The knockout story of Deborah Kiley's five days and nights on a raft in heavy seas during a storm. Aided by journalist Noonan, she spins a harrowing tale. In 1982, 24-year-old Kiley, who had already sailed the Whitbred and other famous sailboat endurance races, fell in with John Lippoth, captain of the Trashman, a heavy-handling, 58-foot yacht he was sailing from Maine to Florida. The Trashman set sail with Debbie and John; his girlfriend Meg Mooney; tall, muscular Brad Cavanaugh and his buddy Mark Adams, a Brit with pale blue malamute eyes and a stupefyingly evil tongue. Somewhere off North Carolina they hit 40-foot seas; 80-knot winds shredded the sails and the engine burned out. The description of this part of the storm is hair-raising, with the crew frantically trying to handle the wheel and the character of each member showing strong and clear. Then, while Debbie was below catching a few hours sleep, the ship went down—in two minutes. (Her account of the terrifying awakening in heaving seas gives shivers.) The five victims clung to a rubber raft and initially fought hypothermia by staying in the water, whose walloping waves were warmer than the air. Eventually, they boarded the raft, found that Meg had many deeply infected cuts and scrapes, and kept each other warm by gathering in a heap in urinous bilge (released urine gave their only heat). Sharks tried to sink the raft from beneath; John and Mark drank seawater, went mad, and cast themselves into the sea; Meg died of blood poisoning. After many ships failed to see them, a Russian freighter finally picked up Brad and Debbie. Short and adrenaline-charged, especially with those sharks.
Pub Date: May 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-65573-0
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Possibly inspired by the letters Cleary has received as a children's author, this begins with second-grader Leigh Botts' misspelled fan letter to Mr. Henshaw, whose fictitious book itself derives from the old take-off title Forty Ways W. Amuse a Dog. Soon Leigh is in sixth grade and bombarding his still-favorite author with a list of questions to be answered and returned by "next Friday," the day his author report is due. Leigh is disgruntled when Mr. Henshaw's answer comes late, and accompanied by a set of questions for Leigh to answer. He threatens not to, but as "Mom keeps nagging me about your dumb old questions" he finally gets the job done—and through his answers Mr. Henshaw and readers learn that Leigh considers himself "the mediumest boy in school," that his parents have split up, and that he dreams of his truck-driver dad driving him to school "hauling a forty-foot reefer, which would make his outfit add up to eighteen wheels altogether. . . . I guess I wouldn't seem so medium then." Soon Mr. Henshaw recommends keeping a diary (at least partly to get Leigh off his own back) and so the real letters to Mr. Henshaw taper off, with "pretend," unmailed letters (the diary) taking over. . . until Leigh can write "I don't have to pretend to write to Mr. Henshaw anymore. I have learned to say what I think on a piece of paper." Meanwhile Mr. Henshaw offers writing tips, and Leigh, struggling with a story for a school contest, concludes "I think you're right. Maybe I am not ready to write a story." Instead he writes a "true story" about a truck haul with his father in Leigh's real past, and this wins praise from "a real live author" Leigh meets through the school program. Mr. Henshaw has also advised that "a character in a story should solve a problem or change in some way," a standard juvenile-fiction dictum which Cleary herself applies modestly by having Leigh solve his disappearing lunch problem with a burglar-alarmed lunch box—and, more seriously, come to recognize and accept that his father can't be counted on. All of this, in Leigh's simple words, is capably and unobtrusively structured as well as valid and realistic. From the writing tips to the divorced-kid blues, however, it tends to substitute prevailing wisdom for the little jolts of recognition that made the Ramona books so rewarding.
Pub Date: Aug. 22, 1983
ISBN: 143511096X
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1983
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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