jack the castaway

by Lisa Doan
Darby Creek / Lerner  2014

Smart kid, dumb parents, and a menacing whale shark! What more could a kid want from a book? 


Jack is a sheltered kid on the cusp of puberty living with his Aunt Julia safely in Pennsylvania. Or at least he was living safely until his Aunt met with misfortune and Jack was forced to call his world-traveling parents home from their latest scheme, panning for gold in the Amazon. Jack's parents are everything Jack isn't: reckless, thoughtless, careless dreamers with no grounding in reality. Since abandoning Jack with his Aunt they have gone from one dead-end business to another but now they are forced back to raise a son who has more sense than they do collectively.

So begins Lisa Doan's Jack the Castaway, the first in a series aimed squarely at the emerging, struggling, or reluctant middle grade reader looking for an adventure series with humor and a sturdy story. Playing off the trope of kids being smarter than the adults that surround them, Doan has amped up this discord by giving Jack all the typical traits of a worry-wort adult and made his parents the equivalent of hyperactive teens. Where his parents wouldn't never even think of making a list or a plan before setting out on an adventure, Jack prefers the logical order of his life and would rather spend his time in school. Reunited as a family, Jack's parents think it only natural to bring their risk-adverse son with them to a tropical island where they intend to open a snorkeling enterprise, despite having no experience. But before long Jack finds himself alone on the water, then shipwrecked on a tropical island and... is that a shark keeping watch on him from the shore?

There are many ways a story like this could go wrong, but Doan keeps a fine balance between humor and adventure, particularly when dealing with Jack's brief experience alone on a tropical island. Where many readers might find the prospect of being alone to do nothing, away from the school and responsibilities that Jack craves, it's Jack's practicality that allows him to stay calm and survive. Where Jack errs on the side of caution the reader is allowed to guess that he is overreacting, removing any real danger that would otherwise make the story too dark.

And while I wouldn't say I was much like Jack when I was young I will confess that he and I share a certain blood-chilling close encounter with a large, benign sea creature. Both Jack and I survived to laugh about it in retrospect.

There's a lot of summer reading out there that kids are having foisted on them, and while much of it is good I strongly believe that there's room for lighter, well-crafted fare. I realize this might skew a bit younger than most of what lands on Guys Lit Wire but sometimes boys need to catch the reading bug at a younger age to ensure they continue into the goods we reviewers dig up for the older teens. Put Jack the Castaway in the back seat on a long road trip and see if it isn't devoured in one single gulp.


This review also appeared at Guys Lit Wire, in case you thought you saw it somewhere else.

Also, as a matter of full disclosure, I received a review copy of this book from the author who, like myself, is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts' Writing for Children and Young Adults program. If you find this troubling, email me, I'll be more than happy to put your mind at ease. 
~d.e.

The Shark God

by Rafe Martin
illustrated by David Shannon
Scholastic / Arthur A. Levine Books 2001

In this adaptation of a native tale from Hawaii, two children, a boy and a girl, find a shark tangled in netting on the shore. Their attempts to get adults to help them are met with derision so the decide to free the shark themselves. The shark can sense the children mean to help and once freed gives them a bit of a nod of thanks before disappearing into the ocean.

Jubilant at their rescue, the children run through the edges of the jungle, stumbling on the king's sacred drum. In their excitement they long to sound the drum, to announce their achievement to the world, but to do so would be kapu (forbidden). But they're kids, they lightly tap the drum anyway, under the watchful smirk of the king who sees it all. Having waited until they have hit the drum the king then calls out his guards to seize the children and have them held for punishment.

Their parents plea to the king, hoping to appeal to his softer side, but his heart has grown cold to the entreaties of his people. Likewise, appeals to the other members of the community are cold and the parents decide that they must make their case elsewhere.

Seeking out the cave of the Shark God they place their lives on the line as the mountain-sized god swoops them up for a snack. After hearing their story the Shark God agrees to help and sends the parents home with instructions to prepare a canoe filled with goods and to wait for a sign.

The Shark God brings about a massive wave that floods the village and frees the children from their cells. The parents, having seen the sign they were waiting for, launched their canoe before the wave hit and were well at sea when their old village was destroyed. They quickly found their children (with the aid of a friendly shark) and the king's drum and with it sail to anew island where they hoped to find (or start) a new community, one with an open heart.

The author points out in an afterword the differences between the original folk tale and the modifications made for this version. The differences mentioned appear slight and motivational and make a good case for maintaining the essence of the original. A little casual Internet research shows that this story has many variations across the South Pacific and not all of them pleasant. In one, "Kauhuhu, The Shark God of Molokai," the children belong to a priest and they are killed for beating on the drums when the chief is away, no mention of freeing a shark. There are greater details about the ordeal necessary for avenging the children's deaths and the wave brings a hoard of sharks who feast on the cold-hearted villagers.

So on the one hand we have these tales collected by a couple of German brothers that are filled with all sorts of strange dismemberings and transformations and gore, and despite there being no solid evidence they were meant for children we consider them as such. On the other hand when we get a story from a non-Western culture we see a need to make it more palatable and perhaps soften the rougher edges? True, many a Grimm tale are themselves softened to the point of innocence though they are far from their original spirit and, for the most part, have been co-opted by Disnefication. But where we have the original tales in translation for ready comparison such isn't always the case and a lesser-known tale like The Shark God, without research, becomes practically gutted and filleted from the original to a piece of nicely presented same at a sushi bar.

In the end, I'm not taking a stand on this book either way. No, really. I read it knowing nothing about its origin and enjoyed it. Had there not be the author's afterword I might not have gone searching for the original story and not known what had been changed. I think I would prefer that when we introduce stories from another culture to children -- especially if there is little to suggest they will one day be taught it's true origins -- then I guess I'd like that "one shot" to be an accurate one. I wouldn't want any child drawing all their knowledge of ancient Egypt from watching mummy movies and don't like the thought of children learning about the culture of our island state in such a sanitized manner.