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Summary
Summary
This adventure novel about survival at sea by Newbery Honor author Gary Paulsen is now available in an After Words paperback edition!David thought he was alone, that the ocean around him was all there was of the world. The wind screamed, the waves towered, and his boat, the twenty-two foot fiberglass FROG, skidded and bucked and, each moment, filled deeper and grew heavier with sea water.David thought surely he was dead at fourteen. His uncle Owen, who had taught him about sailing safely, would be so angry. Owen had died only days ago, his last wish for David to take the FROG out on his own, and sail her beyond sight of the coast, and once there scatter Owen's ashes.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-9A taut survival story of a 14-year-old boygrieving over his uncle's recent deathcaught at sea in a small sailboat and pushed by a storm 350 miles from home. Paulsen's spare prose offers an affecting blend of the boy's inner thoughts and keen observations of the power of nature to destroy and to heal. (Jan. 1989) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Three-time Newbery Honor author Paulsen provides another action-filled survival story, as a storm strands 14-year-old David when he attempts to fulfill his late uncle's last wish by piloting his sailboat. Ages 10-14. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Another tautly written survival story, much like Hatchet (1987, Newbery Honor Book) in design, though not in incident. David, 14, has just inherited Frog, a 22-foot sailboat, from his well-loved uncle and companion, Owen, dead of a cruelly swift cancer. Mourning, David is scattering Owen's ashes, alone and out of sight of the southern California coast (Owen's last request) when he is caught by a sudden storm and knocked out by the boom. After a series of adventures that gradually makes him more competent and confident--a becalming, a shark, an oil tanker that nearly collides with him, looming but friendly whales, another storm--he encounters a research ship and accepts some supplies, but decides to make his way home alone (350 miles against wind and current) rather than abandon the untowable Frog. Though David encounters plenty of life-threatening situations, there's never real doubt that he will survive; what holds attention here is the way he applies his ability to reason in coping with physical challenges and his own tear. As he acquires Owen's intimacy with Frog and sea, David also begins to assume Owen's best traits: his thirst for knowledge, his respect for the natural world. Like the adults in Hatchet, David's parents and Owen remain shadowy figures, within the range of the possible (though few parents would willingly allow a boy to undertake such a journey), but that is beside the point: this story is about the voyage of the Frog--an epic, often lyrical journey of self-discovery, perhaps less gripping than Hatchet but with a subtler, more penetrating delineation of its protagonist. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 6-9. When David's beloved Uncle Owen dies from a swift-spreading cancer, he leaves the 14-year-old with a legacy, his 22-foot sailboat, the Frog, and a request that David spread his ashes on the sea. Sailing out farther than he ever has before, David shudders as he spreads the inch-and-a-half gray mass-- all that's left of the man that Owen had been-- on the water. Then a hissing moan with a seemingly evil resonance foreshadows a violent storm during which the boom knocks David unconscious. What follows is a nine-day odyssey, a melange of feelings and encounters: pain, a shark, frustration, whales, boredom, and a freighter that almost swamps him, stirring a hatred the boy has never known. But it is in his struggle for survival, recalling Owen's teachings and insatiable love of learning, that David learns acceptance: ``he could no longer draw a line where he ended and the Frog began . . . they were together, a thing of the sea and the wind and man all joined in a single dance.'' Ultimately the captain of a passing ship provides David with supplies and a promise to contact his parents, so David sails on alone. With this clever device Paulsen neatly skirts the issue of the inevitable post-rescue letdown. Voyage has appeal, merit, and substance; while much of the storyline does not have the robust and rugged appeal of Hatchet [BKL N 15 87], it contains a deeper level of sophistication. As David grapples with nature amid the winds' brutal and treacherous assaults, it is his inner turmoil that must be laid to rest to ensure his survival. Paulsen's readers will know David's going to make it. -- Phillis Wilson