Hostages Book 5 of Barclay Family Adventure Series by Ed Hanson 2003 PDF {SPirate}
Description:
The ten novels in this new series introduce readers to the adventurous and spirited Barclay family. Follow the family on easy-to-read journeys that feature interesting facts about history, geography, and science. In addition to character development throughout the series each novel contains an element of mystery and suspense. Plus, the stories can be read sequentially or independently. Each novel is 64-pages and includes comprehension questions at the end of each book.
The men on board had made careful plans. They would round the island just
before daylight. By noon, they expected to be fishing off of Admiralty Island.
But sometimes, fate changes even the best-laid plans...
especially when the disaster-prone Barclays are near at hand!
OK, I made up that last part, but regular readers know what to expect when the Barclay family is on the scene!
Ed Hanson and Saddleback Educational Publishing have come up with a brilliant concept for solving a very serious problem: the great decline in reading among today's students. Their solution? Put out readers that are essentially suspense-filled or mystery-filled juvenile series books like the famous Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, and Hardy Boys series of old.
This confronts both of the major problems with more traditional readers: if they are not mind-numbingly dull, they are excruciatingly didactic, cramming some important "teachings" whether moral, religious, or (these days) politically correct down the throats of children so hard as to turn them off of reading for good.
In this volume Ed Hanson continues to show improvement. For the first time in this series he was dealing with the Barclay family's response to criminals rather than accident, and I thought he handled it well. In addition he has finally provided a partial answer to the "cascading disbelief" problem I tend to harp upon in these reviews. This time the Barclay family penchant for attracting trouble prevented a terrorist attack, although Paul wisely (though no doubt futilely) advises his son Jim "to leave out some of the details" when he tells his mother about it "if you ever want to join me on another fishing trip, that is!"
Defects? One is simply length. 64 pages just doesn't allow for much if any character development or anything much beyond cardboard cutouts: brave father, devoted mother, the athlete, the science wizard, and the baby of the family.
A couple of minor depictions of Political Correctness had my eyes rolling briefly in this volume. First was the too perfect to believe portrait of the big Saturday breakfast ritual "that Dad and Mom had agreed to keep going even though they were no longer together" at the start. If the old-fashioned juvenile series book portraits of the Happy Nuclear Family (or in a number of cases the Happy Widower Family in order to make it more plausible for the heroes to keep getting into dangerous situations) were often unrealistic, it must be admitted that the Happy Divorced Family is even more unrealistic! In addition I would have appreciated learning what the terrorists were really up to as their goal most certainly was NOT merely to cause "AN ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER OF MAJOR PROPORTIONS" as it stated on Aaron's plaque.
Still, for what they are intended to be, reading textbooks, they are wonderful. The fact that children who learn to read better and to love reading from these books will quickly find them skimpy fare for pleasure reading is not entirely bad, assuming their teachers quickly move them on to bigger and better things in the school library or the bookstore if necessary.
The previous book in the series is Forest Fire (Barclay Family Adventure Ser., Bk. 4), and the next book in the series is Lost at Sea (Barclay Family Adventure Ser., Bk. 6).
Paperback: 64 pages
Publisher: Saddleback Educational Publishing, Inc. (January 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 156254554X
ISBN-13: 978-1562545543