FURIOUS MOOSE OF THE WILDERNESS

The Furious onslaught of the moose ushers in the elements of what might have been a stark, stirring story. The hero, 18-year-old Pete Gant, is almost destroyed by a monstrous bull moose. He senses that for some reason the moose is actually trying to hunt him down. For his part he is determined that he must kill the moose, and this obsession takes precedence over his other concerns. The confrontation appears to be perfectly clear-with two unyielding opponents ready to fight it out. But then a third element slips into the picture: Hailey Zluski, a beautiful, blond, Polish refugee. Pete, a trapper, takes an open-and-shut view of things, including the natural world of the wilderness, which he accepts unsentimentally as a challenge and as the source of his livelihood. Hailey is a more intellectual, romantic type, and she hates violence. The two are bitterly opposed on the subject of the killing, so-- Pete leaves, temporarily gives up trapping, forgets his monomania (the moose, apparently, has already decided to let bygones be bygones) and goes to the big city for a self-improvement course, and then returns for a compromise ending. Some readers will cheer for Pete, others for the moose, but Hailey is the disappointing victor. The text is at the start vividly dramatic and pictorial, but as the story bogs down, the descriptions become fulsome. The late Mr. Kjelgaard is the author of many popular books for boys.