The Time Hackers by Gary Paulsen

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

This is a short, comedic book by Gary Paulsen. We have enjoyed a variety of his other books. Here is the list:

Brian’s Return

Brian’s Winter

Flat Broke

Hatchet

Masters of Disaster

Mudshark

The River

Vote

Woods Runner

***

This book is, like others of his short, humorous books, not particularly deep, but just light entertainment. Of the ones we have read, this is probably the fluffiest, although it does have an interesting premise.

The idea is that someone found a way to bring holograms of things back from the past, which has led to, among other things, a total revision of the history curriculum. The problem is that eventually, strange things start happening to Dorso (the narrator) and Frank (his comedic wingman.) First, they are fairly harmless, like Dorso’s locker at school being filled up with dead rats - who mysteriously disappear a minute later. But eventually, they get serious, with Dorso and Frank getting suddenly transported to the past - and nearly getting killed. It turns out that someone - two someones actually - have hacked time, so to speak, and are playing a deadly game with time travel. (As in, can one of them alter history and violate the “grandfather paradox” before the other can set it right and prevent dire consequences up to and including the annihilation of the universe.) The problem for Dorso and Frank is that they have no idea what is going on or how they got involved. Or, for that matter, how to stop it, particularly since the cyber-authorities don’t believe them.

Things of note about this book: First, I think Paulson is excellent at setting the stage for a complicated technology without using too much space. He has a lot to do, and he does it gradually through the first few chapters - but he does it clearly and concisely. The entire book is all of two and a half hours of audiobook, so it is short. Paulsen can’t waste time on wordy descriptions, and has to be frugal.

Second, Paulsen uses the two essential Jr. High sources of humor: gross stuff, and nude girls. The book starts out with the discovery of an old medical cadaver in Dorso’s locker and a girl who faints at the smell. There is more of the same sort of stuff throughout. Because stinky stuff is funny. Just ask my younger kids.

The other running gag is that Frank keeps trying to circumvent the censorship of the time-web in order to see naked women. For “research,” of course.

As with all Paulsen books, it is tightly plotted, internally consistent, and modest in length. I didn’t find it quite as funny as, say, Masters of Disaster, which has comedic timing down to an art. But it was a diverting audiobook for our drive, and made the younger kids laugh. It is pretty hard to go wrong with Paulsen.  

Brian's Return by Gary Paulsen

 Source of book: Audiobook from the library (but we own this too.)

This book is number four (of five) in the Hatchet series. The rest are reviewed below:

Hatchet

The River

Brian’s Winter

I first heard Hatchet as an audiobook when I was in my late teens. I read it to the kids first, then we listened to the rest in audiobook form. The original book is a true classic. The River was pretty good, but I thought Brian’s Winter was a better (and alternate) continuation of the story. 

I will confess I was a bit disappointed by Brian’s Return. It picks up the story after Brian’s Winter with Brian trying to reintegrate into school and society after nearly a year in the wilderness. It does not go well. A bully attacks him over a girl (who he isn’t even dating), and Brian reacts as he would to a dangerous animal, seriously injuring the bully. This leads to him landing in counseling. As part of this process, he is introduced to Shakespeare, and also told that he would benefit from going back to the wilderness periodically. In Brian’s case, that means he essentially decides he is going back there - and staying this time.

This is where I have a bit of a problem with the direction taken by the series. Paulsen’s afterword makes it clear that Brian is Paulsen in many ways, and Paulsen himself did live mostly in the wilderness for years, until health issues forced him to live closer to civilization. So I get the personal aspect of the desire to return to nature. Honestly, I too love the wilderness (in reasonable doses), but I also realize that isolation like that works for very few people. We are a social species, and lack of human contact isn’t particularly healthy for individuals, and it ultimately precludes the development that makes us human, rather than just smart animals.

Paulsen also never addresses the fact that even a social form of hunting and gathering would require the human species to be one percent or less of the population we have, which is, for obvious reasons, a serious moral problem.

