Children's Literature
- Sue Reichard
Author Will Hobbs' books are often on the Best Books for Young Adults list. His new book, The Maze, is also sure to be a winner with young teens. Rick Walker is 14, alone, on the run and desperate. Rick has been in foster homes all over the state of California. He has been in six different schools in four years. He has never known either of his parents, and the grandmother who raised him has just died. Rick steals away in the back of a pickup truck and finds himself in a place called The Maze. Readers will devour this tale as Rick searches for himself and also a way out of his troubles.
VOYA
- Sarah K. Herz
Fourteen-year-old Rick Walker runs away from Blue Canyon Youth Detention Center near Las Vegas, hides out in the rear of a camper truck, and finds himself "at the end of the world"-Canyonlands National Park in Utah. The truck delivers supplies to an isolated campsite, where bird biologist Lon Peregrino is feeding and observing fledgling condors recently released in the area. Rick is afraid that Lon will notify the authorities, but Lon proves to be the best person Rick could hope to meet. Rick has been in a series of foster homes, and does not trust adults-they have let him down too often. Lon does not pry into Rick's past; he accepts Rick's help in tracking and feeding the condors, and teaches Rick hang-gliding. Gradually Rick trusts and respects Lon, and tells Lon about his past. When Rick risks his life to save Lon, he learns what it means to care about another human being. Through his relationship with Lon, Rick is ready to become responsible for his actions and prepare for his future. Hobbs has written an exciting adventure story about a teenager who changes his negative attitude about rules, adults, and authority. Rick is a richly-textured character who reveals his curiosity about the condors, his appreciation of the Canyonlands, his theory about the Icarus myth, and his realization that his anger and self-pity will not help him mature. VOYA Codes: 5Q 4P M J (Hard to imagine it being better written, Broad general YA appeal, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8 and Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9).
Children's Literature
- Christopher Moning
Rick Walker is on the run-from the law, from a series of foster homes, from a pair of gutless gun smugglers, and from the countless knocks that life has handed him ever since his grandmother died four years ago. After a daring escape from a corrupt youth detention center, Rick finds himself lost in the Maze section of Canyonlands National Park. Rick's luck begins to change when he encounters Lon Peregrino, a rough, grizzled loner who is a bird biologist. The two forge a deep bond as Rick aids Lon on his quest to return the endangered California condor to the wild. In this lightning-paced adventure, Rick begins to understand the power of trust and forgiveness. There are vivid descriptions of the condor and also of the arroyos, spires, and rock formations in Canyonlands. Anyone who has ever had a flying dream will thrill to Rick's breathless hang gliding experiences. In the rousing climactic scene Rick takes a desperate gamble and, like the fledgling condor, he learns how to fly solo.
School Library Journal
Gr 6-9-Fourteen-year-old Rick Walker feels that his life is a maze. He's been bounced around from one foster family to another and is sent to a detention center for hard-core juvenile offenders after committing a petty offense. After he reports corruption at the facility, the boy is forced to flee for his life and ends up in an isolated part of Utah's canyon country, near an area called the Maze. Here he forms a friendship with Lon, a biologist who is trying to reintroduce condors into the wild. The two work together, observing and assisting the birds, and Lon teaches Rick to hang glide. When they run afoul of a pair of nasty antigovernment types who are hiding a cache of weapons in the area, their lives are placed in danger. Certain elements of the plot are pretty conventional, appearing in countless young adult novels troubled teen runs away and finds redemption with wise friend in a remote area. What sets this book apart is the inclusion of fascinating details about the condors and hang gliding, especially the action-packed description of Rick's first solo flight above the canyons in the face of an approaching thunderstorm. Many young readers will find this an adventure story that they can't put down.-Todd Morning, Schaumburg Township Public Library, IL
Horn Book
Rick Walker, product of too many foster homes, is sentenced to serve six months in Blue Canyon Youth Detention Center near Las Vegas. His crime-throwing rocks at a stop sign-hardly seems to warrant such severe punishment. Aware that Rick is not a hardened criminal and concerned for the environment in which he will serve time, his social worker pleads unsuccessfully with the judge. The facility is worse than imagined. Except for the librarian, Rick has little support in a corrupt organization. When he learns that he is in danger from the other inmates, he escapes, eventually finding refuge with a bird biologist in the canyons of southwestern Colorado. As he learns to work with the giant condors that Lon, the biologist, is attempting to introduce into that area, he learns much about himself-his capacity for growth, endurance, and commitment. Ultimately, he must return to society, face the judge who had sentenced him, and resolve his future-but not before he has helped Lon to bring two dealers in illegal weapons to justice and negotiated the Maze, a harshly beautiful landscape of deep canyons and awesome pinnacles. This time, his social worker is not alone in attesting to his character, for Rick bids fair to extricate himself from the maze in which life has placed him. As in Far North, Hobbs spins an engrossing yarn, blending adventure with a strong theme, advocating the need for developing personal values. Again, as in the earlier book, there is a character who serves as mentor and explicator of those values-but the author's sure sense of story prevents him from overwhelming his narrative with philosophical commentary. .
Kirkus Reviews
A well-crafted, straight-up adventure story from Hobbs (Ghost Canoe, 1997, etc.). Confined to a juvenile detention center after traveling through a series of foster and group homes, Rick escapes after trying to blow the whistle on corrupt guards. His flight ends at an isolated camp on the edge of a bewildering system of canyons known as the Maze District, in Utah's Canyonlands National Park, where self-named biologist Lon Peregrino is nurturing six young condors bred in captivity. More accustomed to birds than people, Peregrino doesn't pry into Rick's past, allowing him instead to help keep the condors under observation while they acclimate themselves to new surroundings; he also fills Rick in on their history and behavior and, as the two become friends, teaches him to hang glide. As Rick eagerly soaks it all up, enter two rough locals, Carlile and Gunderson, with chips on their shoulders and a mean pit bull who immediately attacks and kills a condor. Lon suspects them of collecting Anasazi artifacts for the black market until Rick trails them to a cave full of pipe bombs and assault weapons. Hobbs sets the stage for a dramatic hang-glide rescue and throws in a major storm, after which the bad guys are collared and Rick is set on a more promising road. Both the breathtaking setting and the huge, rare birds are strong presences in this page-turner; Hobbs appends a condor release program's web address for interested readers. (Fiction. 11-13)
