Setting the story in the early 1950s, Hamilton has penned a slow-moving but ultimately touching character study about a boy learning to love his new stepfather. Dal Wilkins is 11 and really can’t remember his father, a soldier killed in WWII. His mother has married a jovial, kind man whom Dal calls “Mr. Sabatini.” Dal accompanies Mr. Sabatini on a trip to Idaho; expecting to find the Wild West, Dal instead spends his summer in a tiny, sleepy town. He works in bean fields, goes to barbecues, works up an attraction to Patty Puckett, goes swimming, and spends some strained days with the Dunns, a family of farmers whom Patty ridicules. Patty’s ne’er-do-well father, Len, claims to own a uranium mine, however, and Mr. Sabatini decides to invest. When Mr. Sabatini is bitten by a rattlesnake on a trip to the mine, Dal must summon the same courage his own father and Mr. Sabatini drew upon during the war. He drives to town through the nearly roadless desert, saves his stepfather’s life, and finds that he has a family stronger in love than that found in the Dunn or Puckett brood. This beautifully crafted book, long on plot, feeling, and suspense, features protagonists that are drawn with realism and depth. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-16814-0
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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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