A girl’s odyssey through, and ultimate understanding of, the life of a boy whose only crime was being born into the wrong family becomes a powerful tale of redemption from Grove (Rimwalkers, 1993, etc.), written with grace. Almost everyone in the Missouri farming community where sixth-grader Carly lives hates and fears the Groats, who live along a swamp, close to a vile and stinking landfill. The men of the clan are hard-drinking, gun-toting types, painted as caring little for civilized society and its rules. As part of a class assignment, a horrified Carly has to interview Dustin Groat; he’s not very clean, fairly surly—a loner who comes to school wearing a small pin in his knuckle. In the course of the interview, Carly begins to question her classmates’ treatment of Dustin, and to solve some mysteries: why her third-grade teacher, after a run-in with Dustin’s father, left town in the middle of the school year, and why Dustin needs a network of hiding places. Worst of all, Carly recalls what she did to Dustin in third grade that so humiliated him that he was forever changed from a boy grieving over his mother’s suicide to a “melted,” broken creature. Among a cast of memorable characters, Dustin is obviously pitiable but also noble: Small hurts and large ones culminate until there is only an outcast who is not without dignity, and a savior who is not without culpability—it’s all very human, and brimming with compassion. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 18, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-23008-4
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
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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