What is the theme of The Trial by Jen Bryant?

Question

What is the theme of The Trial by Jen Bryant?

Answer 1

"The Trial" is a novel that takes you inside one of the most widely publicized criminal cases of the twentieth century:  The kidnapping of the son of Charles Lindbergh, a hero in America at the time of the crime.

The country mourns; a manhunt begins; and when Bruno Richard Hauptmann is captured and accused, Jen Bryant's character Katie, only 12, finds herself inside the courtroom at the trial of Hauptmann as an assistant to her uncle, a reporter. Through the eyes of young Katie, the reader lives through the courtroom drama that captured the world's attention in 1935.

Without revealing too much, Katie conveys the gravity of an event that may have been a miscarriage of justice. As Katie says, “When a man's on trial for his life, isn't every word important?”

"The Trial" was named to the 2006-2007 Virginia Young Readers Choice Award Master List, and the Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year.