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Hobie Hanson #2
4B Goes Wild
Fourth graders on a three-day camping trip with their teachers experience frights and delights.
147 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 17, 1983
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 19, 2018
I saved this for later on in my summer thinking it was going to be so funny and charming. Literally the first line of the book had me rethinking that. Hobie talked of the Dinosaur Delight event at school and how it sounded like "ice cream with salted fossils." Nick stuck up for his mom because she came up with the name. They kept Toby's rubber frog away from him, Hobie didn't want to go to it, Toby said he liked butter too. Hobie would rather clean the cat's box. I didn't know what was going on. It was all over the place. One thing after another. The only mildly funny thing was when Nick told Toby their mom needed him to hang on her leg as she walked around the gym. But other than that the humor was a miss.
A girl named Molly out her hands over his eyes from behind when he got to the gym, gave clues on what kind of dinosaur she was. I wondered what kind of history they had together. It was stupid though when she called him a dwerp when he said it was her and double dwerp when he wouldn't guess and Toby beat him to it.
Molly's friend Lisa covered Marshall's eyes and tried to get him to guess what kind was the biggest dinosaur, and he said if she didn't let go of his eyes she'd be the flattest of dinosaurs. It should have stopped there but she went on to have him say Lisa would be a dinosaur rug. The best humor is when you don't try too hard and quit while you're ahead.
Molly's grandma saved him some brownies and he escaped from her before she could ask him if he thought Molly was the cutest girl in 4th grade. I liked the little hint of boy/girl stuff.
I found a lot of the wording to be really lame. Toby asked Hobie what dinosaurs say, and he said "Roogie-roogie" and then Toby repeated it. I thought that was so stupid.
I didn't appreciate the added parent drama and gossip thing going on nor did I find it funny in the slightest. One time Hobie's mom had said her husband was stubborn about going to the doctor, and Molly's grandma screwed it up and said they were fighting, and she said it loudly at the gym where people heard. Hobie bought tickets to win the prize of the hotel stay for his parents, and the two women there made up this whole story based on nothing. One said they were separated and the other said Hobie was trying to prevent it, bcuz he feels guilty.
I hate when animals are treated badly, but 10x worse when it's in the name of humor. Rolf played a game and earned a goldfish, and then ate it live. I was so mad. You don't do that to a poor fish. That was disgusting and deplorable.
I found it incredibly unrealistic and inappropriate that one of the prizes was a weekend at the Marriott Hotel with a champagne brunch. These are 4th graders. What are 4th graders going to do at a hotel for a weekend? And champagne wouldn't even be mentioned at school, where there are children. Get real.
It irritated me further that the $8 out of the $10 his mom gave him that he spent on tickets for the hotel earned him a lunch with the principal instead. Wouldn't his tickets go into a jar just for the hotel and not for the other prizes??
Hobie had pushed Michelle and then lied about it during their classroom court session, and acted like it was something to be smug and nonchalant about. Then at recess she tagged him out during kickball and he thought about tackling her. It was so totally wrong that he wanted to do that to a girl. The casual way in which she had him treat girls so badly was not okay. He would be the school bully, a jerk that girls wouldn't like. I really didn't like that.
Ms. Svetlana Ivanovitch, the sub, was talking to Mr. Star and the girls said they were cueshee together, meaning cute. Apparently girls make up stupid-sounding words to mean things that already have a perfectly good word which is shorter and easier to say. Stupid.
I was disturbed that Molly was jealous of Ms. Ivanovitch, said she was too short for Mr. Star and she wanted to marry him when she got older. She's 8-9 years old!
She called her Ivan-low-witch and Ivan-slow-itch. It was a bad joke.
The camp trip was boring before they even got there. I was just shaking my head at all of the choices, the actions and dialogue and the way it was all described, just everything. I didn't understand anything that was happening. I literally could not follow along with any of it. Usually there's a clear path and you can anticipate what's going to happen but if you can't then you can at least understand why someone said or did something and follow their train of thought. This had no train of thought. It was like a rubber ball had been bounced into a room and it just kept banging into one thing after another and never settled down. I didn't know what anyone's motivations were, didn't connect to them because everyone and everything was all over the place.
It started with Miss Ivanovitch standing on the sidewalk when everyone else was on the bus. She looked up and down like for traffic except there wasn't any traffic at the school. Mr. Star told her to get on the bus. She stood there and checked the lane again, and then got on the bus. Why? What was she doing? I just didn't have the patience for it, this woman who might have been thinking about not going but who just stood there looking for imaginary traffic. Yeah, not funny. Get on with the story.
