clean, except for a brief and very vague mention in this one of shifting love affairs in the co-ed youth halls (where the young people are fed contraceptives daily). This would probably go right over the heads of most young kids. We don't hear about any specific love affairs - there's not even any kissing. Most people past their mid 20s seem to be in monogamous pair bonds.