School is out for the summer and Pablo Perez, his sister, Pia, and their cousin, Kiki Flores, visit the Bar-7 ranch in New Mexico. The young Missourians have come to help their Uncle Antonio with the annual cattle roundup.
Uncle Antonio introduces his nephew and nieces to hundreds of primitive petroglyphs that have been chiseled into the walls of a nearby canyon—Petroglyph Canyon. The primitive rock drawings are part of Uncle Antonio’s sprawling cattle ranch. Sadly, looters are routinely excavating the ancient drawings with high-tech rock saws. Uncle Antonio believes the looters are selling the glyphs.
Pablo, Pia, and Kiki are determined to put a stop to the looting, and that’s when the adventure begins.
Uncle Antonio introduces his nephew and nieces to hundreds of primitive petroglyphs that have been chiseled into the walls of a nearby canyon—Petroglyph Canyon. The primitive rock drawings are part of Uncle Antonio’s sprawling cattle ranch. Sadly, looters are routinely excavating the ancient drawings with high-tech rock saws. Uncle Antonio believes the looters are selling the glyphs.
Pablo, Pia, and Kiki are determined to put a stop to the looting, and that’s when the adventure begins.
My Review:
Ghosts of Petroglyph Canyon is definitely a grade a read. I tend to read quite a few mid-grade books since I have younger kids and I want to make sure that I know what they're reading. I found Ghosts particularly good simply because I think it is capable of spanning a great age range. It's simple enough for younger readers to enjoy while at the same time it has enough adventure and intrigue to keep older readers interested.
The kids are fun and adventurous. Plus they are also intelligent. Their intelligence isn't played down just because it's a kids book. I think that they initiative and courage are definitely good examples.
Also the story is definitely interesting. I found myself wanting to find out more about the history of New Mexico and the Native Americans who lived there. I think Ghosts would definitely inspire it's target audience to want to look into that as well. Any book that inspires kids to further look into the subjects it is based on is always a good thing.
One of the only problems I have with the story is that the adults in the book don't seem as concerned with their kids whereabouts as real life adults would be. Yes, I know it's a fictional book, and that there are times when one must ignore certain things to move a story along. But being a parent, I don't think I would really let my kids go running around unsupervised when there are people like the Raglands in the area. But I don't think that my opinion of the adults lack of concern will keep your child from enjoying The Ghosts of Petroglyph Canyon.
Otherwise I think this book is a great read. I definitely recommend that as a parent you read it before giving it over to your mid-grade reader. If only because there is some mild violence in the book and people do die in it. So depending on the age and experience of your reader you might want to discuss it with them before they read it.
Cloud also wrote the book Adelita's Secret, which I reviewed for letter A of this challenge. I definitely would read more books by Christopher Cloud, no matter what the genre or age group. His stories keep the readers interest, the characters are likable and the topics he writes about always make me want to find out more about them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for a fair and honest review to be included as part of the Blogging from A to Z April (2015) Challenge on my blog. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.
No comments:
Post a Comment