They went to the cemetery and noticed what kind of stone the gravestones were, the oldest dates and families who died together. They took paper and crayons and made rubbings and I was thinking this is the wild, hilarious trip to summer camp I thought would be so much fun? I just don't even know what to say. It was so tame and lame and such a letdown I can't even say.
Mr. Star told them to go to the bathroom beforehand and Hobie and a friend ran from the dining hall to the lodge, and went through the girl's rooms upstairs and then back to their room so no one could accuse them of having gone there. Without saying why they went there, without having them talk to each other and make a plan to do it before, they just did it for seemingly no reason. I had no idea why they did that, to what end.
Don't even get me started on the predator/prey game in the dark. I got that it illustrated that animals are active at night and go by their hearing, smell, and sight. Some had perfume samples, flashlights, rattles and what her scrapers were. But I was totally miserable waiting for the humor and hilarity with crazy mishaps and adventure in the woods. Molly's grandma then told a story that was so familiar, as in it is the same story I've heard or it's copied from a famous story, where a couple wishes for money, so their son was killed at work and all ground up, and they got the insurance money. They wished to bring him back but he came back grotesque and so they wished for him to die. Just like Edgar Alan Poe's twisted story I believe. It had no place in here. It was plunked in, not funny, not scary, not anything. Just wrong.
The next "scary story" featured her just saying "deep and dark" over and over again. Deep, dark voice. Deep, dark stormy night. Deep, dark, enchanted forest. Deep, dark enchanted forest again. Deep, dark dark haunted graveyard. Deep, dark haunted graveyard again. Deep, dark yawning hole twice. Deep, dark moldy box twice. She threw a "monkey paw" on the kids and it was one of the boy's hand which he had put in his pillow. Which raised the question of how she knew it was hidden in his pillow and when she got it. Like, really. What was happening and how was it happening?? We don't know. I guess major details don't matter anymore.
It was kinda funny when Hobie wished with that scary hand that he was home, and when it moved he took his wish back. Naturally worried after what happened in the story.
I was disappointed with Hobie when he went to call home the first night, couldn't sleep without talking to his parents. He missed his parents, homesick and even started to cry. When Ms. Ivanovitch ran up on him in the hallway he said he thought his parents were getting divorced and I thought you don't know that, you're just letting other people make you think that. He said he wanted to go home, please and asked if there was a way. I expected him to be stronger, not to cry and be so homesick he begged to go back. Enjoy the trip and your friends. Boy was I disappointed.
Eugene had to go to Mr. Star and Rolf made fun of him and said he was a baby to the other guys. It turned out he needed his asthma medication and I'm thinking these jerks should feel like crap. Hobie saw that Eugene had a bunny blanket and he thought that Eugene was a baby. He kept repeating "baby Eugene" to himself, said the kid was a loss while he had real things to worry about. That's not ok to put someone else down when you did the same thing, but you try to reason out how your own behavior makes you better than him. I didn't like Hobie. But when he said Eugene probably needed a lullaby, and laughed about it, I despised him. You wrote a bully for the main character!
That first night seemed to go on forever. I was like move on to a new day. Things kept happening, teachers down the hall, kids waking up, flashlights, bathroom trips, jokes and pranks. When it came to their prank on Rolf who was snoring, I was appalled. They played a prank called trucking where Eugene hit him with a pillow and they all yelled truck, Nick and Hobie holding flashlights to make the appearance of a truck, to make him think he was about to get hit. Rolf lit up on Eugene only, accusing him of hitting him when Rolf had done nothing to him. He made fun of him being afraid of the lightning and needing a blanket and it was hideous. It was nasty, it was mean, it was disgusting. How these losers have any friends is beyond me. He challenged Eugene to steal something from the girls room and I was waiting for someone to be the voice of reason but Nick and Hobie were just glad Rolf wasn't doing it to them.
Eugene didn't know what truck was, and Nick said something like have you ever been to camp before? Hobie didn't know what it was either but he didn't even say anything. Rolf said he was going to sue Eugene at school, and Hobie did actually say it was just a joke. Nick was the one who had the idea for Eugene to steal something of the girls, and Hobie knew he could have said something but he didn't. Rolf threatened to show everyone Eugene's blanket if he didn't do it. Hobie said he'd get the blanket back when he got back, and he wouldn't be afraid anymore, which was kind of nice, and after Eugene went to do it, Hobie put his blanket on his bed. A while had gone by and they thought Eugene snitched. Hobie said he might have ran away and they might have been too mean, which didn't go over well with Rolf, but at least he put it out there. The whole scene was so vicious and I didn't like any of them, Hobie, Rolf or Nick. Bullies every one.
