A stirring, suspenseful true story of dangerous adventure and remarkable survival.
In this true, thrilling adventure story, 55-year-old former president Theodore Roosevelt joins an expedition to explore an uncharted river deep in the Amazon jungle and barely makes it out alive.
Long before he was president of the United States, Roosevelt was famous as an intrepid adventurer. While on a speaking tour of South America, Roosevelt receives an offer he cannot refuse: lead an expedition deep into a mostly unknown region of the Amazon to chart an unmapped river. Accompanying him are his son Kermit and renowned Brazilian explorer Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, quite similar to Roosevelt in stamina and temperament. The expedition is plagued with difficulties from the beginning. Besides having to trudge through thick, unforgiving jungle and navigate an unpredictably dangerous river with raging rapids and steep waterfalls, Roosevelt and his companions must endure myriad threats such as ferocious insects, malaria, near starvation, bloodthirsty piranhas, poisonous snakes, and hostile indigenous peoples. Seiple’s crisply written, briskly paced narrative brings the constant state of danger to the fore, smoothly weaving in quotations from primary sources. As close to death as he has ever been, Roosevelt characteristically remarks, "I did have a murderous trip down South, but it was mighty interesting." One unfortunate oversight is an absence of specific source notes for these quotations.
A stirring, suspenseful true story of dangerous adventure and remarkable survival. (photos, “Teddy’s Travel Tips,” timeline, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-70916-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too.
Abridged but not toned down, this young-readers version of an ex-SEAL sniper’s account (SEAL Team Six, 2011) of his training and combat experiences in Operation Desert Storm and the first Battle of Mogadishu makes colorful, often compelling reading.
“My experiences weren’t always enjoyable,” Wasdin writes, “but they were always adrenaline-filled!” Not to mention testosterone-fueled. He goes on to ascribe much of his innate toughness to being regularly beaten by his stepfather as a child and punctuates his passage through the notoriously hellacious SEAL training with frequent references to other trainees who fail or drop out. He tears into the Clinton administration (whose “support for our troops had sagged like a sack of turds”), indecisive commanders and corrupt Italian “allies” for making such a hash of the entire Somalian mission. In later chapters he retraces his long, difficult physical and emotional recovery from serious wounds received during the “Black Hawk Down” operation, his increasing focus on faith and family after divorce and remarriage and his second career as a chiropractor.
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too. (acronym/ordinance glossary, adult level reading list) (Memoir. 12-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-01643-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A solid and captivating look at these remarkable pioneers of modern fiction.
The wild freedom of the imagination and the heart, and the tragedy of lives ended just as success is within view—such a powerful story is that of the Brontë children.
Reef’s gracefully plotted, carefully researched account focuses on Charlotte, whose correspondence with friends, longer life and more extensive experience outside the narrow milieu of Haworth, including her acquaintance with the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who became her biographer, revealed more of her personality. She describes the Brontë children’s early losses of their mother and then their two oldest siblings, conveying the imaginative, verbally rich life of children who are essentially orphaned but share both the wild countryside and the gifts of story. Brother Branwell’s tragic struggle with alcohol and opium is seen as if offstage, wounding to his sisters and his father but sad principally because he never found a way to use literature to save himself. Reef looks at the 19th-century context for women writers and the reasons that the sisters chose to publish only under pseudonyms—and includes a wonderful description of the encounter in which Anne and Charlotte revealed their identities to Charlotte’s publisher. She also includes brief, no-major-spoilers summaries of the sisters’ novels, inviting readers to connect the dots and to understand how real-life experience was transformed into fiction.
A solid and captivating look at these remarkable pioneers of modern fiction. (notes and a comprehensive bibliography) (Biography. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-57966-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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