Author | N.D. Wilson |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Fantasy |
Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | April 8, 2014 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Pages | 208 |
ISBN | 978-0-44981673-8 |
Boys of Blur is a 2014 young adult novel by N. D. Wilson, published by Random House. It is set in the Florida Everglades, where boys play football and chase rabbits through burning sugarcane fields. According to Booklist, "Wilson brings the stuff of folklore to life in this novel, as elements of Beowulf, voodoo, and zombie mythos combine with the everyday to fantastic effect. The story moves at heart-pounding speeds, furthered by magic and mystery and rooted in ideas of familial bonds and self-discovery." [1]
Charlie Reynolds, a twelve-year-old, moves to Taper, Florida. Taper's high school football coach, Coach Wiz, has died, and Charlie's stepfather, Prester Mack, is going to replace him. Charlie then meets his step-second cousin, "Cotton" Mack, who tells him strange tales of the sugar cane fields. The plot thickens when Charlie meets a strange man named Lio, finds out about the mysterious disappearance of Coach Wiz's body, and sees blood markings on the town church. Scholastic.com adds, "Charlie hunts secrets in the glades and on the muck flats where the cane grows secrets as old as the soft earth — secrets that haunted, tripped, and trapped the original native tribes, ensnared conquistadors, and buried runaway slaves." [2]
According to Kidsreads.com, "The main theme --- good versus evil --- is tightly interwoven throughout many other concurrent themes, including dysfunctional family relationships, child abuse, racism, and sugar cane harvest and muck rabbit history." [3] Jeremy Larson argues that the connection between Boys of Blur and Beowulf hinges on the theme of "envious warfare". [4]
Carl Hiaasen is an American journalist and novelist. He began his career as a newspaper reporter and by the late 1970s had begun writing novels in his spare time, both for adults and for middle grade readers. Two of his novels have been made into feature films, and one has been made into a TV series.
Belle Glade is a city in south-central Florida and it is the far western part of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States, on the southeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee. It is part of the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 16,698, down from 17,467 in the 2010 census.
Pahokee is a city located on the shore of Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is part of the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. The population was 5,524 in the 2020 census.
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Chasing Vermeer is a 2004 children's art mystery novel written by Blue Balliett and illustrated by Brett Helquist. Set in Hyde Park, Chicago near the University of Chicago, the novel follows two children, Calder Pillay and Petra Andalee. After a famous Johannes Vermeer painting, A Lady Writing, is stolen en route to the Art Institute of Chicago, Calder and Petra work together to try to recover it. The thief publishes many advertisements in the newspaper, explaining that he will give the painting back if the community can discover which paintings under Vermeer's name were really painted by him. This causes Petra, Calder, and the rest of Hyde Park to examine art more closely. Themes of art, chance, coincidence, deception, and problem-solving are apparent.
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Strip Tease is a 1993 novel by Carl Hiaasen. Like most of his other novels, it is a crime novel set in Florida and features Hiaasen's characteristic black humor. The novel focuses on a single mother who has turned to exotic dancing to earn enough money to gain legal custody of her young daughter, and ends up matching wits with a lecherous United States Congressman and his powerful corporate backers.
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Dear America is a series of historical fiction novels for children published by Scholastic starting in 1996. By 1998, the series had 12 titles with 3.5 million copies in print. The series was canceled in 2004 with its final release, Hear My Sorrow. However, it was relaunched in the fall of 2010. Each book is written in the form of a diary of a young woman's life during important events or time periods in American history. The Dear America series covers a wide range of topics, including: the Pilgrims' journey to the New World, the Salem Witch Trials, the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, western expansion, slavery, immigration, nineteenth-century prairie life, the California Gold Rush of 1849, the Great Depression, Native Americans' experiences, racism, coal mining, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the fight for women's suffrage, the sinking of the RMS Titanic, the Battle of the Alamo, the Vietnam War, and more. The breadth of historical topics covered in these books through fiction makes the Dear America series a favorite teaching device of history schoolteachers around the country. The re-launch series and releases contain a new cover style and different pictures of the main characters than those of the original releases. Originally all the books had a ribbon inserted as a bookmark for the books but were removed in the later releases. Several of the stories were filmed and released on videotape.
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Nathan David Wilson is an American author of young adult fiction.
The marsh rabbit is a small cottontail rabbit found in marshes and swamps of coastal regions of the Eastern and Southern United States. It is a strong swimmer and found only near regions of water. It is similar in appearance to the eastern cottontail but is characterized by smaller ears, legs, and tail.
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The Bluford Series is a widely read collection of contemporary American young adult novels set in the fictional inner-city high school of Bluford High in Southern California. Bluford is named for Guion "Guy" Bluford, the first African-American astronaut. The series was created and published by Townsend Press and was co-distributed by Scholastic. As part of an effort to promote reading in underfunded school districts, Townsend Press originally made the Bluford Series available to schools for a dollar each. As of 2018, over 11 million Bluford Series novels were in print.
Ashtown Burials is a young adult fantasy series by N. D. Wilson. It consists of three published novels: The Dragon's Tooth (2011), The Drowned Vault (2012), and Empire of Bones (2013), as well as a fourth book, The Silent Bells, which as of 2021 is being published in serial format.
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