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nancy@nancykeane.com
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Bodett,
Tom
WILLIWAW!
New York : A.
Knopf, 2000
IL 5-8
RL 5.9
ISBN
0375806873
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- (Pretend
playing a pocket video game or use a real one
for a prop)
I really
like playing video games, don't you? I'm
the best at Tech Patrol, especially since I got
this pocket game. I used to have to wait
until I could take the skiff over to Port Vixen,
fourteen miles away to play the games at the
video arcade at the Dockside Traders. Last
summer my sister and I made enough money selling
clams at the Fourth of July picnic that I
was able to buy the pocket version with my share
of the earnings. Since we live on a remote
piece of land, across from Steamer Cover, so far
from the Alaskan mainland we don't have
electricity, so we don't have television.
We use a marine radio and a short-wave radio to
stay in touch with the rest of the world.
Nights get pretty long even with my sister
September around for company. She likes to
read and listen to the radio, which I think is
pretty boring. After I got this game, I
spent hours playing it. I was going
through $3 worth of batteries every night!
Then I discovered I could hot-wire my game into
our radios. From then on I spent many a
long summer's night blasting the bad guys.
But I would never do it when my dad was
around. He'd kill me if I did anything
that could wreck the radios/
One
evening when Dad made his weekly call, something
he did every time he had to go off-shore on a
fishing trip, he told us that he'd be
another two weeks out crabbing. Since he
didn't think we should be on our own for that
much longer, he said we were to go to Port Vixen
to stay with Aunt Nelda and Uncle Spitz.
We talked him into letting us stay on our
own. We're not babies! I'm twelve
and September is thirteen. That's old
enough to look after ourselves and take care of
chores around our place. Besides, we've
got the marine radio in case we need to call for
help. Thai's when Dad gave us the really
bad news. He said we could only stay home
if I stopped hot-wiring my video game to the
radios. How did he find out I was doing
that? It was hard -- two weeks with no
Tech Patrol! I agreed. Two weeks
without a video game was better than two weeks
being worked to death on Aunt Nelda's
farm.
I
couldn't keep my promise. That night,
after my sister fell asleep, I rigged up my game
to the radios just like I always did, but I was
working in the dark, just by feeling for the
right wires with my fingers and ... I blew
out the video game and the radios too! Now
we're here alone with no way of contacting the
harbormaster at Port Vixen and Dad will be
trying to call us again in a week. I've go
to get the radios fixed before Dad finds
out.
Ivan and
September have figured it all out, how they can get
the chores done and the radios repaired before
their father returns but they didn't figure on the
williwaw, the name given to the fierce northeaster
that devastates everything in its path. Just
like the storm that took the life of their
mother. For nonstop action and adventure,
read WILLIWAW! by Tom Bodett.
(New
Hampshire Great Stone Face
Committee)
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SUBJECTS:
Storms -- Alaska --
Fiction.
Boats and boating -- Alaska -- Fiction.
Brothers and sisters -- Alaska --
Fiction.
Alaska -- Fiction.
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© 
Permission is
granted for the noncommercial duplication and use of this
resource, provided it is substantially unchanged from its
present form and appropriate credit is
given.
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