Tahleen reviews: "Night of the Howling Dogs" by Graham Salisbury

Title: Night of the Howling Dogs
Author: Graham Salisbury
Publisher: Recorded Books, 2009 (print available from Laurel Leaf)
Narrator: Robert Ramirez

Rating: 4.5 stars

Dylan and his scout troop from Hilo, Hawaii are psyched to be camping out at the base of a volcano in Halape during the summer of 1975. But when he finds out tough, older Louie, with whom he has a history, will be joining them, his enthusiasm is dampened. They start off the camping trip on a rocky start, with Dylan struggling to assert himself as senior patrol leader with the other boys. Then disaster strikes, and the beach paradise they started camping in turns into a nightmare when an earthquake causes rockslides and a tsunami. Dylan, Louie, and the rest of the troop must put aside their differences, rely on their wits, and on each other to survive.

This book might be short, but it's a true tale of survival that is based on actual events. As soon as the earthquake hits, we as readers are never sure who will survive, or when they will be rescued. Tensions were high to begin with, but it goes through the roof once the natural disaster hits and people go missing.

At first I didn't really like Dylan. He was kind of irritating and petulant. But I warmed to him once he started showing what he was really made of. I liked Louie much more than Dylan from the beginning, mostly because it was clear there was more to him than Dylan seemed to see. He just had a huge chip on his shoulder, and an attitude to go with it. Plus he was not friendly toward white people, or haole.

The setting and culture are one of my favorite aspects of all of Salisbury's books. He really infused the Hawaiian mythology into the story; one of the characters says that one of the howling dogs of the title is Pele, the volcano goddess, and a shark is a spirit watching over the island. The dialogue is often in pidgen, creating a strong sense of character and place.

Robert Ramirez did a good job on the narration. At times he sounded like he was accenting words a bit too much, but it was not something that took away from the storytelling. I've listened to him narrate before, and I would have no issue with listening to him again.

Ever since visiting the beautiful islands of Hawaii on my honeymoon, I've loved traveling back through novels. Salisbury is one of the best authors I've found for this. His authenticity in writing for young people is unparalleled in this regard, and I look forward to reading his other works. (I've already read a number of his Calvin Coconut books, and he also wrote the Scott O'Dell Award–winning Under the Blood Red Sun.)

Disclosure: I got this audiobook from my local library.

Tahleen reviews: "I'll Be There" by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Title: I'll Be There
Author: Holly Goldberg Sloan
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; 2011

Rating: 4 stars

Sam Border has only known what it's like to run. He hasn't had stability since he was a very young child, and ever since his father took him and his younger brother Riddle when they were small they've always been looking over their shoulder for whoever is after them, usually the authorities. Their father is a thief, going against the system and trying to cheat it as often as possible, and uses his sons to get pity from those he tries to swindle. All Sam can do is make sure to take care of his brother as best he can. But all this changes when he meets Emily by chance after a church service, after she seems to sing a song straight to him. He begins to want to stay, to be a part of another person's life. But he has a major obstacle: his paranoid and abusive father, and his worry for his brother.

I read this book a couple of weeks ago, and I have to say I had to stay up reading it until I was finished. Some of you may know this doesn't happen too often to me. It turned from love story, to family story, to survival story, and I needed to know what happened to each character.

I must say the characters were very well crafted and developed. Sam is unsure of this new pattern he has started, and has a fierce loyalty to Riddle. He is tender and caring but knows what needs to be done and does it. Riddle is a quiet, suffers from asthma in silence. He draws complex images of the insides of machines in a phone book as a way to cope. He craves love and gets it from Sam, but wishes for the love of a mother too. Emily is a fairly typical teenage girl who doesn't understand what it's like to live in poverty and can't wrap her brain around Sam's situation, doesn't even consider that such a life could be possible for this boy. Her whole family becomes important to the story, and each is individual and fleshed out.

The story itself is gripping and full of tension, especially when it comes to how Sam and Riddle's father reacts as it is clear he is mentally unstable and we are unsure how he will react or take action when he thinks he's being double crossed or tricked.

I'll Be There is a heartwarming and lovely story survival, hope, and promise.

Disclosure: I got this book from my local library.

Jessi Reviews Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Title/Author: Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Publisher/Year: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006
Where I Got It: My local public library
Why I Read It: It had been on my to-read list for quite a while


Synopsis:


Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.

Told in journal entries, this is the heart-pounding story of Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.


Review:



Okay, so this book definitely freaked me out. I don't know if it's just because of the wacky weather we've had so far this year, but the events of this book seem completely and utterly possible.

The fact that this book is so realistic is what makes it so good. The after effects from the moon being knocked out of orbit are completely plausible, and it made me all too aware of how much we take for granted. Simple things like electricity and running water. Being able to go to the store if we need something. It freaked me out because, to put it plainly, I would suck at surviving.

Another thing that I found to be realistic was Miranda's voice. The diary thing worked for me, as a whole. There were a couple things I didn't buy, like who really writes dialogue in a diary? But I understand that things like that have to be taken with a grain of salt because they are necessary for the book to work. And to tell the truth, it didn't really bug me all that much. I was too busy being freaked out about how much food we have in our house. I thought Miranda was really authentic, though. What 16-year-old doesn't have their vulnerable or whiny or selfish points? What 16-year-old wouldn't rather be ice skating than sitting in a sunroom reading a history textbook? Especially when the world is ending! I also liked how even though I would have liked to know what was happening in the rest of the world, we couldn't know because Miranda herself couldn't know. Hopefully, we'll see more in subsequent books.

This was compulsively readable for me, and I probably would have read it all at once if I wouldn't have stopped myself. I had this utter need to know what was going to happen and how it was going to end. I will definitely be reading books 2 and 3 to find out!