It was so sad that next day when Molly asked Hobie who had won the scavenger hunt and he didn't know what she was talking about. She said the one she'd had to give her cat for, so we knew Eugene had come up with that lie so he could get it. It was interesting when Hobie told her Rolf had slept with it and she said she didn't care if Rolf liked her or not because he wasn't cute. Well actually she said "cueshee" which was stupid.
It was cute that she said they thought the rest of the boys would be coming up and they waited at their doors to hit them with pillows. But the first person to come through was Ms. Ivanovitch and they all hit her.
The bird banding was cool, Idk why the kids didn't like it. A bird had gotten caught and the camp was going to teach them how to band the bird with an ID number but no one wanted to even hold the bird. The man gave it to Hobie and he didn't like it. What's wrong with these kids??
Eugene got his chance to shine and I was so glad. The camp had chickens on their nests and Ms. Ivanovitch told them to see if there were any eggs. Some kids were worried that the chickens would attack them, but Eugene just reached right under the bird and got an egg. His grandparents have a farm so he knew what he was doing. Take that. Hobie wondered how someone who could do that needed a baby blanket.
They played Silence, Skits and Singing which wasn't really a game to me. It was a waste of paper. Silence involved laying on the floor and listening to night noises and then Mr. Star made owl noises trying to get an owl to hoot back. Skits had kids doing various things I didn't find entertaining, like people wrapped in toilet paper as mummies and Molly read fortunes in people's shoes. She threw all of the shoes once she does, and when it came time to read Ms. Ivanovitch she said she'd be going on a long trip and sent it flying and no one could find it. That was mean.
The second night Rolf wanted to truck somebody and Eugene said if they did it to him he'd let the air out of their tires. He was no longer afraid and standing up for himself. Hobie recognized that and he knew he was still afraid and wanted to call his parents. He didn't want to go back to the cemetery and make a rubbing to replace Ms. Ivanovitch's that he and Nick had accidentally ripped. I wanted a new main character.
They got their rubbing in the middle of the night, but on the way back to the lodge they encountered a skunk. Nick froze and it was up to Hobie to pull him along out of the way. They ran away but the skunk came after them--in a behavior I am 99.9% certain that no skunk would ever do. They had plenty of time to leave but they stayed there in the ditch and let the skunk come to them, where it stopped and looked at them and then walked off. Skunk goes all the way after humans, isn't afraid of them or them calling out skunk! to Ms. I who found them, and then decided to leave without doing anything. Okay. Sounds like typical wild animal behavior to me.
My annoyance spiked as Hobie realized when he got in bed that he had dropped the rubbing for Ms. I. All that for nothing.
Ms. I knew how homesick Hobie was so she called his parents and found out his dad was in the hospital; he'd had gallstones and had an operation. Once he learned they weren't getting a divorce, he realized it was like the game of telephone they played, where the message ends up changed and nothing like the original. He had fallen for false news. I just couldn't wait for them to realize Ms. I wasn't marrying Mr. Star and get off that kick. It was getting old and it wasn't funny.
Some things became clear at the end. When they got to school a man went over to Ms. I and they held hands, clearly together. He was who she had been looking for when everyone was on the bus and waiting to go. He was also who she'd tried to call at the lodge. Next year she was going to be a 5th grade teacher.
Some things were funny like when the man first got there the kids didn't know who he was, wondered if it was her brother. They had played a game animal, vegetable, mineral on the bus while Hobie slept and the kids told him about it, so he asked the mystery man if he was an animal, vegetable or mineral. Quick sense of humor.
It was funny when the principal went to confirm their lunch outing and Rolf came over to enjoy Hobie's suffering, but she had the idea to have one of his friends come along and he jumped on it. He said they could tell her about trucking.
I also didn't know that Hobie was short for Hobart until pg. 144. Because there wasn’t any background on the characters and their lives and relationships to each other.
His big lesson was that he'd made it 2 nights away from home and only Ms. I had known about him being scared. He told Toby it was a wild trip. Not really. Not at all, really. It didn't live up to any of my expectations. It promised more than it could deliver. I pictured them camping out with cool campfires and ghost stories, outdoor activities and just being cool and funny.
I would have appreciated it if things would have just slowed down. There was constantly something happening and something going on and some downtime would have been nice. There was hardly a chance to get inside Hobie's head, to see what other characters looked like, what he thought about them, what he was thinking and feeling. It was one of the worst storytelling I've ever experienced because there wasn't enough thoughts. It was action, action, action--all the time. Like a roller coaster ride.