So, this kind of bothered me. Maybe the final book resolves the issue, but I found it unsatisfying to think that the only option was complete isolation from society and near-complete isolation from technology. This general philosophy was all too common in the Fundie circles (although they generally envisioned an early agricultural, rather than hunter-gatherer society as ideal.) Both share a disdain for urban living - and thus urban humanity - which again poses a myriad of ethical and practical questions.

There are some good parts to the book, though. It is nice to see a counselor portrayed as neither the all-knowing savior of the protagonist nor as a bumbling fool, but as an interesting human in his own right. Paulsen is still amazing in describing techniques, and in recounting moments from his own experience: in this book, encounters with a deer and a bear. I also appreciated the episode near the end when he encounters the old woodsman, who speaks his particular language. The writing is good. The problem is in the conception, which seems uncharacteristically naive for Paulsen.

We listened to this on the same trip as The Call of the Wild, which made an interesting pairing. Two authors familiar with the unforgiving laws of nature, as well as the things necessary for survival. Both stories about going feral and returning to instinct. It turns out to be a bit more convincing in the case of the dog.

Brian's Winter by Gary Paulsen

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

This book is the third of five in the Hatchet series, the original of which was Gary Paulsen’s breakout work. I listened to Hatchet when I was a teen, then read it to my kids. Later, we also discovered that Paulsen is a delightful humor writer as well.

Previous reviews of books in the Hatchet series:

Hatchet

The River

Reviews of other Paulsen books:

Flat Broke

Masters of Disaster

Mudshark

Vote

When Paulsen wrote Hatchet, he wrote a self contained story. It has a beginning, and resolves at the end. But readers apparently wanted to hear more. So Paulsen wrote The River, which continues the story, with Brian returning to the scene of the plane crash with someone studying survival techniques. 

But readers apparently wanted something different. Or at least more. They wanted to know how the story would have gone had Brian not been rescued, but had spent the winter stranded in the wilderness. In the introduction to Brian’s Winter, Paulsen notes that he received hundreds of letters to this effect. So he went back and wrote an alternative scenario. 

Brian’s Winter is very much in the vein of Hatchet, naturally. Brian must overcome new obstacles and face new challenges. But the basic facts are the same. He must survive. In order to survive, he must continually find food. He must protect himself from the elements and from dangers posed by animals that would love to eat him.

Paulsen writes from experience. While he never had a catastrophe like Brian, he did spend a lot of time in the wilderness, and tested the techniques he writes about. Because of this, the books have a very realistic feel to them. To the degree that I am familiar with the topics, I can confirm that Paulsen is scrupulously devoted to accuracy. He does not exaggerate. He does not get the details wrong.

But the real charm of these books is the storytelling. Paulsen always tells a good story, whether it is realistic or humorous. His characters are memorable, human, and match their ages well. Paulsen doesn’t shy away from discomfort either, whether it is Brian’s nausea after he kills an animal for food, or the social discomfort the hapless Kevin (in Vote and Flat Broke) experiences when his plans go awry. But Paulsen is always hopeful. Brian will survive - and learn from his difficulties. Kevin will grow up a bit. And Reed will unfailingly find the zombie poop.

I found Brian’s Winter to be every bit as enjoyable as the original. There are two more in the series, which I am sure we will eventually get to during our travels.

Flat Broke by Gary Paulsen

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

This is the second book in Paulsen’s series featuring the hapless Kevin, who can’t get out of his own way. We listened to Vote earlier this year, and enjoyed it. The first book in the series, Liar, Liar appears to have gone missing (at least the audiobook version) from our local library, so we have so far just listened to the others. 

As we learned in the other books, in the first one, Kevin got himself into no end of trouble as a result of ever-escalating lies. Because of this, his parents took away his allowance, which put a serious crimp in his ability to attempt to score a date with Tina Zabinski, the world’s most beautiful girl, as far as Kevin is concerned.

This being Kevin, naturally, he sets about remedying the problem with a combination of irrational confidence, exuberance, and grandiose schemes. After all, why merely earn a living when you can be filthy rich at 14?

