A review by tcbueti
Escaping The Giant Wave by Peg Kehret
3.0
What would you do if you were babysitting on vacation and disaster struck? If your parents had said "Don't leave the hotel room", but had also gone over the tsunami warning signs posted on the beach: "Get to higher ground"?
The compelling description of escaping a tsunami as it strikes the Pacific northwest makes this one hard to put down. The side plot of gaining the courage to stand up to a bully was pretty well done. The main character never felt that fleshed-out to me--I kept thinking he was a girl--although his little sister, BeeBee, is funny (obsessed with money, names her teddy bear after Bill Gates). Sometimes characters and dialogue seem to exist just to get some info on the page. Nevertheless, I could see this one grabbing reluctant readers and taking them for quite a ride.
And Kehret discusses, in an afterward, the problem of warning people: how can you warn without causing panic? (Use the sound of mooing cows as a signal!?) What if the event blows over--will the public ignore the warnings next time?
Pair with her memoir "Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio" for an interesting discussion of young people confronting adversity.
The compelling description of escaping a tsunami as it strikes the Pacific northwest makes this one hard to put down. The side plot of gaining the courage to stand up to a bully was pretty well done. The main character never felt that fleshed-out to me--I kept thinking he was a girl--although his little sister, BeeBee, is funny (obsessed with money, names her teddy bear after Bill Gates). Sometimes characters and dialogue seem to exist just to get some info on the page. Nevertheless, I could see this one grabbing reluctant readers and taking them for quite a ride.
And Kehret discusses, in an afterward, the problem of warning people: how can you warn without causing panic? (Use the sound of mooing cows as a signal!?) What if the event blows over--will the public ignore the warnings next time?
Pair with her memoir "Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio" for an interesting discussion of young people confronting adversity.