The Dark Canoe

By Scott O'Dell

Book Overview

THERE IS A THIN LINE BETWEEN GENIUS AND MADNESS. When young Nathan sails with his older brothers in search of a lost treasure ship, he is expected to do exactly as they tell him. But when one of his brothers mysteriously dies and the other declares he is Captain Ahab straight out of Moby Dick, Nathan worries about what orders he might have to carry out. Then a mysterious object appears in the bay that seems to have floated out of the very pages of Moby Dick. Something very strange is happening at sea, but how. . . and why? "Figures and events from Moby Dick are given eerie, shadowy counterparts ... So quietly, so persuasively is this accomplished that when Ishmael's ocean-going coffin drifts out of Melville's seas in O'Dell's, it carries no shock for either Nathan or the reader." - Washington Post Book World

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1402213344
• ISBN13: 9781402213342
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
• Length: 139 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 0.5" x 5.0"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

What I think

Scott O'Dell's novles for young people are as notable for the range and variety of their themes as for the strength and beaty of their prose. The Newbery Award winning Is Of The Blue Dolphins spoke with simplicity and restraint of human lonliness and needed for human love. The King's Fifth a Newbury runner-up, was a powerfulwritten historical novle of the Spanish conquistadors and the corrupting power of the lust for gold. The Black Pearl, also a Newbury runner-up, was rich and subtlein its exploration of the forces of good and evil that have affected and motivated man from the beinning of time. The Drark Conoe, Scott O'dell's most recent book, is a novle of driving narrative force. It is told from the point of view of young Nathan , who sails from Nantucket with his older brothers Caleb and Jermy, to try and discover the facts behind the sinking of the Amy Foster. As the dramatic events unfold, both Nathan and the reader begin to understand the nature of the friction; that Caleb is the victom of some kind of madness, believing in some strange distorted way that he is Ahab, straight out of Moby Dick.