It was annoying because a major part of it was kids making assumptions about things based on flimsy evidence and jumping to conclusions, thinking they knew what was going on. Molly thinking Ms. I and Mr. Star were together and she spent the entire book jealous and being mean, and everybody else got in on it. People thought Hobie’s parents were getting divorced based on stupid evidence which was about something else entirely, and Hobie eventually believed it and spent a lot of time worrying about it. I don’t find it amusing when people jump to conclusions and grossly misjudge things and spend the whole time acting out because of something that isn’t even happening. I also have no idea what happened in the first book and what they did to “sink the sub.” I had intended to read that one because I thought this would be so funny, and I already marked it to read, so I guess it’s good there were no spoilers but it was weird not to have any idea what they did to Ms. I. The next looks promising with some romance between Hobie and Molly so I want to read that to see where it goes.
A girl named Molly out her hands over his eyes from behind when he got to the gym, gave clues on what kind of dinosaur she was. I wondered what kind of history they had together. It was stupid though when she called him a dwerp when he said it was her and double dwerp when he wouldn't guess and Toby beat him to it.
Molly's friend Lisa covered Marshall's eyes and tried to get him to guess what kind was the biggest dinosaur, and he said if she didn't let go of his eyes she'd be the flattest of dinosaurs. It should have stopped there but she went on to have him say Lisa would be a dinosaur rug. The best humor is when you don't try too hard and quit while you're ahead.
Molly's grandma saved him some brownies and he escaped from her before she could ask him if he thought Molly was the cutest girl in 4th grade. I liked the little hint of boy/girl stuff.
I found a lot of the wording to be really lame. Toby asked Hobie what dinosaurs say, and he said "Roogie-roogie" and then Toby repeated it. I thought that was so stupid.
I didn't appreciate the added parent drama and gossip thing going on nor did I find it funny in the slightest. One time Hobie's mom had said her husband was stubborn about going to the doctor, and Molly's grandma screwed it up and said they were fighting, and she said it loudly at the gym where people heard. Hobie bought tickets to win the prize of the hotel stay for his parents, and the two women there made up this whole story based on nothing. One said they were separated and the other said Hobie was trying to prevent it, bcuz he feels guilty.
I hate when animals are treated badly, but 10x worse when it's in the name of humor. Rolf played a game and earned a goldfish, and then ate it live. I was so mad. You don't do that to a poor fish. That was disgusting and deplorable.
I found it incredibly unrealistic and inappropriate that one of the prizes was a weekend at the Marriott Hotel with a champagne brunch. These are 4th graders. What are 4th graders going to do at a hotel for a weekend? And champagne wouldn't even be mentioned at school, where there are children. Get real.
It irritated me further that the $8 out of the $10 his mom gave him that he spent on tickets for the hotel earned him a lunch with the principal instead. Wouldn't his tickets go into a jar just for the hotel and not for the other prizes??
Hobie had pushed Michelle and then lied about it during their classroom court session, and acted like it was something to be smug and nonchalant about. Then at recess she tagged him out during kickball and he thought about tackling her. It was so totally wrong that he wanted to do that to a girl. The casual way in which she had him treat girls so badly was not okay. He would be the school bully, a jerk that girls wouldn't like. I really didn't like that.
Ms. Svetlana Ivanovitch, the sub, was talking to Mr. Star and the girls said they were cueshee together, meaning cute. Apparently girls make up stupid-sounding words to mean things that already have a perfectly good word which is shorter and easier to say. Stupid.
I was disturbed that Molly was jealous of Ms. Ivanovitch, said she was too short for Mr. Star and she wanted to marry him when she got older. She's 8-9 years old!
She called her Ivan-low-witch and Ivan-slow-itch. It was a bad joke.
The camp trip was boring before they even got there. I was just shaking my head at all of the choices, the actions and dialogue and the way it was all described, just everything. I didn't understand anything that was happening. I literally could not follow along with any of it. Usually there's a clear path and you can anticipate what's going to happen but if you can't then you can at least understand why someone said or did something and follow their train of thought. This had no train of thought. It was like a rubber ball had been bounced into a room and it just kept banging into one thing after another and never settled down. I didn't know what anyone's motivations were, didn't connect to them because everyone and everything was all over the place.
It started with Miss Ivanovitch standing on the sidewalk when everyone else was on the bus. She looked up and down like for traffic except there wasn't any traffic at the school. Mr. Star told her to get on the bus. She stood there and checked the lane again, and then got on the bus. Why? What was she doing? I just didn't have the patience for it, this woman who might have been thinking about not going but who just stood there looking for imaginary traffic. Yeah, not funny. Get on with the story.
