Saturday, January 29, 2011

Alabama Moon

Alabama Moon

Author: Watt Key
Publisher: New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 2006.

Plot Description:
This book follows Moon, a young boy who was raised in the forest’s of Florida by his father.  When his father dies, he is faced with deciding whether or not to keep to the codes his father taught him –to distrust people and the government and to keep living in the forest on his own- or to learn to embrace the outside world he has had little contact with.  Along the way he learns that while there is both good and bad people and events in the outside world, the relationships he makes along the way are what make life worth living.

Review:
I thought that this book was extremely well written.  It is believably told from a 10 year olds point of view, albeit a very mature 10 year old in terms of survival skills and his own thought process.  The ways in which he learns to deal with loss and confronts a way of life that he has only glimpsed would be interesting to anyone.  I think that it is an excellently told story of the ways in which we must adapt to changing situations and learn to confront that what we have been taught is not always correct.

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Reading level: 6th Grade

Similar Books: Hatchet

Reader’s Advisory:
Subjects/themes- survival, wilderness, loss, death, father-son relationships
Awards- CA Young Readers Award 2010
Character names/descriptions-
            Moon- Young orphan who grew up in the woods
            Kit- Friend Moon makes at boys facility who runs away with Moon for the adventure of a 
                    lifetime
            Hal- Bully at the boys facility who Moon befriends
            Wellington- Rich lawyer who builds a huge property in the woods near Moon’s house
            Sanders- The local constable who will stop at nothing to get Moon to jail
Annotation- A young boy learns to survive in the world after growing up in the wilderness.

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