{"id":207,"date":"2008-04-16T08:09:40","date_gmt":"2008-04-16T12:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=207"},"modified":"2008-04-16T08:09:40","modified_gmt":"2008-04-16T12:09:40","slug":"castaways-of-the-flying-dutchman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/castaways-of-the-flying-dutchman\/","title":{"rendered":"Castaways of the Flying Dutchman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s 5th Grade Book Group book was Brian Jacques’ Castaways of the Flying Dutchman<\/em>, a book that had been recommended by one of the group members.\u00c2\u00a0 Though I started out not liking the book much, by the end I was hooked by its vivid writing, great characters, and unique premise.\u00c2\u00a0 Divided into three unequal sections, the story begins with a young mute boy who winds up on the ill-fated ship The Flying Dutchman <\/em>as he escapes from his cruel stepbrothers.\u00c2\u00a0 This first section of the book sets the stage for the boy’s future: when an angel condemns the captain and crew of the ship\u00c2\u00a0to wander the world for all eternity, that same angel spares the boy and his dog, granting them eternal life and youth in exchange for their helping those in the world who are in need.\u00c2\u00a0 Dog and boy are also granted the ability to speak and communicate with each other.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second small section of the novel covers the time that Neb (the boy, who later calls himself Ben) and Den (the dog, who later calls himself Ned) live with a poor shepherd in South America.\u00c2\u00a0 Neb and Den bring joy and love to Luis’s life, and though he dies a few short years after they arrive at his cottage, the angel tells them that they gave Luis the happiest years of his life.\u00c2\u00a0 Mission accomplished, time to move on.<\/p>\n

The largest section of the book is the third, which fastforwards a couple of hundred years to an English village that has been threatened with destruction by an unscrupulous man who wishes to raze all of the homes and open a limestone factory.\u00c2\u00a0 Now called Ben, the boy and the dog, now called Ned wander on to the scene when they both feel called to the place (surely guided by the angel).\u00c2\u00a0 In my opinion, this chunk of the story is by far the best, as Ben and Ned work with the villagers to defeat the evil developer and to\u00c2\u00a0prove that the villagers own their properties.\u00c2\u00a0 Following clues in an ancient scavenger hunt, they work as a team to solve the mystery of where the deed to the village has been hidden, and of course Ben and Ned make many wonderful friends in the process.<\/p>\n

There is a happy ending, but also a sad ending: the developer is thwarted and defeated, but Ben and Ned must move on just as the happiness begins, driven on to their next destination by the angel’s ringing of a bell, unable to bid goodbye to their new friends or to even pick up Ben’s rucksack before leaving.\u00c2\u00a0 Jacques has written two sequels to this adventure, which I’m anxious to read (and ashamed to admit were missing from our library’s collection).<\/p>\n

As always, the real question here is: what did the book group think of the book?\u00c2\u00a0 Though more than half of the book group members hadn’t come close to finishing the book, we were still able to have a terrific conversation about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Surprising.\u00c2\u00a0 The kids who had read the whole book were gushingly enthusiastic about it, and some of those who hadn’t finished it were inspired to renew their copies and take them home once again.\u00c2\u00a0 (I suspect that those kids who didn’t read the entire book simply ran out of time, because the writing is denser than any of our recent books.)\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0In discussing the book, we teased out the reason that Jacques put Ben and Ned on The Flying Dutchman<\/em>, made connections to movies and books (like Pirates of the Caribbean <\/em>and Tuck Everlasting<\/em>), and shared the bits of the story that we liked best.\u00c2\u00a0 There were no earth-shattering revelations in our book discussion, but it was lively and fun, and the\u00c2\u00a0kids proved once again that they have matured and grown into an excellent and intelligent book group.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

And if you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not often that I do that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s 5th Grade Book Group book was Brian Jacques’ Castaways of the Flying Dutchman, a book that had been recommended by one of the group members.\u00c2\u00a0 Though I started out not liking the book much, by the end I was hooked by its vivid writing, great characters, and unique premise.\u00c2\u00a0 Divided into three unequal sections, … Continue reading Castaways of the Flying Dutchman<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-groups","category-childrens-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}