User:Derild4921/First Light

First Light is the debut novel of Newbery Award winning author Rebecca Stead, published in 2007.

Inspiration and origins
Stead drew inspiration from many sources in order to create the novel. As a child growing up in a big city, she was interested in the small towns which made her think "that in smaller places, everybody, even the kids, had special identities, where as in a cty people are pretty anonymous". An idea began to form for a hidden society that also served as a small town.

Stead began writing in 2002, but had no expereince prior to that. The first draft turned out confusing and unwieldy. To help her, Stead met with Wendy Lamb, an editor Stead had met in a workshop who suggested to meet with a "critique group" to revise the draft. After Stead had created a revised copy of the novel in 2005, she sent it to Wendy again and a contract was made. Even with this draft, more revisions were made it order the other world easy to understand. Stead found it hard "to maintain a sense of 'the whole'" Over and over I mapped out the book out for myself using post-its in a manila folder, trying to get a sense of where the tension went". The novel took three years to complete.

After the revision were done, much of he plot stay the same, but several events in the original draft were cut out to make the whole book stronger. Stead combined two characters into one, having a stronger outline and also cut out several scenes for minor characters. In the end, Stead found that the revisions helped to make the book stronger.

Genre and themes
First Light has been categorized in both the science fiction and mystery genres. Haegele from the Philadelphia Inquirer also put the novel as a "slow-to-unfold mystery combining elements of science and history with an appealing note of fantasy". Kirkus Reviews classified the novel as an "ice-age mystery" as both Peter and Thea "discover one another's worlds as well as the truth about themselves". Connie Tyrrell Burns from School Library Journal found the novel as "an exciting, engaging mix of science fiction, mystery, and adventure".

Reviewers also noted an environmental theme in the book. Kirkus Reviews found that "With the impending threat of global warning as an ominous backdrop, teens from very different worlds find they have much in common". In the novel Peter finds an underground civilzation beneath Greenland that is sinking as a result of global warming. Burns felt that ''First Light is a "great discussion starter of issues ranging from global warming to shunning and building a new society".

Audiobook adaption
First Light has been made in an audiobook containing 6 disks and a length of 7 hours and 6 minutes. The audiobook was released by the Listening Library and read by Coleen Marlo and David Ackroyd for the parts of Peter and Thea, respectively. Kathy Miller from School Library Journal praised the two readers for their performance which "engages listeners, and they are both adept at creating a different voice for each character and moving seamlessly between them". Miller also found the novel useful for starting a discussion on topics such as "political subterfuge and propaganda to global warming". A review from Horn Book Review by Jenifer Brabander praised the easy shifts from American to English accents made by both narrators. Brab ander also found the tone given to Thea appropriate and compared the novel to Stead's second work When You Reach Me feeling that "[t]hough First Light doesn't reach the excellence of Stead's second novel, the Newbery-winning When You Reach Me, this audio will nevertheless draw listeners in with its narrators' strong talent".