Here's the latest of the Mark Twain Award nominees I've read. The book has an odd title: Navigating Early. The cover even displays a review quote that says the book feels like Huckleberry Finn. Reading the book, I understand the comparison, but I cannot agree. Outside some of the obvious similarities within the plot, Clare Vanderpool's novel simply does not have the same quaint honesty.
In fact, Vanderpool appears to be trying too hard to make a complex story:
In fact, Vanderpool appears to be trying too hard to make a complex story:
- A slightly autistic boy teams with a trouble youth who has just lost his mother and has trouble relating to his military dad
- A character lost on a mission during World War 2 may or may not magically reappear to a visionary boy
- Pirates and a deadly bear attack
- The number pi, which she admits to faking (in her notes at the end)
- A character named Pi, whose substory is somehow inspired by the number
 | From the author's website: After his mother's death at the end of World War II, Jack Baker is suddenly uprooted from his home in Kansas and placed in a boys' boarding school in Maine. I believe this is a well-written story, but I think it could have been simpler. I understand the intention of the author, but I think the main purpose of two boys finding themselves (as much as I dislike that term) was lost in the attempted complexity of the plot. That being said, the story was enjoyable enough |
