Thursday, May 5, 2011

Runner by Carl Deuker

My review is on the book, Runner, by Carl Deuker. It’s about a boy named Chance Taylor that’s in high school and lives on a small boat that his always drunk dad and him can barely afford. So he tries finding all kinds of different jobs until he finds one certain job where he gets to run and pick up packages that hold something in them but he can’t find out what’s in them without putting his life in danger. He has to pay all the fees to just keep the boat because his dad is an alcoholic and can’t keep a job for very long. A quote from the book is “ I’ve heard about kids that hate their parents for being alcoholics. I’ve never understood that. It’d be like hating a wounded animal for being wounded, which makes no sense at all.” A review from the Kirkus Review is “Deuker’s brisk narrative, long on action if short on embellishment will carry on even the most reluctant of readers in this post-9/11 tale of terrorism on the Puget Sound.” The back says, “ But the weather-beaten sailboat Chance Taylor and his dad call home is thirty years old and hasn’t sailed in years. One step from both homelessness and hunger, Chance worries about things other kids his age would never give a thought: Where will the money come from for the electricity bill, grocery bill, and moorage fees? So when a new job falls his way, he jumps at the opportunity. He knows how much he will earn; what he doesn’t know is how much he will pay.”

Recommeded by Dylan Ambrosy

No comments:

Post a Comment