Wild+Man+Island

Jay Haft Summer Reading August 1, 2007

__Wild Man Island__ by Will Hobbs is about a child named Andy. He is a very good kayaker who lives in Colorado. He goes to Alaska to see the site where his father died. On the second to the last day of the trip, he finds out that he is not going to visit the site. At around 3:00 a.m., he takes a kayak and paddles up to the site when everyone else is asleep. On his way back to the campsite, he is going against the tide, and then a storm hits. Andy is stranded on an island. The island is nicknamed The Fortress of Bears, because is has one of the most dense bear populations in the U.S. On the island he finds a man in ancient clothing. This is the wild man of the title. This book is an adventure story. The theme is survival because Andy has to depend on his survival skills to stay alive. I liked the book because it told a lot of things about Alaska and a lot of facts about the wildlife there. It was easy to read. One thing I didn’t like was that sometimes if you missed a sentence, you would be completely confused about what happened. The writing style had lots of facts, but sometimes it did not go into enough detail. In Chapter 9 Andy is starving and is trying to decide whether to eat mussels in the seabed. Andy says to himself, “Every so often they’re poisonous, Julia had said. //Every// //so often//, I thought, as in //once in a while//. As in //rarely//. It was just that they were risky. I was ready to take that risk.” This quote shows that Andy is taking a risk to survive. It is also an interesting fact that he learned from Julia, his kayaking guide. In Chapter 16 Andy was trying to escape from a cave. He noticed he was close to the way out. Andy thinks, “My torch wasn’t the only light source. Downstream the creek and the far slope were lit by natural light from an opening I couldn’t quite make out. The only thing was, could I reach it and could I crawl through it?” This quote is interesting because Andy is going through a cave and he does not know if there was even a way out. This time luck was on his side. I would recommend this book to other people because it is a fun adventure book and it is easy to read. It is also very entertaining and has lots of twists and turns.

response: This book seems like something I would like because it has a mix of fiction and survival themes. I know that there are many kids in our class who like this kind of book too. I have also been to Alaska and know that even along the coastline it’s hard to find civilization. Surviving there would be extremely hard if you got disoriented. I think that Jay did a good job writing this review. He covered all of the points about the book, but could have given a few more examples of what Andy did to cope with his new environment. He could have said where Andy got his food, fire, and shelter. He could have also given some of Andy’s background about his family and life. How old was he? Did he have any siblings? What were his motives to get back home? He just leaves some facts and doesn’t come back to them sometimes. I want to know if he ran into any bears. If he did, what happened? He also could have explained who the wild man was or go into a little more detail about him. I would also like to hear about the island that the wild man lived on, and how he and Andy got along. Also, what happened to the kayak? I did like how he explained the author’s writing style. He also chose exciting quotes from the story. Overall, he made me want to read the book.

---Jon---