They went to the cemetery and noticed what kind of stone the gravestones were, the oldest dates and families who died together. They took paper and crayons and made rubbings and I was thinking this is the wild, hilarious trip to summer camp I thought would be so much fun? I just don't even know what to say. It was so tame and lame and such a letdown I can't even say.
Mr. Star told them to go to the bathroom beforehand and Hobie and a friend ran from the dining hall to the lodge, and went through the girl's rooms upstairs and then back to their room so no one could accuse them of having gone there. Without saying why they went there, without having them talk to each other and make a plan to do it before, they just did it for seemingly no reason. I had no idea why they did that, to what end.
Don't even get me started on the predator/prey game in the dark. I got that it illustrated that animals are active at night and go by their hearing, smell, and sight. Some had perfume samples, flashlights, rattles and what her scrapers were. But I was totally miserable waiting for the humor and hilarity with crazy mishaps and adventure in the woods. Molly's grandma then told a story that was so familiar, as in it is the same story I've heard or it's copied from a famous story, where a couple wishes for money, so their son was killed at work and all ground up, and they got the insurance money. They wished to bring him back but he came back grotesque and so they wished for him to die. Just like Edgar Alan Poe's twisted story I believe. It had no place in here. It was plunked in, not funny, not scary, not anything. Just wrong.
The next "scary story" featured her just saying "deep and dark" over and over again. Deep, dark voice. Deep, dark stormy night. Deep, dark, enchanted forest. Deep, dark enchanted forest again. Deep, dark dark haunted graveyard. Deep, dark haunted graveyard again. Deep, dark yawning hole twice. Deep, dark moldy box twice. She threw a "monkey paw" on the kids and it was one of the boy's hand which he had put in his pillow. Which raised the question of how she knew it was hidden in his pillow and when she got it. Like, really. What was happening and how was it happening?? We don't know. I guess major details don't matter anymore.
It was kinda funny when Hobie wished with that scary hand that he was home, and when it moved he took his wish back. Naturally worried after what happened in the story.
I was disappointed with Hobie when he went to call home the first night, couldn't sleep without talking to his parents. He missed his parents, homesick and even started to cry. When Ms. Ivanovitch ran up on him in the hallway he said he thought his parents were getting divorced and I thought you don't know that, you're just letting other people make you think that. He said he wanted to go home, please and asked if there was a way. I expected him to be stronger, not to cry and be so homesick he begged to go back. Enjoy the trip and your friends. Boy was I disappointed.
Eugene had to go to Mr. Star and Rolf made fun of him and said he was a baby to the other guys. It turned out he needed his asthma medication and I'm thinking these jerks should feel like crap. Hobie saw that Eugene had a bunny blanket and he thought that Eugene was a baby. He kept repeating "baby Eugene" to himself, said the kid was a loss while he had real things to worry about. That's not ok to put someone else down when you did the same thing, but you try to reason out how your own behavior makes you better than him. I didn't like Hobie. But when he said Eugene probably needed a lullaby, and laughed about it, I despised him. You wrote a bully for the main character!
That first night seemed to go on forever. I was like move on to a new day. Things kept happening, teachers down the hall, kids waking up, flashlights, bathroom trips, jokes and pranks. When it came to their prank on Rolf who was snoring, I was appalled. They played a prank called trucking where Eugene hit him with a pillow and they all yelled truck, Nick and Hobie holding flashlights to make the appearance of a truck, to make him think he was about to get hit. Rolf lit up on Eugene only, accusing him of hitting him when Rolf had done nothing to him. He made fun of him being afraid of the lightning and needing a blanket and it was hideous. It was nasty, it was mean, it was disgusting. How these losers have any friends is beyond me. He challenged Eugene to steal something from the girls room and I was waiting for someone to be the voice of reason but Nick and Hobie were just glad Rolf wasn't doing it to them.
Eugene didn't know what truck was, and Nick said something like have you ever been to camp before? Hobie didn't know what it was either but he didn't even say anything. Rolf said he was going to sue Eugene at school, and Hobie did actually say it was just a joke. Nick was the one who had the idea for Eugene to steal something of the girls, and Hobie knew he could have said something but he didn't. Rolf threatened to show everyone Eugene's blanket if he didn't do it. Hobie said he'd get the blanket back when he got back, and he wouldn't be afraid anymore, which was kind of nice, and after Eugene went to do it, Hobie put his blanket on his bed. A while had gone by and they thought Eugene snitched. Hobie said he might have ran away and they might have been too mean, which didn't go over well with Rolf, but at least he put it out there. The whole scene was so vicious and I didn't like any of them, Hobie, Rolf or Nick. Bullies every one.
