The Dark Pond

by Joseph Bruchac, Sally Wern Comport (Illustrations)

The author of Skeleton Man returns with another chilling tale. What kind of sinister creature lurks in the dark pond in the forest? Armie can feel it calling to him...and he suspects the answer may lie in the legends of his Shawnee ancestors. Joseph Bruchac, the award–winning author of Skeleton Man, puts a contemporary spin on Native American lore to create a terrifying tale of monsters and darkness.

Genres: Horror, Young Adult, Fantasy, Native American, Childrens, Middle Grade, Suspense

160 pages, Hardcover

First published July 27, 2004

About the author

Joseph Bruchac lives with his wife, Carol, in the Adirondack mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki ancestry. Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots are the ones by which he has been most nourished. He, his younger sister Margaret, and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, continue to work extensively in projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture, language and traditional Native skills, including performing traditional and contemporary Abenaki music with the Dawnland Singers.

He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio. His work as a educator includes eight years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum security prison. With his wife, Carol, he is the founder and Co-Director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press. He has edited a number of highly praised anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction, including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, Breaking Silence (winner of an American Book Award) and Returning the Gift. His poems, articles and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review, Cricket and Aboriginal Voices to National Geographic, Parabola and Smithsonian Magazine. He has authored more than 70 books for adults and children, including The First Strawberries, Keepers of the Earth (co-authored with Michael Caduto), Tell Me a Tale, When the Chenoo Howls (co-authored with his son, James), his autobiography Bowman's Store and such novels as Dawn Land, The Waters Between, Arrow Over the Door and The Heart of a Chief. Forthcoming titles include Squanto's Journey (Harcourt), a picture book, Sacajawea (Harcourt), an historical novel, Crazy Horse's Vision (Lee & Low), a picture book, and Pushing Up The Sky (Dial), a collection of plays for children. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, the Knickerbocker Award, the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature and both the 1998 Writer of the Year Award and the 1998 Storyteller of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.

As a professional teller of the traditional tales of the Adirondacks and the Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Joe Bruchac has performed widely in Europe and throughout the United States from Florida to Hawaii and has been featured at such events as the British Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. He has been a storyteller-in-residence for Native American organizations and schools throughout the continent, including the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and the Onondaga Nation School. He discusses Native culture and his books and does storytelling programs at dozens of elementary and secondary schools each year as a visiting author.

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

So.very.bad. This was a horribly written, choppy mess of randomness. The story didn't flow smoothly at all due to the author changing topic every few sentences. It's hard to follow a book when there;s zero focus. So it goes without saying that this was an unpleasant read.

As for the main character...

The boy is this book is a Native American with a magical bond to animals, because you know, all Native Americans frolic through the woods and chat it up with animals. Yeah, no, that's a bit too much like Disney and a bit insulting to Native Americans. Also, the kid hates everyone, and every time someone is nice to him he acts like an ass. His behavior made zero sense. I had to do a formal review of this for my children's lit class (which is why I am keeping this review short) and in no way do I think this is a quality book for children.

[Gabe Prepetit · Rating 3 out of 5]

The dark pond was an okay story. The climax of the story a confrontation with a 50 foot worm that was hiding inside of a pond. There was a lot building up to the event and the whole story was peaking the readers interest in what was in the pond but when you find out what is in the pond the main characters try to defeat it and they do very quickly in 10 pages to be exact and then the story ends. The author never explains if the animal is ever killed, and the main character Armie was having family problems with his parents but you never find out about that either. In general I thought it was a good book, but I wish that the story had more action events it seemed it would be a more action packed story but it was more of a mystery.

[Ivan Cardenas · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book makes me sleepy it is boring. I am already half through the book so i have to suffer just a little more.Atleast i got through this and finished the dang book.

[Nadia Guzman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would have breezed through this book in a couple of days but it was difficult to read. I couldn't really keep up with what was happening and it was not really my genre.

[Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up at the book sale Friday. I’m waiting on an Animorphs inter-library loan, so I figured why not?