As in Vote, Kevin isn’t a bad guy, he’s just, well, a bit full of himself and unseasoned. Kind of like most of us were at that age. Or at least like people we knew at that age. (At 14, I had neither confidence nor chutzpah, honestly. I was square and awkward, so not much of a Kevin. And I was, as now, the responsible plodder rather than the daring schemer. But I had a friend…)

So, Kevin, lacking funds, decides to borrow a few bucks from his older sister, enlist a few friends as employees, and engage in a range of moneymaking schemes. Some of these are pretty legit: cleaning out garages for neighbors, baking cookies for college students, assisting his sister and a classmate in monetizing their skills. But his poker games seem a bit over the legal - and moral - lines. As usual, it isn’t his lack of diligence or hard work that does him in, but his failure to consider fairness to others and think through all the difficult logistical issues that get him.  

In the end, he can’t keep the balls in the air, and things fall apart. And he has to make some painful apologies. But, as always, Kevin isn’t really a bad guy, so he takes his lumps and finds success out of the lessons he learns.

We have listened to quite a few Paulsen books over the last couple of years, after discovering him through what is probably his best known book, Hatchet. His serious books in that vein are worthwhile, but his humorous works, like this one, really shine as well. Like all of the books in this series, they are fairly short, amusing, and well written. Paulsen deserves his reputation as a beloved writer.

This audiobook was performed by Joshua Swanson, who I am not familiar with, but who has a really cool last name. He does a credible job giving voice to Kevin, so I’ll make an exception from my general rule that Stephen Fry should narrate all audiobooks.

***

Other Gary Paulsen books reviewed on this blog:

Hatchet

The River

Vote

Masters of Disaster

Mudshark

***

And, just because it fits:

Vote by Gary Paulsen

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

To say Gary Paulsen has been a hit with my kids would be to undersell just how much they love his humorous books. (They like the Hatchet series as well, but the comedies are their favorites.) Here are my previous Paulsen reviews:

Hatchet

The River

Masters of Disaster

Mudshark

With this disaster of an election looming, I decided that about all we can do is look for a reason to laugh. Hence, I picked this book. 

Paulsen wrote several books in this series, featuring 14 year old Kevin Spencer and his schoolmates. Like the others, Vote is narrated by Kevin himself, which adds to the humor. Kevin is, shall we say, not the most self-aware person. He thinks more highly of himself than he ought, and he fails to see disaster looming as the natural result of his questionable choices. On the other hand, he is likeable, in a certain way, despite his faults. You want to see him succeed, even though he seems rather unlikely to do so.

The setup is thus: Kevin is now dating the gorgeous (if a little personality-deficient) Tina, but he is still terribly insecure. The problem is Cash Devine, the new kid who is “every boy band ever mashed together” handsome. It is obvious that most of the girls at school are swooning over Cash. When it turns out that Cash is running to be student body president after the incumbent moves away, Kevin finds himself throwing his hat in the ring in an effort to impress Tina.

The ensuing election is a never-ending stream of missteps and pratfalls. Cash is mostly looks, with little in the way of a brain or ambition. The genius behind his campaign is Katie, Kevin’s frenemy. In fact, as everyone realizes far too late, Katie is the person who should be president. Had she joined the race, she would likely have won. Instead, the final debate is between Kevin and Cash, neither of whom really wants the job, and both of whom are nervous as heck.

I have come to appreciate Paulsen’s light touch with his characters. Kevin is flawed in many ways, but he does have a number of redeeming qualities. One of these is his love and care for Markie, the 4 year old his family is babysitting while his parents attempt to reconcile. Kevin is the only one in the family who seems to appreciate the little kid, who is, well, a typical 4 year old boy. One of the funniest - and also telling - episodes in the book is the day that Kevin’s parents leave early due to a combination of obligations and an emergency situation - and nobody realizes that Markie has been left behind. Kevin, being a decent person, finds a way of smuggling Markie into Kevin’s school, and integrate him into the day’s activities.