It was so sad that next day when Molly asked Hobie who had won the scavenger hunt and he didn't know what she was talking about. She said the one she'd had to give her cat for, so we knew Eugene had come up with that lie so he could get it. It was interesting when Hobie told her Rolf had slept with it and she said she didn't care if Rolf liked her or not because he wasn't cute. Well actually she said "cueshee" which was stupid.
It was cute that she said they thought the rest of the boys would be coming up and they waited at their doors to hit them with pillows. But the first person to come through was Ms. Ivanovitch and they all hit her.
The bird banding was cool, Idk why the kids didn't like it. A bird had gotten caught and the camp was going to teach them how to band the bird with an ID number but no one wanted to even hold the bird. The man gave it to Hobie and he didn't like it. What's wrong with these kids??
Eugene got his chance to shine and I was so glad. The camp had chickens on their nests and Ms. Ivanovitch told them to see if there were any eggs. Some kids were worried that the chickens would attack them, but Eugene just reached right under the bird and got an egg. His grandparents have a farm so he knew what he was doing. Take that. Hobie wondered how someone who could do that needed a baby blanket.
They played Silence, Skits and Singing which wasn't really a game to me. It was a waste of paper. Silence involved laying on the floor and listening to night noises and then Mr. Star made owl noises trying to get an owl to hoot back. Skits had kids doing various things I didn't find entertaining, like people wrapped in toilet paper as mummies and Molly read fortunes in people's shoes. She threw all of the shoes once she does, and when it came time to read Ms. Ivanovitch she said she'd be going on a long trip and sent it flying and no one could find it. That was mean.
The second night Rolf wanted to truck somebody and Eugene said if they did it to him he'd let the air out of their tires. He was no longer afraid and standing up for himself. Hobie recognized that and he knew he was still afraid and wanted to call his parents. He didn't want to go back to the cemetery and make a rubbing to replace Ms. Ivanovitch's that he and Nick had accidentally ripped. I wanted a new main character.
They got their rubbing in the middle of the night, but on the way back to the lodge they encountered a skunk. Nick froze and it was up to Hobie to pull him along out of the way. They ran away but the skunk came after them--in a behavior I am 99.9% certain that no skunk would ever do. They had plenty of time to leave but they stayed there in the ditch and let the skunk come to them, where it stopped and looked at them and then walked off. Skunk goes all the way after humans, isn't afraid of them or them calling out skunk! to Ms. I who found them, and then decided to leave without doing anything. Okay. Sounds like typical wild animal behavior to me.
My annoyance spiked as Hobie realized when he got in bed that he had dropped the rubbing for Ms. I. All that for nothing.
Ms. I knew how homesick Hobie was so she called his parents and found out his dad was in the hospital; he'd had gallstones and had an operation. Once he learned they weren't getting a divorce, he realized it was like the game of telephone they played, where the message ends up changed and nothing like the original. He had fallen for false news. I just couldn't wait for them to realize Ms. I wasn't marrying Mr. Star and get off that kick. It was getting old and it wasn't funny.
Some things became clear at the end. When they got to school a man went over to Ms. I and they held hands, clearly together. He was who she had been looking for when everyone was on the bus and waiting to go. He was also who she'd tried to call at the lodge. Next year she was going to be a 5th grade teacher.
Some things were funny like when the man first got there the kids didn't know who he was, wondered if it was her brother. They had played a game animal, vegetable, mineral on the bus while Hobie slept and the kids told him about it, so he asked the mystery man if he was an animal, vegetable or mineral. Quick sense of humor.
It was funny when the principal went to confirm their lunch outing and Rolf came over to enjoy Hobie's suffering, but she had the idea to have one of his friends come along and he jumped on it. He said they could tell her about trucking.
I also didn't know that Hobie was short for Hobart until pg. 144. Because there wasn’t any background on the characters and their lives and relationships to each other.
His big lesson was that he'd made it 2 nights away from home and only Ms. I had known about him being scared. He told Toby it was a wild trip. Not really. Not at all, really. It didn't live up to any of my expectations. It promised more than it could deliver. I pictured them camping out with cool campfires and ghost stories, outdoor activities and just being cool and funny.