This book was a pleasant surprise. As soon as one of the characters mentioned Mt. Marcy (I hiked it a few years back) I knew we were in the Adirondacks. My home.

So of course that tipped the scales in favor of this book. It was easy to visualize the forests as I grew up in them.

It also featured a lot of local lore, lore I didn’t know about previously. This was also nice.

I admit, the first 10 pages or so were a hard sell. We’re dropped into this character’s circumstance. He has the ability to communicate with animals and has a bit of a tough guy image he tries to perpetuate. But I have met plenty of folks who are similar-more interested in animals than humans. Not too chatty-so no biggie here.

This is a light horror book, low-stakes overall. It is part mystery as well. That’s the way I tend to like them. Atmospheric, mystery luring you forward. Close enough to reality to make suspension of disbelief easy. Boom.

I don’t know. It just worked for me.

[VJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

The notion of water spirits was a fun one to consider. Here was a malevolent spirit in the pond, luring creatures to their deaths beneath its calm, black exterior.

Armie determines he will find out what is in the dark pond and kill it.

His Shawnee background is referenced, and the situation is resolved quite too neatly and quickly to satisfy the tension that was lightly building.

Wonder how popular this was among young people?

[VJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long buildup, quick resolution, over before I remembered the mystery had been solved.

[Max Merlo · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Dark Pond, by Joseph bruchac. I think the main theme of this book was to prove that other people may have a side that you do not know about. If the author wanted me to get one thing out of this book Then I would probably say that it is that other people may have a side to them that you may not know about. This very must compares to our real world because there are many people out there who most likely have other sides to them but are hiding it. This book has accomplished to teach me to not judge other people as I have thought of them to be.

This book is about a kid named Armie who is bullied because of his long hair and his culture and he also has a dark pond that is calling to him and wants to kill him deep in the forest.. In this book we can see his other side to him and see how he is very intact with nature and we get to see the side of him that no one knows about. The genre of The Dark Pond is a mystery and a horror book. The setting is mostly in his school or in the forest. The action mostly takes place at the end of the book when Armie fights the giant worm in the forest that has been living in the pond. The main character in the book is Armie. I think he is very believable because there are many people out there who are different and we may not know a lot about them. The author describes Armie very well and I feel as if i am inside his thoughts.

A weakness of the book is that the plot is not so interesting and I think there should be a lot more action in the book. I thought the book was okay. It was not horrible but it was a little slow in the middle of the book. I personally liked the authors writing style because it describes characters and the setting very well.

If I were the reccommend this book to people it would honestly depend on who liked what. If the person liked a quick read and a little bit of a scary book then this would be a great book for them.

[Chrispin Sokol · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Book I am reading is The Dark Pond and it is written by Joseph Bruchac. The main charactor's name is Armie and after he feels a force drawing him toward a mysteirious pond in the woods, he looks to old Native American tales for an explaination about the dangerous monster lurking in the dark, shadowy waters. Some of it's strong points are the charactor's backstories. Some of the weak points are the main plot behind the pond and how they show it was haunting Armie. I think it is overall a decent book but they don't do a good job with developing Sabattis's charactor. The main setting is the boarding school and the forest. Most of the action takes place in the woods and the author does a good job describing these settings. The main charactor and the way he says things is very easy to under stand and when he talks about the dark pond it sounds made up. The author does describes him with very descriptive words. The way the author writes is very confusing and I don't really like it. He writes very descriptive at some points and very bland at others. Some examples are when he describes the creature from the pond it is not descriptive. He described it as an extremely large leech. This is not detailed at all compared to the landscape descriptions in the forest. Overall this book is good and i would recommend it to someone who likes mild horror fiction books.

[Christopher Cordaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I wondered why none of those animals had been drawn in. Had they wised up to the danger? Or was it just that whatever was there under the dark water wasn't trying to draw anything in right now? Did it go to sleep after it ate, like a big snake? I didn't have an answer. I just kept watching" (Bruchac 53). "The Dark Pond" by Joseph Bruchac is about a young Native American boy named Armie who, because of his appearance, does not have a lot of friends in school. The tribe that Armie is from, Shawnee, are called "people from the south wind". The author uses a hyperbole in the beginning of the book when the main character was talking about his new school up north in the mountains. The text states, "It gets so cold that if you light a match, the flame freezes and you have to thaw it out to start a fire" (Bruchac 6). This quote adds to the main conflict of the story of Armie's new and foreign environment.

