thewanderer

Judge A Book By Its Cover

Book Reviews and Synopses

The Wanderer

Sharon Creech

Creech, Sharon. The Wanderer. Harper Collins Publishers. New York, NY. 2000.

Sharon Creech’s second published book, The Wanderer, is a breathtaking novel about sailing the ocean. This book was published in 1948 and was extremely popular for its time. Although The Wanderer is not as popular now as it was fifty years ago, it is still the same sensationally written book.

Little ten year old Johny and his father Peter have been traveling the sea where no one has been. They travel in a little boat Peter made years ago called The Wanderer. They have been to the deserts of Egypt, the islands of the Caribbean, and the jungles of Madagascar. When Johny and Peter set sail for their next adventure, they left the harbor of Madagascar and headed out East towards Australia. The fastest way to Australia was to sail East through the Death Swamp. They heard stories of Death Swamp before, but they thought the stories were legends and they had nothing to fear.

As Johny and his father were traveling towards the swamp, they began to see fog. There was so much fog that they could not see more than five feat in front of their boat, and the air quickly became very thick and hard to breath. They traveled through the fog for hours, and soon it became dark. They didn’t want to sleep because they were scared that the legends of the Death Swamp’s deadly sea creatures might possible be true. Eventually, when they were too tired to keep their eyes open, they fell asleep.

When they awoke they were surprised that they were not in the sea, but they were washed up on the shore of some island, and their boat was a wreck. They couldn’t be in Australia yet, and there was no island on their map that they could be on. Where were they? What happened while they were sleeping?

The Wanderer is a very well written book with a suspenseful plot twist. While it is an exciting and thrilling book, it is not the book to read if you want a nice easy “they all lived happily ever after” book.

4 out of 5 stars.

Contributed by J. Leete

May 13, 2011