In a patchy pirate yarn rigged with historical people and incidents, Moore (My Life with the Indians, not reviewed, etc.) puts a teenage stowaway aboard an 18th-century pirate chaser. Raised in the strict Philadelphia Quaker household of his Uncle Elias, David steals off to sea while Elias himself is away on a supposed trading venture, and finds himself aboard The Sea Turtle, a refitted merchant ship commissioned to track down brutal, wily buccaneer Jack Scarfield. A trail of burning ships and murdered men leads to a climactic battle, in the course of which David is shocked to learn that Scarfield and Elias are one, a freebooter who assuages his Quaker conscience by buying and freeing slaves to crew his ship, but then steals the money back. Though Moore opens with a melodramatic hanging, he takes a long time to get David off shore, and leaves the complex, potentially fascinating character of Elias/Scarfield, a figure based on a real brigand who led a double life, largely unexamined. Violent encounters are compellingly related, but readers with a taste for salt breezes and nonstop action will find this slow and flavorless next to such blood-and-thunder tales as Iain Lawrence’s Buccaneers (2001) or Gerald Hausman’s Tom Cringle series. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-97877-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
Low in physical violence, while being rich in moral and ethical issues, as well as in appealingly complex characters and...
Pub Date: March 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-316-05777-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Megan Tingley/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Paulsen brings the story he began in Hatchet (1987) and continued in the alternate sequels The River (1991) and Brian’s Winter (1996) around to a sometimes-mystical close. Surviving the media coverage and the unwanted attention of other high school students has become more onerous to Brian than his experiences in the wild; realizing that the wilderness has become larger within him than the need to be with people, Brian methodically gathers survival equipment—listed in detail—then leaves his old life behind. It takes some time, plus a brutal fight and sessions with a savvy counselor, before Brian reaches that realization, but once out under the trees, it’s obvious that his attachment to the wild is a permanent one. Becoming ever more attuned to the natural wonders around him, he travels over a succession of lakes and streams, pausing to make camp, howl with a wolf, read Shakespeare to a pair of attentive otters and, once, to share a meal with an old man who talks about animal guides and leaves a medicine bundle for him. Readers hoping for the high adventure of the previous books may be disappointed, as Brian is now so skilled that a tipped canoe or a wild storm are only inconveniences, and even bears more hazard than threat; still, Paulsen bases many of his protagonist’s experiences on his own, and the wilderness through which Brian moves is vividly observed. Afterword. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32500-2
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
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