I would have appreciated it if things would have just slowed down. There was constantly something happening and something going on and some downtime would have been nice. There was hardly a chance to get inside Hobie's head, to see what other characters looked like, what he thought about them, what he was thinking and feeling. It was one of the worst storytelling I've ever experienced because there wasn't enough thoughts. It was action, action, action--all the time. Like a roller coaster ride.
It was annoying because a major part of it was kids making assumptions about things based on flimsy evidence and jumping to conclusions, thinking they knew what was going on. Molly thinking Ms. I and Mr. Star were together and she spent the entire book jealous and being mean, and everybody else got in on it. People thought Hobie’s parents were getting divorced based on stupid evidence which was about something else entirely, and Hobie eventually believed it and spent a lot of time worrying about it. I don’t find it amusing when people jump to conclusions and grossly misjudge things and spend the whole time acting out because of something that isn’t even happening. I also have no idea what happened in the first book and what they did to “sink the sub.” I had intended to read that one because I thought this would be so funny, and I already marked it to read, so I guess it’s good there were no spoilers but it was weird not to have any idea what they did to Ms. I. The next looks promising with some romance between Hobie and Molly so I want to read that to see where it goes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 4, 2020
Book Review
I wasn’t a fan of this book. What happens first is they go to the school for a party that is dinosaur themed. It wasn’t a very entertaining beginning because it just seemed like the author was trying to come up with random stuff.
Then what happened was the teacher announced they would be going on a field trip. Then when they went on the field trip they got out and went to their lodges. What they did first was they had to make their beds. Then after that they went to eat supper which nobody liked.
To end it off they did rubbing in a graveyard and then Nick and Hobie sneak out at night. After that they almost get sprayed by a skunk and Ms. Ivanovitch catches them. Then the next morning they leave and they head to the school. After that they go home and that's the end.
I wasn’t a fan of this book. What happens first is they go to the school for a party that is dinosaur themed. It wasn’t a very entertaining beginning because it just seemed like the author was trying to come up with random stuff.
Then what happened was the teacher announced they would be going on a field trip. Then when they went on the field trip they got out and went to their lodges. What they did first was they had to make their beds. Then after that they went to eat supper which nobody liked.
To end it off they did rubbing in a graveyard and then Nick and Hobie sneak out at night. After that they almost get sprayed by a skunk and Ms. Ivanovitch catches them. Then the next morning they leave and they head to the school. After that they go home and that's the end.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 26, 2015
This is the second book in the Hobie Hanson series, and it takes place
a couple months after the events in "Thirteen Ways to Sink a Sub."
Spring has sprung and Mr. Star's fourth grade class is excited. They've raised enough money with their spring carnival that they, along with the other fourth-grade class at Central School, will be able to go on Outdoor Education. Three days, two nights away from home, at Camp Trotter in Wisconsin.
Hobie is excited at first, then begins to have misgivings. He's never been so far away from home without his parents before, much less overnight, and besides that, he is worried about his parents; are they really fighting and on the brink of a divorce as everyone suddenly seems to think?
Gilson's 4B characters are as vivid and recognizable as ever: Molly, the smartest and bossiest kid in the class, who is rather creepily obsessed with Mr. Star; wisecracking Nick, Hobie's best friend; Molly's dimwitted sidekick Lisa; and of course there's Miss Ivanovitch, the sub that 4B tried so hard to sink, who has come along to help chaperone. All the girls in 4B have grown to like Miss Ivanovitch except Molly, who is actually jealous of her seeming friendship with Mr. Star.
Outdoor Ed proves to be much more interesting than regular school. The kids visit a historic cemetery to take rubbings of the tombstones, go out on the lake in a boat to test the water, spend the afternoon on a farm, and learn about bird-banding. They also work on "people puzzles" as Miss Ivanovitch calls them, learning to work together to solve problems, and in the evenings they enjoy campfire singing and storytelling.
Hobie enjoys the activities, but his worry about his parents is always present, and it comes to a head the first night when a powerful thunderstorm knocks out electricity to the lodge. Under cover of darkness, Hobie slips down to the lodge's pay phone and tries to call home collect, but no one answers. Sad and frightened, and embarrassed by what he considers babyish behavior, Hobie starts back to his room, only to literally run into Miss Ivanovitch, who had been hoping to make a phone call of her own. Both are startled to find each other in the dark, and just as startled when the electricity suddenly comes back on. Hobie is unable to hide his unhappiness and confides in Miss Ivanovitch. She is sympathetic but can offer him no concrete reassurance.
