In her writings and conversations about her work, Katherine Paterson repeatedly raises issues which emerge as artistic challenges for her. Among these are her commitment to the young reader's right to an absorbing story and her difficulties with plotting. Herself imbued with the Christian spirit, all Paterson's stories—whether they are set in feudal Japan or World War II Chesapeake Bay—dramatize a young protagonist's encounter with the mysteries of grace and love. Her publ...

Katherine Paterson won a second Newbery Medal with [Jacob Have I Loved]. I am not sure that she would have qualified for a Carnegie, but then the Americans like their emotions hot and hearts on sleeves. There is plenty of action and passion here but not a lot of stoicism. Let me be fair. Mrs. Paterson is a woman of formidable intelligence and unshakable integrity. She shirks no issues in a story of a twin baulked at every stage of life by the effortless brilliance of her sister. Although the story is told b...

The author of Bridge to Terabithia … has again written [in Jacob Have I Loved] a story that courageously sounds emotional depths. Acknowledging her great interest in life in Chesapeake Bay, she describes the activities of the watermen living on a sparsely inhabited island during World War II and shows how the ethos of its isolated, strict Methodist community affected the thoughts and feelings of a rugged but sensitive and intelligent girl. (p. 622) In addition to evoking the atmosphere of the remote ...

We meet Louise Bradshaw [of Jacob Have I Loved] in the summer of 1941, smarting under the disproportionate attention lavished on her fragile, musically talented twin sister Caroline since their birth 13 years earlier…. The interesting aspect of all Louise's torment and self-sacrifice is the growing realization that it isn't being forced on her. But not until she has settled down as a nurse-midwife (the only medical help) in a small Appalachian community—marrying a man with three ...

"… Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated," was the quotation that her senile, spiteful grandmother had pointed out to Louise [in Jacob Have I Loved]…. This theme of twin-envy is set on a small island in Chesapeake Bay, the setting made vivid and colored by local idiom. The story is told by Louise in retrospect, after she has broken away from the island and found her own career and her own family; it is brought full circle when she (now a nurse in a mountain community) deliver...

[In Jacob Have I Loved] Paterson weaves her background into a colorful but overly detailed canvas, sensitively picturing Louise as a strong-willed, strident, haunting characters. The first-person narrative, strongest in Louise's early years, loses some of its momentum during her gradual evolution into adulthood, which happens without benefit of confrontation. More a portrait than a full-bodied novel, this nevertheless stirs the blood. (pp. 255-56) Barbara Elleman, in a review of "...