Paulsen (My Life in Dog Years, 1998, etc.), treading water, offers a competent fantasy-adventure about a boy who is time-warped into a primitive world, undergoes the hero's journey, and proves he can get the girl and still go home again. Mark, 13, is thrilled to spend a few days in the desert camping, until a mysterious light transports him to a place and time not his own. When he comes upon other people, recognizable but clearly different from himself, he sees that he is in a society close to that of the first peoples in North America. The language is plain, action-oriented, and always driven toward cliff-hanging chapter endings, but there is little in the way of character development. Instead the story is filled with some powerful if old-fashioned archetypes engaged in fairly primal give-and-take: Mark kills a horrible beast and thereby rescues a young maiden from its clutches; he kills or outsmarts all enemies; he is accepted as a warrior and undergoes ceremonial tributes as such; he's sweet to younger children; and prepares to marry the chief's daughter. Other than referring to pizza and his parents once or twice, Mark is at home as a warrior/survivor; his former life falls away even as he searches for the way back to the present. In the end, the light brings a 17-year-old Mark back from what was a future brought about by a great epidemic; his readjustment is unremarked upon. Readers last glimpse Mark as an adult, trying to find a vaccine for the vires behind the epidemic. (Fiction. 10- 14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32196-1
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
Eighth-grader Orithian Haley, nicknamed “Rith,” is an extremely sullen and resentful member of a blended family. He never knew his dad, who died when Rith was very young. Now his mother has remarried and has twin toddlers. Rith cannot stand his stepfather, Walt, with whom he has nothing in common. Walt makes everyone go to church, another mark against him in Rith’s book. Suddenly, an eerie noise begins waking up Rith in the middle of the night. Gathering his courage, he sees a wooden staircase that isn’t normally in the house. When he goes down, he sees an old man who quotes Biblical proverbs and a cat who guards the old man. Rith tries to understand what’s happening, whether he’s going crazy, could the man be God, etc. With the help of a new friend, he starts to puzzle it out. When the cat awakens him because his little sister has gone outside during a blizzard, Rith rescues her and the old man disappears for good. Rith finally demands the truth about his dad from his mom, but his stepfather is the one who thinks he deserves to know the unpleasant facts. This rhapsody on faith, acceptance, patience and the relationship between “truth” and “reality” is an unusual and valuable addition to the pantheon of literature for youth, particularly since faith is so seldom addressed with such neutrality in books for younger readers. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8225-7268-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
Ejii Ugabe, nervous and subservient, is an unlikely heroine in her semi-magical world. Though mystical shadows speak to her and mark her as different, Ejii would rather be the humble girl-child her despotic father wanted. When the shadows order her to join the folk hero Jaa, a mighty warrior woman, on a quest across Nigeria, Ejii resists the call. As a result, her quest begins far more dangerously, nearly alone but for a talking camel and an escaped slave boy who calls lightning. Ejii’s world is touched by magical realism, with technology interwoven with wild magic in a chaotic post-apocalyptic setting. Though the narrative and dialogue are thoroughly inexpert, the rich and complex world-building creates an intriguing setting for Ejii’s quest. Moreover, the intricacy of this Western African milieu, with its multitude of shades of Islam, its contemporary and fantasy tribes and its geographical variations, is very welcome in the still mostly Eurocentric genre of fantasy. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4231-0033-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Disney-Jump at the Sun
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
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