Skip to main content

The Iceberg Hermit

Image
By Lauren
The Iceberg Hermit
By Arthur Roth
Scholastic, c1974. 219 pages. Fiction.

Iceberg Hermit is about Allan, who is an apprentice aboard an Arctic whaling ship in the 1700's. The ship wrecks on an iceberg, and the boy is the only one to survive. He manages to make shelter, find food, and live off the (ice)land for over a year. He also befriends and raises a baby polar bear. Eventually, Allan sets out to cross the ice in hopes of finding others. He finds some natives and they help him find a returning whaling ship to get him home from Scotland. Ignore the horrendous cover, and let's pretend there's a better title...like, "Hatchet on Ice!" This gem of fiction was suggested to us by a patron. I loved it, and found it to be a very close readalike to Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, as far as the writing style and story elements.There's something for everyone: survival, history, and realism.
Labels:

Comments

curlyq said…
So is this like "Disney on Ice?" Sounds amazing! ( ;
March 15, 2012 at 2:51 PM
Ms. Yingling said…
My daughter's 4th grade teacher did this as a class novel for about 30 years, but she liked it because HE liked it so much. Have you read Phleger's Pilot Down, Presumed Dead? It's like Hatchet in the Desert!
March 16, 2012 at 4:34 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The New Girl

By
The New Girl By Cassandra Calin New York: Graphix, 2024. Comic. 261 pages. 12-year-old Lia and her family have just moved from Romania to Montreal, and she's doing her best to keep up with the changes. But, she's homesick. She misses the rest of her family, her friends, and her favorite Romanian treats. She doesn't speak French and her English is shaky, which makes it hard to make friends, even in her international immersion class. And she's dealing with super painful menstrual cramps every month. But before long, Lia starts to hit her stride. She befriends the other bilingual girls in her class, she gets a spot as the artist for her school's magazine, and even has a new crush -- Julien. Though she may be the new girl, Lia is starting to fit in. This slice of life graphic novel is an adorable choice for middle grade readers and young teens. Lia is a likable protagonist and readers will have little difficulty relating to her adjustment to school. The text speaks to a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker

By
  Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker By Heidi Heilig New York: Greenwillow Books, 2025. Fiction. 291 pages. Thanks to Cincinnati Lee's no good, dirty rotten, artifact stealing great great great grandfather, Cincinnati's family is now cursed and Cincinnati feels like it's up to her to break the curse. Which involves trying to steal the artifacts back from museums that her grandfather robbed from graves and archeological sites around the world and return them to their countries of origin. But when Cincinnati's first artifact stealing mission goes awry, she decides it might be more effective to steal an all-powerful artifact herself that she can use to break the curse - The Spear of Destiny. Unfortunately her race for the spear will pit her against art smugglers and thieves intent on finding the ancient artifact themselves. If you are looking for an Indiana Jones read-alike, this is the perfect for you! Heavy on the adventure with similar levels of mysticism to those seen in th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more