This Month's Book Reviews

A kids' book that has become the basis
for a colorful adventure movie

Author Dick King-Smith has been a popular writer in Great Britain for several years. He is probably best known in the U. S. as author of "Babe, the Gallant Pig," that was released as a major motion picture in this country. King-Smith's book, "The Water Horse," has been a popular kids' book in Great Britain as well as in Australia and New Zealand. The movie, "The Water Horse, Legend of the Deep" was released in the U. S. at Christmas time 2007. It should be recognized that the paperback reviewed here was the basis of the movie and not the other way around.

For those of you who might have seen or will see the movie, you need to be aware that, just as with most big screen productions based on books, the movie is a "lot more over the top" than the original book. The movie is moved from the original 1930 period to early in World War II. The military action and the violence in the movie along with the hint of adult romance is absent in the original story.

A kids' book from a unique series called
"My Side of the Story"

"Trouble at the Mill" by Phillip Wooderson is a paperback from a series that tells a story by one narrator that runs one way to the center of the book. To read the story by the second narrator, the reader flips the book around and reads the other way into the book's center. The subject matter is the early days of the Industrial Revolution in England, focusing on the Lancashire cotton mills.

One narrator, telling the story to be read first, is Lizzy, a teen-aged worker, who works sixty hours per week in a cotton mill. The other narrator is Josh, the teen-aged son of the cotton mill's owner. The confrontational nature of the opposing stories is softened somewhat by the fact that the two narrators had been childhood friends. Josh, who is to inherit his father's ownership of the cotton mill, has a much more sympathetic view of the workers' plight than his father because of the son's earlier friendship with Lizzy.

Obviously, such writing for kids offers a palatable way for them to develop background for those topics they will study in their history classes. Young readers come to understand the concept of "point of view" in writing. Later, such writing also can be used to develop skills in propaganda analysis, since an author may have a strong, but unstated, bias that becomes evident in the way the story is presented.

A teen-ager gets involved in a dangerous expedition
into the Amazon jungle

Roland Smith is a research biologist who has authored a number of adventure books for kids over the years. All of them have an environmental and wildlife preservation message imbedded. "Jaguar" is also in this mode. Its main character is a fourteen-year-old, Jacob Lanza, the son of a PhD level researcher and environmentalist. Jacob's parents are divorced and, although he has been on research expeditions with his father before, he fears that he is going to be left behind to finish high school as his dad embarks on a new venture in the Brazilian jungle. Of course, Jacob ends up going deep into the Amazon jungle with his dad and experiencing adventure well beyond what could have been expected.

There are some interesting sidebars included in the novel. One is Jacob's being left temporarily in an old peoples' home with his grandfather, who just happens to be a full-blooded Hopi Indian. Another is Jacob's finding out when he gets to Brazil that his father has a new romantic interest and how Jacob comes to respect her and appreciate her skills as an environmental researcher.

Kids while reading about kids from the past
can learn a lot of history

Karen Cushman, author of "Ballad of Lucy Whipple," also wrote "Catherine, Called Birdy" and the Newbery Medal winning "The Midwife's Apprentice." The latter two books dealt with two early-teen-aged girls in medieval English history. "Lucy Whipple" deals with an early-teen-aged girl reluctantly involved in the California gold rush of 1849. A New York Times Book Review comments "Lucy's story is packed with more history than many textbooks." Today's young reader will readily relate to Lucy as she and her family work at surviving the continent-changing gold rush of '49. The history lesson is a bonus.