It’s 1519 and the plague has struck Spain. Mateo Macías de Ávila buries his parents, burns his farm, and sets out with his dog, Ugly, looking for a future. In an old inn reeking of smoke and half-drunken men, Mateo meets a recruiter and signs away two years of his life for a voyage to an unknown destination. Mateo meets Rodrigo Nieto, who tells him, “If we are lucky, half of us will return. It is the way of the sea. And that, my friend, is what I call adventure.” As cabin boy, cook, musician, and artist, Mateo is indeed in for an adventure. Sailing under Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese captain swearing allegiance to King Carlos of Spain, Mateo and Rodrigo hear stories of two-headed monsters, cannibals, and sea monsters standing between them and the riches of the Spice Islands. In their bid to sail west to get to the Far East and return home by circumnavigating the globe, Mateo and his fellow voyagers experience murder, mutiny, marooning, starvation, beautiful native women, a forest of ghosts, menacing seawolves, and a graveyard of mummified giants. Young readers will be entranced by Torrey’s descriptions of starving sailors eating maggots, rats, leather, and sawdust, and of executions and bloody warfare. The writing is lively; readers will feel as if they have been right there with Mateo on one of the greatest voyages of discovery ever. This deserves to be in the hands of every reader who loves history and adventure. (map, glossary, afterword, bibliography, bibliography for young readers) (Historical fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-82338-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Beautiful and important.
When Death tells a story, you pay attention.
Liesel Meminger is a young girl growing up outside of Munich in Nazi Germany, and Death tells her story as “an attempt—a flying jump of an attempt—to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it.” When her foster father helps her learn to read and she discovers the power of words, Liesel begins stealing books from Nazi book burnings and the mayor’s wife’s library. As she becomes a better reader, she becomes a writer, writing a book about her life in such a miserable time. Liesel’s experiences move Death to say, “I am haunted by humans.” How could the human race be “so ugly and so glorious” at the same time? This big, expansive novel is a leisurely working out of fate, of seemingly chance encounters and events that ultimately touch, like dominoes as they collide. The writing is elegant, philosophical and moving. Even at its length, it’s a work to read slowly and savor.
Beautiful and important. (Fiction. 12+)Pub Date: March 14, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-83100-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A delightfully captivating swatch of autobiography from the author of Kiss. Kiss, Switch Bitch and many others. Schoolboy Dahl wanted adventure. Classes bored him, there was work to be had in Africa, and war clouds loomed on the world's horizons. He finds himself with a trainee's job with Shell Oil of East Africa and winds up in what is now Tanzania. Then war comes in 1939 and Dahl's adventures truly begin. At the war's outbreak, Dahl volunteers for the RAF, signing on to be a fighter pilot. Wounded in the Libyan desert, he spends six months recuperating in a military hospital, then rejoins his unit in Greece, only to be driven back by the advancing Germans. On April 20, 1941, he goes head on against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens. On-target bio installment with, one hopes, lots more of this engrossing life to come.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0142413836
Page Count: 209
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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