On their last night at Camp Trotter, Hobie and Nick sneak out to the cemetery at midnight to do a rubbing of a particuarly beautiful tombstone for Miss Ivanovitch; she had done one the day before but the boys accidentally tore it, and are feeling gilty and want to make a replacement. They get the rubbing done and are pleased with the results, but on the way back to the lodge they encounter a skunk and are forced to hit the ditch. And that's where Miss Ivanovitch finds them; kept awake by the hijinks of all the kids at the lodge, she had gone looking for Hobie to tell him something important, but when she couldn't find him and Nick, she realized where they must have gone.
And what did Miss Ivanovitch want to tell Hobie? She has bent the rules of Outdoor Ed and contacted Hobie's mother, and is thus able to reassure Hobie that he has misunderstood the situation and need not fear any kind of divorce.
What I like about this series is that it feels so authentic. Gilson herself accompanied a class on an Outdoor Ed outing, taking notes all the while, and she effortlessly captures everything about the experience, from the gross camp food to the big thunderstorm to the kids' nocturnal antics. Well done.
a couple months after the events in "Thirteen Ways to Sink a Sub."
Spring has sprung and Mr. Star's fourth grade class is excited. They've raised enough money with their spring carnival that they, along with the other fourth-grade class at Central School, will be able to go on Outdoor Education. Three days, two nights away from home, at Camp Trotter in Wisconsin.
Hobie is excited at first, then begins to have misgivings. He's never been so far away from home without his parents before, much less overnight, and besides that, he is worried about his parents; are they really fighting and on the brink of a divorce as everyone suddenly seems to think?
Gilson's 4B characters are as vivid and recognizable as ever: Molly, the smartest and bossiest kid in the class, who is rather creepily obsessed with Mr. Star; wisecracking Nick, Hobie's best friend; Molly's dimwitted sidekick Lisa; and of course there's Miss Ivanovitch, the sub that 4B tried so hard to sink, who has come along to help chaperone. All the girls in 4B have grown to like Miss Ivanovitch except Molly, who is actually jealous of her seeming friendship with Mr. Star.
Outdoor Ed proves to be much more interesting than regular school. The kids visit a historic cemetery to take rubbings of the tombstones, go out on the lake in a boat to test the water, spend the afternoon on a farm, and learn about bird-banding. They also work on "people puzzles" as Miss Ivanovitch calls them, learning to work together to solve problems, and in the evenings they enjoy campfire singing and storytelling.
Hobie enjoys the activities, but his worry about his parents is always present, and it comes to a head the first night when a powerful thunderstorm knocks out electricity to the lodge. Under cover of darkness, Hobie slips down to the lodge's pay phone and tries to call home collect, but no one answers. Sad and frightened, and embarrassed by what he considers babyish behavior, Hobie starts back to his room, only to literally run into Miss Ivanovitch, who had been hoping to make a phone call of her own. Both are startled to find each other in the dark, and just as startled when the electricity suddenly comes back on. Hobie is unable to hide his unhappiness and confides in Miss Ivanovitch. She is sympathetic but can offer him no concrete reassurance.
On their last night at Camp Trotter, Hobie and Nick sneak out to the cemetery at midnight to do a rubbing of a particuarly beautiful tombstone for Miss Ivanovitch; she had done one the day before but the boys accidentally tore it, and are feeling gilty and want to make a replacement. They get the rubbing done and are pleased with the results, but on the way back to the lodge they encounter a skunk and are forced to hit the ditch. And that's where Miss Ivanovitch finds them; kept awake by the hijinks of all the kids at the lodge, she had gone looking for Hobie to tell him something important, but when she couldn't find him and Nick, she realized where they must have gone.
And what did Miss Ivanovitch want to tell Hobie? She has bent the rules of Outdoor Ed and contacted Hobie's mother, and is thus able to reassure Hobie that he has misunderstood the situation and need not fear any kind of divorce.
What I like about this series is that it feels so authentic. Gilson herself accompanied a class on an Outdoor Ed outing, taking notes all the while, and she effortlessly captures everything about the experience, from the gross camp food to the big thunderstorm to the kids' nocturnal antics. Well done.
February 21, 2012
I don't really remember the plot of this book, but the cover image hits me right in the memory place.
The one thing I think I remember about this book is that
The one thing I think I remember about this book is that
July 18, 2012
I loved this book as a kid and was tickled to find it available on Kindle. Fast reread and I'm loving it all over again. Really captures sleepaway adventures as a kid - the stomach churning fear and excitement all at once.
May 6, 2009
ms. uhler read it to us before outdoor ed in fourth grade at mckenzie! the best school ever! this book was writen by a wilmette mom about outdoor ed
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