The Black Pearl
By: Scott O'Dell
Read aloud classic for boys who dream of far away lands
Kelly: ☻☻☻
Boy Reader: ☻☻☻
Reading The Black Pearl was entirely my idea. I have fond memories of trying to build up my lung capacity in the backyard pool so I could dive for pearls. The lack of an ocean within 500 miles was never a consideration.
Boy Reader would not have picked this book. 1967 is ancient history when you were born in the 2000's. So we did it as a read-aloud.
The story is of a boy whose father is a pearl merchant. The boy wants to dive and find amazing pearls and make his dad proud. The dad wants to keep the boy safe. This conflict is the same in the 2000's as it was in the 1960's.
The boy finds a massive pearl, but it is said to belong to a giant manta/the devil. Manta/devil unleashes nature and its own manta-self in a quest to regain the pearl. Or maybe it's all bad luck.
The Black Pearl is a Newbery winner. The sentences jump off the page and into fully formed images in your head. Yet I only give it three smiley faces, because this is not the book to grab if you're trying to hook today's child on reading. Note also that this is marketed for 11-13 year olds, and there's tons of potentially objectionable stuff like violence, a sea creature who may actually be the devil (I was never quite clear) and a character who smokes.
Boy Reader tends towards books with roller coaster plot lines. He described this more like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney. There's lots of tension, but it feels a bit flat when compared to those action-packed cliffhangers.
Boy Reader: ☻☻☻
Reading The Black Pearl was entirely my idea. I have fond memories of trying to build up my lung capacity in the backyard pool so I could dive for pearls. The lack of an ocean within 500 miles was never a consideration.
Boy Reader would not have picked this book. 1967 is ancient history when you were born in the 2000's. So we did it as a read-aloud.
The story is of a boy whose father is a pearl merchant. The boy wants to dive and find amazing pearls and make his dad proud. The dad wants to keep the boy safe. This conflict is the same in the 2000's as it was in the 1960's.
The boy finds a massive pearl, but it is said to belong to a giant manta/the devil. Manta/devil unleashes nature and its own manta-self in a quest to regain the pearl. Or maybe it's all bad luck.
The Black Pearl is a Newbery winner. The sentences jump off the page and into fully formed images in your head. Yet I only give it three smiley faces, because this is not the book to grab if you're trying to hook today's child on reading. Note also that this is marketed for 11-13 year olds, and there's tons of potentially objectionable stuff like violence, a sea creature who may actually be the devil (I was never quite clear) and a character who smokes.
Boy Reader tends towards books with roller coaster plot lines. He described this more like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney. There's lots of tension, but it feels a bit flat when compared to those action-packed cliffhangers.