Audiobook reviews

I recently reviewed two audiobooks with a peculiar connection.  Masterminds is a thriller set in the seemingly perfect town of Serenity, New Mexico.  The Way to Stay in Destiny is a character-driven novel set in the woefully imperfect town of Destiny, Florida.  Neither town is quite what it seems.  Click the links to read the complete reviews.

Masterminds by Gordon Korman.  Read by a cast of five. (2015) 

[http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read/98783/]

A contemporary science thriller set in New Mexico - a real page-turner!  This is the first in a planned series.  I'm not sure how he can top this one!

The Way to Stay in Destiny by Augusta Scattergood and read by Michael Crouch. (2015) 

 [http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read/99246/]

Historical fiction set in 1970s Florida by the author of Glory Be. Another paean to the power of music.  (Try Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan, too!)

I'm confident that either of these is great in print as well.

Skink - No Surrender - a review

Hiaasen, Carl. 2014. Skink - No Surrender. New York: Knopf.
(Advance Reader Copy)

Skink - No Surrender is Carl Hiaasen's first foray into YALit and he's making his entrance in a big way—employing Skink, the outrageous and outlandish character from his adult novels.

In keeping with his customary practice of setting books in Florida's great outdoors (Hoot, Flush, Scat, Chomp), Skink No Surrender begins on a Florida beach where Richard finds Skink buried in the sand—on the hunt for turtle egg poachers. Though at first taken aback by the one-eyed, cammo-wearing giant of a man with buzzard beaks braided into his beard, Richard soon finds out that he is the ex -Florida governor and a force to be reckoned with - even if he is presumed to be dead.

     All kinds of wild rumors got started, and some of them turned out to be true.  According to one Wikipedia entry, the ex-governor became a wandering hermit of the wilderness, and over the years he'd been a prime suspect in several "acts of eco-terrorism."  Interestingly, he'd never been arrested or charged with any serious crimes, and it seemed to me that the targets of his anger were total scumbags, anyway.
     The web article included interviews with a few witnesses who'd supposedly encountered Clinton Tyree by chance.  They said he'd lost an eye, and was going by the name of "Skink."  They had differing opinions about whether or not he was nuts.  The most recent entry quoted the governor's closest friend, a retired highway patrol trooper named Jim Tile, who said:
     "Clint passed away last year int he Big Cypress Swamp after a coral snake bit him on the nose.  I dug the grave myself.  Now, please let him rest in peace."
     Except the man was still alive.

An unlikely pair, Skink and Richard team up to find Richard's cousin, Malley, who has run off with (or been kidnapped by) a young man she met online.

An intense hunt takes the two across the swamps in search of Malley and a dangerous impostor.  Suspenseful and very funny at the same time, Skink No Surrender presents a case for Internet safety, bird habitat conservation, and the value of family, but you'll be havimg so much fun that you won't even notice!

Getting my autographed copy of Skink

See the first 56 pages of Skink No Surrender here.

An Educators' Guide will be forthcoming.

On sale and in libraries beginning September 23, 2014.

Scat

Hiaasen, Carl. 2009. Scat. Read by Edward Asner. New York: Listening Library.



Scat is the latest of Carl Hiaasen's single-syllabled, adventure mysteries - following the very successful Hoot and Flush. As in his previous books, Florida's wildlife and wild places take center stage in this environmental mystery featuring the endangered Florida panther. The mystery begins when the stern Mrs. Starch takes her Biology class on a field trip to the Black Vine Swamp. One student, nicknamed "Smoke," had a run-in with Mrs. Starch a day earlier and fails to show up for the trip. A fire in the swamp forces the students to return immediately to school, but Mrs. Starch, who had driven her own car, never arrives back at the Truman School.

Teenagers, Nick and Marta, begin to unravel the tangled mystery, beginning with a video Nick filmed in the swamp.

Kidnapping? Arson? Theft? Environmental crime?

What exactly is going on in the Black Vine Swamp?

More than just an environmental mystery, Scat touches on the concept of crime (can it ever be justified?) and the Iraq War (Nick's father is stationed in Iraq). The mystery unfolds asynchronously and from varying perspectives, adding intrigue but making it a more difficult book for reluctant readers.


My library has this book classified as young adult (YA) fiction, but it's certainly appropriate for 5th grade and up.

I listened to the audio version. After my initial surprise at hearing the gruff, old voice of Ed Asner, I easily settled in to the story and his depiction of the characters. His voice is particularly effective in creating the voices of grizzled old Floridians, oil men, and law enforcement officers.

Better than my own recommendation, my teen-aged daughter enjoyed Scat and my "reluctant-reader" son read it for hours yesterday!

The Pirates of Crocodile Swamp

Arnosky, Jim. 2009. The Pirates of Crocodile Swamp. New York: Putnam.

*Spoiler alert*

I don't like spoilers, but I feel like I have to write one for The Pirates of Crocodile Swamp by Jim Arnosky. If you're not familiar with Jim Arnosky, he's a prolific writer of children's nature books, mostly Juvenile non-fiction and Easy fiction. I picked up his latest, thinking that I'd enjoy an adventure book with a nature theme - always looking for that perfect "boy" book. I expected from the cover art that the "pirates" of Crocodile Swamp would be two young boys, but I did not expect that they would be on the run from their father - a drunk, kidnapper, murderer, and abuser.

Unlike Kathy Appelt's, The Underneath, which couches its violence in an opaque mysticism, the violence in The Pirates of Crocodile Swamp (although not a focal point of the book) is real and urgent,

The day Terry died, Dad had come home early from work, drunker than ever. He
staggered in... Jack and I watched the whole thing from the living room. I can
still see Dad standing wobbly at the top of the stairs, cursing and mumbling
that we were bleeding him dry. We were chains around his legs, and he was tired
of working all day to feed our grubby faces.

The story is told from 9-year-old, Jack's point of view. After the boys are kidnapped by Dad, and Mom has likely been murdered too, they steal Dad's money and escape to a swamp in the Florida Keys where they live in a boat abandoned by Cuban refugees. In the book's conclusion, Dad finds the boys in Crocodile Swamp. As they fight against him for their very lives, a large crocodile attracted by the struggle, swims up and deals Dad a fatal bite to the leg. The boys pull him from the crocodile's jaws and place him among the mangroves. Dad makes his peace with them as he lays bleeding to death. Deciding not to report the death, Jack and Sandy set Dad's body adrift in the Gulf Stream.

I don't write this because I didn't enjoy the book; it is certainly an action-packed adventure novel full of admiration for nature and appreciative of nature's quietest moments, such as a moonlight encounter with feeding manatees,

We were about halfway across the bay when something splashed near Jack's oar.
Then a great bulge formed in the water and the back of a huge animal rolled
up to the surface. We pulled in our oars and dove for the floor. I said a quick
prayer, expecting that we were going to be swallowed by a whale. Jack was
hunkered down beside me, but when he heard a watery snort coming from
the animals in the water, he recognized the sound. 'Manatees,' he whispered.
We peeked over the side of the boat. There were three animals in the water,
each one as big as our boat. They looked like enormous gray footballs.
"Manatees," Jack said again. "Real live manatees! Get up, Sandy. They won't
hurt us." We crawled back up on the seat and watched the manatees in the
moonlight. One at a time they lifted their heads, and when they did, we
could hear them breathing.

The quiet splendor of nature creates a stark contrast to the rage of the boys' father.

Arnosky imparts useful and interesting facts about wildlife, nature, boating and survival, but they're integrated so seamlessly into the story, that readers won't even realize that they're learning. A rousing tale of survival and adventure, but not for the squeamish.