Other characters are fun. There is Kevin’s goofy Aunt Buzz (named for her caffeine habit) and his friend (whose name eludes me) who is kind of a ditzy stoner sort but without the illicit substances. There is Cash, who has all the charm and good looks, but discovers he hates campaigning because everyone wants to touch him. Not a sharp tool, but not exactly a tool either, which makes him more interesting.

Another twist which is interesting is that while Kevin is smitten with Tina, who seems nice enough, but a bit flat, one can easily tell that Kevin’s true match is Katie. Obviously, she would be the character I would want to hang with, but Paulsen seems to indicate that Kevin deep down likes her, even as he enjoys their rivalry. Katie is smart, pushy, organized, and unafraid to be herself. It is a relationship that you could see transforming from frenemies to a romance once both of them grow up a bit.

In any case, this is a fun, lighthearted book. It’s fairly short, but a nice diversion with a more thoughtful heart than one might think. My kids hope to read or listen to the others in the series.  If nothing else, it is an escape from our current electoral politics to a world where voting as popularity contest somehow seems less terrifying, and where a kid running for the wrong reasons can find himself inspired to noble goals.

Mudshark by Gary Paulsen

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

Not too long ago, I thought of Gary Paulsen as the realistic and unflinching author of the Hatchet books. (Reviewed here and here.) But it turns out that he has been a prolific writer over the last 25 years, and his range is much greater than I had supposed. Apparently, he wasn’t a one-hit wonder. Likewise, serious writing was not his only strength. He has a delightful sense of humor of just the right type to appeal to kids not easily grossed out. Like, say, my kids.

Over our Christmas trip, we enjoyed Masters of Disaster, so we decided to try Mudshark for our recent camping trip. 

Like Masters of Disaster, Mudshark is a relatively short book, clocking in at about two hours on audiobook. It was also a hit with the kids.

The basic premise is this: Lyle Williams, aka “Mudshark,” is a middle-schooler who got his nickname after a game of “Death Ball,” a local game which sounds quite a bit like the way soccer was once played. The author describes it as a cross between soccer, rugby, football, and a mud fight. The entire town takes it quite seriously, despite - or perhaps because of - the fact that the school has outlawed it. With lightning reflexes honed keeping his toddler triplet sisters out of harm’s way, he saves a goal faster than human vision can follow. Mudshark isn’t just athletic, though. He lives by his quick wits and his excellent memory. Can’t find something? Mudshark probably knows where it is. Need help solving a problem? Call Mudshark. In an interesting spin on real-life playground politics, it turns out the nerdy kid who doesn’t care about popularity ends up being cool.

Things start to go sideways, however, when the librarian gets a talking parrot, whose powers of observation prove to be serious competition for Mudshark. And then the erasers in every classroom start to go missing. This ends up being Mudshark’s toughest case yet.

A number of things brought snickers from my kids, from the little girls to the logarithmic multiplication of crawfish in the school’s ill-fated “animals in the classroom” experiment. And the escaped gerbil who seems intent on terrorizing the 8th Grade English teacher.

But the most popular, by unanimous vote (yes, I took a poll), was the introductions to each chapter. They all start the same way, with an announcement over the school’s PA system.

“Will the custodian please report to the faculty restroom with…”

And then follows an ever-escalating list of needed implements. Starting with “a plunger and a mop,” then “a plank” and eventually “a Geiger counter and a hazmat suit.” One is left to wonder exactly what was going on there, and how a bunch of teachers ended up getting the Department of Homeland Security and various environmental agencies called out to deal with a toilet emergency.  

Of course, this joke does work better if one has kids that actually know what one would do with a Geiger counter. In fact, though, one thing I do like about Paulsen’s writing is that he balances the need to write at the level of his intended readers with an ability to do so without dumbing stuff down. He assumes kids are intelligent and educated even as he stretches their scientific knowledge.

Mudshark isn’t intended to be deep literature or anything, but it is an entertaining tale, and one that subtly pushes Paulsen’s view that there is nothing shameful or uncool about learning and reading and paying attention. I’d say Paulsen writes about boys really well, and it is true, but girls too will find his humorous books enjoyable as well.