=Two lone travelers help each other their achieve hearts’ desires in this leisurely, character-rich western from an always interesting author. Melvin Fitchett has spent the eight years since the Civil War’s end haunted by battle nightmares, and searching for his sweetheart Evelyn, who believes him dead. On the North Texas plains he hooks up with young Melvin Smyte, a Chicago orphan with a guilty secret and a profound need for friendship. Dubbing each other Stick and Whittle, respectively, the two Melvins set off for Kansas, discovering when they reach Wichita City that Evelyn, now a governess, and her 11-year-old charge have been kidnapped by a feared desperado. Hite (Cecil in Space, 1999) develops a fizzy chemistry between saturnine Stick and his garrulous, mercurial sidekick as they lope across wide prairies, conversing on topics deep and silly, finding sturdy allies in an old Cheyenne warrior and his beautiful daughter, risking their lives in a quixotic rescue. Though the climax is a wild, fiery, horse-stampeding shoot-’em-up with a generous body count at the end, the overall tone here is just this side of serious. Whittle not only survives a sudden brief ride in a tornado, for instance, but earns Stick’s awed respect when he admits to having started an accidental fire that sent his entire hometown up in flames. Because the good guys are so likable, and the bad guys little more than cardboard figures, readers will find this an amiable ramble, finished off with a heartwarming double romance. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-09828-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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