Overall, this book was really enjoyable. I love the main character's connection to nature and his Shawnee roots. He could also link anything back to his Native American genes. I was also surprised by the ending; I did not expect an action scene with a creature like that. One complaint I had was that the book got really repetitive toward the end. Over and over again he kept talking about the pond and almost nothing but the pond. I would've liked the conflict in the school to develop more before the book ended. I would recommend this book to a friend as an easy read.

[Lia]

I finished this a long time ago and it's a very interesting book, it has a really good intro, call to adventure and dynamic plot. It's talking about a boy who can sort of communicate to animals mostly birds and he moved to the north in a boarding school. During his school time, he felt a need to go to the forest where a dark pond is found. As you can imagine, suspense is shown and is clear throughout the book. I enjoyed this book since it shows fear (which is my type of reading preference) and a lot of suspense and the climax is really good, not amazing but really good.
I would recommend this book to anyone except for people who have a fear of worms or something like that.

[Jennybeast · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice, creepy story about the things in the wilderness that you aren't aware can kill you. Armie is at a wilderness focused boarding school when he feels called to a pond nearby. He's lucky that a fox decides to break his trance before he falls into the water, but he feels the call intensify as the days go by. Great indigenous centered horror story from a master of storytelling.

Loved Armie's connection to animals and his grumpiness about their behavior. Heh.

[Ronaldtodd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book my Joseph Bruchac is a great book it has a lot of very good detail and and conflict and i think its pretty cool that this kid can talk to animals and skip school to hang out with them its very interesting i would definitely recommend it to anyone its a great book.

[Sauls Audiobooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

When something feels like it's calling you, would you try to find it? That's exactly what Armie did, but, not without it almost costing his, and another mans, lives.

My audiobook link, If allowed to post here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

[Nick Kingman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I personally really liked this book. The character is very relatable and gives a good representation of Native Americans. 3rd person books bore me a lot so the fact it is in 1st person really helped me to read it and understand what the character is going through.

[Maxwell K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gets you thinking that there is more to nature that you see.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story.

[Ryan Zhu · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's really not that scary for me although might be scary for others.

[Aidan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would want others to read this, I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was surprisingly creepy for a young adult novel. It was in the library's new section on native american literature and was interesting.

[Drake Bemke · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book sucks cuz I can't read

[Brandi · Rating 2 out of 5]

So all over the place. I read it to 4th graders and we were all so lost.

[Deyshaliz]

This book is really good and says a lot. And i like it a lot.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few of my kids were less than impressed, but I liked it. Creepy, and an interesting glimpse into a Native American legend, with a fantasy twist.

[Michelle Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

5th -20th grade. A little spooky. Insight into American Indian culture. Great ending.

[Abby Tointon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would only recommend this book if you’re desperate to finish your goodreads goal by the end of the year because it’ll only take you two hours

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short book good for middle grades plot wise, although the difficulty level felt younger. On the whole I thought it a was a good monster story.

[Garret · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author has talent, but this book bored me to death. The writing was bland, in my opinion. It was a good theme, though.

[Haneul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't care about all the critical reviews. I've been looking for this book for over 10 years since I read it in middle school. I want to meet the author and have him sign my copy.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Armie can feel something calling to him from the dark pond by his outdoor-focused boarding school. Once he begins to investigate, Armie notices the footprints leading to the hole in the pond. He notices the absence of bird calls in the surrounding forest. He notices the pull he feels from the pond itself, drawing him down into the depths.

Based on Native American lore, this read like a short story or Novella. We barely know Armie, besides that he sees himself as an outcast, a big-boned nobody who people avoid. I struggled with the lack of development on Armie’s part, but I enjoyed the supernatural aspect of the story itself plus the multiple references to Native American culture.