Bearwalker (review)

There is an old Mohawk legend of a young boy who saves his tribe from a man who has taken on the power of a bear, becoming both man and beast, a bearwalker. Baron Braun loves that legend, both because he himself is Mohawk and because, as the shortest member of his eighth-grade class, he's drawn to a tale where the smallest guy becomes the hero. When the whole class goes to spend a week in the Adirondacks, Baron knows he'll have to deal with bullies, but his distaste for the trip changes to deep foreboding when he meets the man called Walker White Bear. Things begin to go wrong at the camp from the start, with Baron discovering that unscrupulous relatives are trying to sabotage the aging owners' intentions of making the location a nature preserve; things go from bad to worse when people start to disappear. Bruchac spins a striking story, filled with interesting information about bears, chilling moments around the campfire, and life-or-death chase scenes through the forest. He is less successful, though, when he hammers readers with phrases or story connections they would have been unlikely to forget in the first place, and he repeatedly makes Baron a little too wise for his years. In spite of these shortcomings, readers will return again and again to this adventure tale, and it offers plenty of potential for book discussions about other stories wherein the littlest one saves the day. Final illustrations not seen.