Woods Runner

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Samuel’s parents have been taken from their home in colonial Pennsylvania by the British and the Iroquois right before the onset of the Revolutionary War. Samuel has been fending for himself in the woods for years and is determined to use his skills to rescue his parents--even if it means he has to track them to New York City and British headquarters.

Great historical fiction. Will keep kids interested and the added historical notes do not detract from the readability. Great as a curriculum addition. ( )

Excellent historical fiction. ( )

Part of the problem here is that I don't particularly care for war stories, but there are other problems too. Despite Paulsen's Afterword claiming that he wanted to bring attention to some of the horrible parts of war that are too often overlooked, I found the whole escape from New York improbably successful with too few hitches along the way. I think the book might have been better overall if it ended with no promises of safety when Samuel and his family seperated from Abel with their journey to Philadelphia still ahead of them. Some of the dialogue from Samuel's mother after this point was downright sappy and contrived and the escape felt like the most exciting part with everything after that on the downside of the climax taking too long. While I do think that kids will be fascinated by the gory, real-life details, I'm not sure having the non-fiction snippets inserted between chapters worked well - I almost think they would have been better as notes at the end of the book so they wouldn't interrupt the narrative flow. I'm afraid that with them placed in between chapters, kids will see this as a transparent attempt to feed them wholesome history with a story as sugar in between bits and that this will make them feel like they're being tricked (and poorly tricked at that). Though I suppose kids who are actually reading the book rather than listening to the audio could just skip the non-fiction bits if they wanted.

Listened to the Listening Library audio edition narrated by Danny Campbell who did a very fine job with the narration. He provided distinct voices for all the characters and handled Abel's Scottish accent well. ( )

Could not get into this one. I listened to the audio and wasn't a huge fan of the reader, so maybe that was the problem? I felt like the only parts I was able to pay attention to were the historical notes at the end of chapters. ( )