Skip to main content

BEAST OF CRETACEA by Todd Strasser


copyright date: October 2015
primarily marketed for: young adults (6th grade and up)


The Beast of Cretacea by Todd Strasser is just the book the world needed.  Strasser’s futuristic retelling of Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick, is a dystopian adventure story that is filled with heart. 

The story opens with protagonist, Ishmael, waking up on a ship on Cretacea after being transported from Earth, which is covered by the Shroud and becoming a less and less viable home for humans.  Ishmael hopes to earn enough money hunting sea creatures called terrafins to pay the way for his foster parents and brother to join him. 

Readers get details about Ishmael’s past in chapters that flashback to his life on Earth.  These chapters develop Ishmael’s relationship with his foster family and solidify our understanding of his motivation to be successful aboard the ship. 

However, there is much more to Ishmael than his past.  He forms strong bonds with his fellow new arrivals, each having a compelling story of his/her own, and we immediately care about the fate of each and every one of Ishmael’s companions. 

When the ship’s captain—Captain Ahab—refuses to allow his crew to spend time hunting easy prey in favor of tracking and capturing an enormous white terrafin to which he previously suffered a great loss, Ishmael has to make decisions for himself, his companions, and his far away family. 

My love of this book—its unique setting, its adventurous men vs sea creature plot, and its man vs nature conflict—came as a total surprise to me.  I tend to favor realistic fiction over science fiction, classics, and dystopian literature.  The heart of the characters Strasser has created and artfully developed in Beast of Cretacea, and his thoughtful, provocative theme (call to action, perhaps?) won me over completely. 

Get your hands on this book—now. 



Labels:

Comments

  1. Todd StrasserFebruary 17, 2016 at 8:14 AM

    Thank you, Christy!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 19, 2016 at 5:58 PM

    The mystical way you describe the ocean reminds me of your book talk on 'Greyson'. The ocean gives me anxiety in the best way. There's a fear in it's vast depths and power, but you can't help but stand in awe of it. I cannot wait to get my hands on this book!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I HUNT KILLERS by Barry Lyga

copyright date: April 2012 primarily marketed for: young adults (high school) I’m just going to put this out there:  I like books about death.  I didn’t know this about myself as a reader until my students this year pointed out how many of the books I booktalk (basically all of them) involve someone who died or someone who is dying. I am not sure if that is just a me thing, or if that is a common thread in books since it is such a major part of life and conflict.  I’d like to think it is the latter. At any rate, I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga , is obviously my kind of book—it is quality literature with sophisticated vocabulary, and it is about death.  Jasper Dent, known as Jazz, is a teenager who is struggling to overcome the odds, to say the least.  His father, Billy Cornelius Dent, is the most infamous serial killer, with victims totaling triple digits.  Since his father’s arrest, Jazz has had to care for his grandmother ...
2 comments
Read more

JAKE AND LILY by Jerry Spinelli

copyright date: May 2012 primarily marketed for: intermediate readers (8 and up) This is another book for younger readers.   So, although the time you spend actually reading Jake and Lily by Jerry Spinelli won’t be long, the time this story spends traveling around in your heart will be immeasurable. Spinelli is a master at getting straight to the heart of what keeps people from accepting one another: differences.   Through the story of young twins Jake and Lily, he tells a story of tolerance, acceptance, and ultimately friendship.   Jake and Lily have a very special relationship.   They are able to connect with one another through dreams and across distances.   In fact, as they write their stories for us in alternating chapters, they don’t even need to read to know what they other has written.   Conflict settles into their lives when growing up threatens to come between them.   As Jake begins to spend more time with a g...
3 comments
Read more

DR. BIRD’S ADVICE FOR SAD POETS by Evan Roskos

copyright date: March 2013 primarily marketed for: young adults (high school) Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos begins “I yawp…” and ends, “Yawp!”   And if that isn’t enough to love, the middle is filled with quotes from Walt Whitman scattered amongst wise words from a pigeon therapist, and a story that is both genuinely funny and heartachingly real.   It is one of those stories that seems as if it was written simply for my own delight, but perhaps you, too, will fall in love with it. James is a teenager who suffers from anxiety attacks and a depression that is possibly part of bipolar disorder, though no official diagnosis is named in the book.   His older sister was recently kicked out of the house by his emotionally detached parents after she is expelled from school for an outburst that resulted in a fight.   As a means of coping with his mental state and the instability in his home life, James invents a pigeon ...
2 comments
Read more