mene: I thought "The Kin" was a bit similar to Jean M. Auel's "Earth's Children" series (book 1 being "The Clan of the Cave Bear"), though Dickinson's book is really targeted at children and it's also written from the childrens' viewpoints. The similarities are that both books take place in the prehistory (although CotCB a LOT later, around 35.000 years ago), both have clans of people who speak and clans who don't speak (and the speaking-people debating whether the non-speaking clans are really people or just people-like animals), and in both books the characters travel through the land. Both authors also describe the landscape very well, though in a different way. The differences are the target audience and consequently the events. In Dickinson's book, it's not really a problem if someone from the speaking-clan gets a child with someone from a non-speaking-clan, but this is a big problem in Auel's books.… (més)

Smitie: Dutch book about a young boy from a hunter/gatherer tribe travels to the east and discovers a whole new culture of the first farmers. A very nice tale from the historic period after the ice ages.