Kalahari

by Jessica Khoury

Summary:

When an educational safari leaves 5 teens stranded in the middle of the Kalahari Desert, it is up to Sarah to try and lead them to safety. Having grown up in the field with her zoologist parents, she's well equipped to lead the teens to safety. But when a silver lion starts stalking them, they realize there might be more going on than they think. Now on the run not only from the lion, but also from the silver disease and the company that created it, Sarah will have to use everything she knows to keep them alive.

Review:

Kalahari was not what I expected when I picked it up. An adventure novel with a scifi twist, it does require quite a bit of suspension of belief, all while trying to be as realistic as possible. It succeeds for the most part, and will find many readers who truly enjoy the book. Good for more advanced middle grade readers, the characters both play into typical teenage stereotypes while making them believable. 

Genre: Scifi Adventure

Age Level: 7th Grade

Hatchet

Hatchet

Author: Gary Paulson

Publisher: New York : Bradbury Press, c1987.

Plot Description:

            Brian was only going to visit his father.  It was supposed to be a quick plane ride over the Canadian wilderness.  But all that changed when the pilot of the plane has a heart attach, leaving Brian alone in the cockpit with no idea where he is or how to land a plane.  This is the story of how one boy learns to survive in the wilderness. How he finds a way to build a shelter, find food, and learn to live with the local wildlife using nothing but his own ingenuity.  And while all of that is great for the short term, how is he ever going to find a way back home?

Review:

            Hatchet is a classic story of survival for good reason.  Brian is a character who is both completely uncomplicated and rational, but at the same time is struggling with personal problems (like knowing the real reason for his parents divorce, even though his dad doesn’t).  His desire to survive and ingenuity in solving his problems of food and shelter are impressive, but at the same time he still is a 13 year old boy who makes mistakes along the way.  The book is well written and a great read for anyone who ever wondered what it would be like to have to survive on your own.

Genre: Survival Fiction

Reading Level: 6^th Grade

Similar Titles: Hunger Games (though older)

Reader’s Advisory:

Personal Thoughts: classic for a reason

Subjects/Themes: survival, wilderness, hunting

Awards: 1997 Newberry Honor

Character Names:

            Brian: 13 year old from New York who has to survive on his own

Annotation: Would you be able to land a plane in the wilderness?

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: 6^th 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.