Review of Catch The Wind by our Reading Club Ambassador Crystal

Here is a great review of the book Catch The Wind by our Summer Reading Club Ambassador. Her Mom provided us with photos too!

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Review By: Crystal Age 13

I spent a bit of my summer reading this book about how two boys about my age spent their summer. We clearly have very different summers. Their summer started out by meeting each other, I have met new friends this summer too. That is about where the similarities end.

While the book is funny and full of adventure there is a very sad part. Both boys Dads lose their jobs. Really bad luck, not because their Dad’s are some how bad. It has to be a very scary situation. Would families like that starve to death? Would anyone help them? How can this happen in the country I live in. I know people lose jobs all the time and houses too but I hadn’t really thought about it much.

In the story there is a killer alligator, people go hunting for it and never come out. There is prize of 25k to anyone who can catch it. The boys get a crazy idea to go hunt it. They could save their homes and be heroes. My favorite part of the book is when the boys leave a note for River’s Mom. Part of it says “P.S. Be back in a few days. P.P.S. Grandpa please help Mom understand.” I couldn’t help but laugh and think how much trouble they would be in. I told my Mom about this part and she laughed to and told me to tell her when the boys get into trouble or when they get eaten. To both our shock, the boys didn’t really get hurt and more shockingly didn’t get into trouble! I would have been in so much trouble. I think most kids would. It doesn’t seem realistic to me. My summer will not be that adventurous, I want to see my next birthday!

I will not give away the ending.

One of the things that bugged me about the book was that the chapters are a mess. Some very short chapters and then some really long ones. When you set out to read a chapter or two a day and then end up being 50 pages and some end up being just 4 pages long that can be really annoying. For homeschooling I get to do a lot of figuring out how much I am reading per day but I know public school teachers like to go by chapters and that might annoy them too. The book needs more chapters that are not so so long. Someone needed to give the alligators perspective, people moving into it’s home land and people hunting them to turn them into boots! If I was an alligator I would defend myself too!

Other than an unrealistic ending and weird chapter length I liked the book. Friendships are important and taking care of family is too. I learned a bit about alligators from the book and then went and researched them more on my own. Did you know alligators have brown eyes and crocodiles have green eyes. The longest alligator known so far has grown to be 17 feet long!