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 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

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

By
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Amazing Generation

By
The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World Written by Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price  Illustrated by Cynthia Yuan Cheng New York: Rocky Pond Books, 2025. Informational. 226 pages.  In a kid-friendly adaptation of his best-selling book, The Anxious Generation , Jonathan Haidt teams up with Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone , to bring the power of good information directly to the hands of those that this issue affects most directly — kids on the cusp of getting their own smartphones. The book presents information about the drawbacks of having a smartphone and social media too soon in clear and easy-to-understand language, with eye-catching graphics and pop-outs. Throughout the book, quotes from real teens and young adults, called screen "rebels" by the authors, emphasize the points the authors are trying to make. Fictional characters are featured throughout in a graphic novel story, which further emphasizes the po...
Post a Comment
Read more