SURVIVE! (Dinotopia #13) -- Brad Strickland

Random House -- tpb
New York -- ©2001 -- 135pp
ISBN: 0-375-81108-7
Number 13 in the Dinotopia series

A young boy loses his memory when he falls and hits his head (the result of an earthquake) and he must rely on skills his doesn't know he has as he explores a rarely-visited part of an island. His dinosaur friend must also rely on skills as he proves himself worthy of joining the party hunting for the lost boy.

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I've said it before, and I'll say it again to anyone who'll listen...this Dinotopia series of books is the best series out there for young readers. They are creative, innovative, unique, adventurous, moral, and exciting. They teach great lessons without being overtly didactic. What young boy wouldn't want to be on an island where dinosaurs talk and are best friends with human youth?

This particular book seemed a little simpler and even a little more didactic than most of the others that I've read, but I'd still place any book in this series above most other children's series of books.

Do you have a reluctant reader? Particularly if that young reader is a boy, please check out this Dinotopia series.

I AM NOT JACKSON POLLACK -- John Haskell

Farrar, Straus and Giroux -- hc
New York -- ©2003 -- 180pp
ISBN: 0-374-17399-0

Stories.

"Dream of a Clean Slate"
"Elephant Feelings"
The Judgment of Psycho"
"The Faces of Joan of Arc"
"Capucine"
"Glenn Gould in Six Parts"
"Good World"
"Crimes at Midnight"
"Narrow Road"

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I love short fiction and was eager to read this collection, despite being less than enthused by Haskell's OUT OF MY SKIN. But what I read was a collection of stories that all seemed the same to me. Each story associating two dis-similar entities. Each story about what something is NOT (hmmm...a pattern here? "NOT Jackson Pollack" and his OUT OF MY SKIN could have been titled "I Am Not Steve Martin"). And sadly, his writing style struck me as dull.

As some of the other reviewers here mention, you do need to be in the right frame of mind for this style of book, but I'm not sure what that frame of mind is. Lost? Confused? And then you can nod appreciably at recognizing another lost soul?

I love looking for and finding an author that I can enjoy and who isn't someone that you will find on the NYT Bestsellers list. (For instance, my discovery of Paul Watkins still strikes me as an enjoyable 'find'.) But Haskell is not someone that I will continue to read.