Perilous Year

The Hungry Year #2

by Connie Brummel Crook

The Perilous Year is published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside.

Genres: Historical Fiction

32 pages, ebook

First published May 27, 2003

About the author

Connie Brummel Crook is a historian, former teacher and the author of more than a dozen historical books for children that often focus on the history of Upper Canada. Connie lives in Peterborough, Ontario.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

So the sequel to The Hungry Year, Connie Brummel Crook's The Perilous Year (and I do rather wish that the title were a trifle less derivative, a bit more imaginative) features the many adventures of Kate's twin brothers Ryan and Alex (who are now considerably older than they were in The Hungry Year, long for a bit of adventure and sometimes do massively resent the tedium of farming life and its daily grind of necessary but certainly not always fun and easy chores). Now while I have indeed for the most part quite enjoyed The Perilous Year, personally I do find at least some of Ryan and Alex's pirate treasure adventures more than a bit too fantastical for my tastes, in other words not all that realistic, and therefore certainly not nearly as evocative and as believable as the first novel, as The Hungry Year, where the possibility of Kate, Ryan and Alex perhaps starving to death due to the lack of food during a harsh winter certainly tears at one and massively opens one's eyes to the stark realities and potential dangers of pioneer life (although I do expect that especially boys from about the age of ten to twelve or so might well find The Perilous Year and Ryan and Alex' escapades with James and Ivan in search of buried British gold exciting and entertaining). But while much of the actual background and framework of The Perilous Year is most definitely and in fact realistic enough in and of itself (such as Kate getting married and leaving the family farm, the father remarrying and Alex and Ryan therefore having to get used to a stepmother and then a new baby sister) the featured search for pirate gold, well, personally, I have always found these types of stories a tad too predictable, not all that interesting, and therefore, while The Perilous Year is absolutely and definitely readable and with that sense of adventure and excitement (and indeed also an adequate enough sequel to The Hungry Year), I can on a personal enjoyment level only consider The Perilous Year as a low three star reading experience at best.