Wisely using only real people and sticking close to the actual events of Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition, McKernan does justice to one of the past century’s great true adventure stories. Those events are as dramatic as it comes, as readers of Jennifer Armstrong’s Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World (1998) or Elizabeth Cody Kimmel’s Ice Story (1999) will attest. Setting out in 1914 to cross Antarctica, Shackleton and 27 men were trapped by ice that eventually destroyed their ship and left them huddled together, barely sheltered from the elements, for 22 months. Teenaged wanderer Perce Blackborow provides the point of view; hoping to measure himself against both nature and his fellow men, he stows away—and finds himself facing harder tests to his courage, spirit, and physical endurance than he’d ever imagined. The author smoothly integrates invented but credible banter and tensions, adds full measures of excitement, terror, boredom, pain, and exhaustion, then closes with sketches of each major participant’s later life, plus several resource lists. A compelling alternative to the nonfiction accounts. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-82691-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
A young orphan’s dog turns out to be considerably more than she seems in this Canadian wilderness tale set in the years following the American Revolution. Unwanted by his Scots relatives, Callum goes involuntarily from Edinburgh to his Uncle Rory’s remote farm in Upper Canada. Just before arriving, he impulsively spends most of his savings to buy an abused dog, plus a small, sealed box, from a vicious, oddly tattooed stranger. It’s a good investment, as it turns out, for Dog not only seems to understand everything that’s said to her, but repeatedly rescues Callum from the consequences of his own carelessness or ignorance, often saving lives in the process. Dog’s almost human awareness—along with selkie stories and songs from his homeland—gives Callum clues to her true nature and a willingness to credit them. Subject to severe mood swings driven by his distaste for farm work on one side and a growing love for his cousins and their kind-hearted father on the other, Callum makes an appealing protagonist whose relationship with Dog grows into warm respect after sundry adventures. Rather than take her cues from traditional selkie tales and end on a tragic or poignant note, Chan has Callum give Dog her freedom—the human skin in the box—and discover that their friendship survives. A well-knit, outdoorsy tale. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55074-895-5
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
Continuing the post–Civil War tale begun in Bigger (1994) and continued in Sooner (1998), Calvert takes young Tyler Bohannon, along with his ex-slave companion Isaac Peerce and dog Sooner, from Missouri to California. Already feeling wronged by his father, who had abandoned the family to fight in the war, and his mother, for remarrying, Tyler gets more bees in his bonnet when a keelboat captain treacherously trades him and Isaac to a group of Sioux. Then, adding insult to injury, Isaac gets far better treatment because his dark skin and woolly hair amaze their captors. Worst of all, when Tyler talks about escaping their enslavement, Isaac is reluctant to leave. Calvert hammers the irony of the role reversal into the ground, and fills Tyler so full of resentment that he comes across as little more than a walking sense of aggrievance. He’s also a bully; not only does he eventually browbeat Isaac into slipping away with him, but, deeply shocked by a white orphan’s disinterest in returning to white society, tries to drag her along too. In a quick, tidy resolution, the author brings Tyler and Isaac to Fort Benton, where they find the keelboat captain dying and Tyler’s stepfather waiting with fresh supplies, then sends the two travelers on to California in an afterword. This is billed as the final volume of a trilogy, but except for Tyler showing some signs of letting his resentment go, there’s little sense of closure. Weak. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83472-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002
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