A moiled, disappointingly passionless view of a people burdened by grief and fear after years of unchecked violence. Told that his aunt Petrona is ill, Juan, 17, leaves his family in Bogot† for Punta Verde, her country estate, where he learns that it's not sickness, but loneliness and fear that have prompted her request for company. Fear of what? Despite plenty of hints, Juan repeatedly needs to have it spelled out: Military troops and guerilla forces have become interchangeable in their terrorist tactics and lack of discipline, and the death toll has been rising almost daily. Juan meets a confusingly large number of campesinos, and Jenkins (Celebrating the Hero, 1993, etc.) shields him, and readers, from any direct experience with soldiers or mayhem—it's all secondhand or offstage. Several subplots are shoehorned in: Petrona reveals that she's actually his grandmother; and while revelations about his father's past are changing Juan from an archetypally sullen teen to a loving son, he meets and falls for Chia, a librarian who, after plenty of clumsy foreshadowing, is killed by a bomb. There is little sense of place and no reason given for the violence. Also missing is the terrifying immediacy of Frances Temple's A Taste Of Salt (1992) and, as is found in Louise Moeri's The Forty-Third War (1989), a clear vision of a society in which warfare is endemic. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-67538-8
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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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