The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer

The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm

By Nancy Farmer

Review:

The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm is a Newbury honor book winner written by Nancy Farmer. The book takes place in Zimbabwe in the year 2194 and is about three overly protected kids that steal away on a forbidden adventure into the inner city of Zimbabwe and end up being kidnapped. Three detectives, the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, are put to the case to find the missing children. These three detectives each have their own special ability as the Ear can hear almost anything, the Eye an see almost anything and the Arm can sense almost anything. But even with these special skills, the detectives  go on a wild goose chase all across Zimbabwe.  

Although The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm is overly packed with adventure, the book became dull about half way through. The scenes in the book switched fast enough to keep me reading with the hope that something extraordinary would take place in the story that would change my view on the book, but that did not happen. The story just became more and more uninteresting and frustrating as the detectives always managed to miss the lost kids by just a hair, and the missing kids always managed to escape their captors against all the odds. It became a routine read and I found myself skipping pages to hurry to the end of the story. 

Nancy Farmer also decided to add an extra element to her novel by adding ancient African words to the vocabulary on each page, with a glossary in the back for definitions and translations. This concept has a great educational benefit for those who care to learn about ancient African words, but I found it to be more distracting than anything. Farmer also contrasts ancient African culture and tradition to modern day Africa, which she does do a great job at, but it was a little too over emphasized which also distracted from the main story. The book would have been better if all of the traditional African lore and beliefs were minimized.  

The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm is completely original and starts off exciting, but that excitement slows down as the story progresses. The book has its ups and downs but does end on a good note. Overall, the book is lightly entertaining even with some of it's flaws.

Written by Scott