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Dead in the Water by Robin Stevenson (Orca Sports $9.95)
Simon Drake, "five-foot-six and 120 pounds soaking
wet,"; is at the helm, drenched with rain and icy salt spray, when someone shouts, "Man overboard!";
With a brain "that sort of freezes up under pressure,"; it's a long moment until the rescue procedure kicks in.
Simon cranks the wheel and the boat slowly turns sideways to the wind. There's no sign of Joey in the storm-soaked sea but Olivia's already thrown in the buoyant man-overboard pole with its bright orange flag.
Simon can only pray Joey's able to swim to the pole and hang on. Jeopardy, with its huge turning
circle, takes forever to come around. Now it's all up to Simon. He's coming in fast, too fast. And too close! The flag disappears under the boat!
"Lucky it was a drill,"; the instructor yells.
A drill?
Simon, who'd worked two "crap"; jobs and saved his "ass off";
to get here, lurches to the rail to puke and wonders what made him think a sailing course was a good idea.
Robin Stevenson's Dead in the Water pits teenage angst against foul-weather sailing and throws in a good measure of environmental concern-in this case lucrative abalone poaching-for a smart, fast-paced read.
A few years ago, Stevenson fixed up a thirty-foot sailboat and left Lake Ontario for the Bahamas. Although she knew very little about sailing, she made it to the islands and spent a year living aboard her boat before returning and settling in Victoria.
Orca has also released Stevenson's Big Guy for their Sounding series. It's about an overweight kid whose on-line lies catch up with him. As well, she's recently published Impossible Things, a novel on the all-too-real pains of grade seven life.
An incessant reader "incapable of walking past a used bookstore,"; she grew up reading LM Montgomery's Emily books and has always made up stories. In the eighth grade, she recalls, "a friend and I co-wrote a mystery story about two girls who murdered their teacher. Today, that would probably have got us suspended or at least referred for counseling, but this was in the early 1980s so the teacher just gave us an A- and suggested we brush up on our knowledge of police procedures.";
Dead: 978-1-55143-962-4
Guy: 9781551439105
Impossible: 9781551437361
--review by Louise Donnelly
[BCBW 2008] "Kidlit"
wet,"; is at the helm, drenched with rain and icy salt spray, when someone shouts, "Man overboard!";
With a brain "that sort of freezes up under pressure,"; it's a long moment until the rescue procedure kicks in.
Simon cranks the wheel and the boat slowly turns sideways to the wind. There's no sign of Joey in the storm-soaked sea but Olivia's already thrown in the buoyant man-overboard pole with its bright orange flag.
Simon can only pray Joey's able to swim to the pole and hang on. Jeopardy, with its huge turning
circle, takes forever to come around. Now it's all up to Simon. He's coming in fast, too fast. And too close! The flag disappears under the boat!
"Lucky it was a drill,"; the instructor yells.
A drill?
Simon, who'd worked two "crap"; jobs and saved his "ass off";
to get here, lurches to the rail to puke and wonders what made him think a sailing course was a good idea.
Robin Stevenson's Dead in the Water pits teenage angst against foul-weather sailing and throws in a good measure of environmental concern-in this case lucrative abalone poaching-for a smart, fast-paced read.
A few years ago, Stevenson fixed up a thirty-foot sailboat and left Lake Ontario for the Bahamas. Although she knew very little about sailing, she made it to the islands and spent a year living aboard her boat before returning and settling in Victoria.
Orca has also released Stevenson's Big Guy for their Sounding series. It's about an overweight kid whose on-line lies catch up with him. As well, she's recently published Impossible Things, a novel on the all-too-real pains of grade seven life.
An incessant reader "incapable of walking past a used bookstore,"; she grew up reading LM Montgomery's Emily books and has always made up stories. In the eighth grade, she recalls, "a friend and I co-wrote a mystery story about two girls who murdered their teacher. Today, that would probably have got us suspended or at least referred for counseling, but this was in the early 1980s so the teacher just gave us an A- and suggested we brush up on our knowledge of police procedures.";
Dead: 978-1-55143-962-4
Guy: 9781551439105
Impossible: 9781551437361
--review by Louise Donnelly
[BCBW 2008] "Kidlit"
Submitted on June 3, 2008 in By David.
