The Second Chance of Benjamin Waterfalls by James Bird. Unabridged e-audio book, ~7 hours. Read by Christopher Salazar. Dreamscape Media, April, 2022. 9781666527629. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from public library.)
Happy Monday! How's your summer going? The weekend's weather sure was a gift. Hot, but dry and nicely breezy. I got a lot of walking and yard work done.
Middle Grade Monday features The Second Chance of Benjamin Waterfalls by James Bird. Benjamin Waterfalls is one angry teen. His dad left the family seven years earlier, when Benny was six. He shoplifts and has a side hustle selling his stolen goods at school. Now he's angry with himself because he has been caught shoplifting, of all things, a stuffed bear. He has no idea what possessed him and now he's before a judge he's seen before and the judge is not happy that he's back. It seems that Benny is headed to juvie, but his mother steps in with the idea of sending Benny to live in Grand Portage with his dad on the Ojibwe reservation and attend a tribal boot camp. Benny would almost rather go to boot camp than spend any time with his dad.
This thoughtful novel of redemption contains some interesting characters, each flawed in their own way. The boot camp isn't at all what Benny was expecting and he comes to appreciate the Ojibwe way of life and reconnects with his culture. Ojibwe words and phrases are sprinkled throughout as are customs and traditions.
But wait, you may be wondering about that second person on the cover. Who is that masked girl? Why does no one seem bothered by the fact that she never takes it off? Read the book to find out. By that, I recommend that you read with your eyes instead of with your ears, as I did.
Regular readers of this blog know that my pet peeve with audiobooks has to do with adult readers reading first-person narratives of kids. Women can generally pull it off, but very few men can. While this narrator seemed comfortable pronouncing the Ojibwa words, I felt he was trying too hard to sound like a sarcastic kid. It came off over-the-top to me.
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