Night of the Howling Dogs
Night of the Howling Dogs
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Random House
Annotation: In 1975, eleven Boy Scouts, their leaders, and some new friends camping at Halape, Hawaii, find their survival skills put to the test when a massive earthquake strikes, followed by a tsunami.
 
Reviews: 6
Catalog Number: #19002
Format: Perma-Bound Edition
Special Formats: Inventory Sale Inventory Sale
Publisher: Random House
Copyright Date: 2007
Edition Date: 2009 Release Date: 03/24/09
Pages: 191 pages
ISBN: Publisher: 0-440-23839-0 Perma-Bound: 0-605-15191-1
ISBN 13: Publisher: 978-0-440-23839-3 Perma-Bound: 978-0-605-15191-8
Dewey: Fic
LCCN: 2007007054
Dimensions: 18 cm.
Language: English
Reviews:
Starred Review ALA Booklist (Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2007)

Starred Review Senior patrol leader of his Hilo, Hawaii, scout troop, eighth-grader Dylan looks forward to camping on the coast in the shadow of a volcano. But when he hears that Louie, a tough, troubled kid, will be joining the scouts on the trip, Dylan remembers when their paths crossed once before, and his anticipation turns to dread. Dylan's sense of foreboding is justified tenfold. After a difficult trek to their campsite, an earthquake jolts the ground and shakes boulders down from the cliff. Then a tsunami engulfs the area. Even in the midst of disaster, Dylan finds that support can come from unexpected directions. A strong sense of place informs the plot as well as the setting of this convincing story. In an unusually compelling author's note, Salisbury writes of camping on the site of the 1975 natural disaster at Halape with his cousin, who lived through it as a Boy Scout. Inspired by that earthquake and tsunami, this vivid adventure soon strips away every vestige of normality, leaving characters dependent on their wits, their skills, and the mysterious spirits of land and sea for their survival. Salisbury weaves Hawaiian legend into the modern-day narrative to create a haunting, unusual novel that will practically booktalk itself.

Kirkus Reviews

When Dylan's Boy Scout troop—eight Scouts and two adult leaders—hikes on the Big Island of Hawaii, down into the beautiful land by the ancient lava flow and the ocean, they must face the grueling heat, wasps, roaches, sharks, wild dogs and rumors of ghosts. But when a catastrophic earthquake hits, followed by a wall of water churned up by a tsunami, mere survival becomes their only goal. This good, old-fashioned survival tale based on a true event of November 29, 1975, is leisurely paced for the first half of the novel. Characters and setting are expertly developed, as is the conflict between Dylan and Louie Domingo—two characters at odds who must work together during the crisis and appreciate each other's strengths. When the quake hits, the pace of the prose matches the action with short, verb-driven sentences, lively dialogue and prolific exclamation points. Given the ordeal, the tale ends satisfactorily, with Dylan and Louie's grudging acceptance of each other and Dylan's new-found relationship with his father. Like any good survival story, this will make readers ponder what they would do when survival is on the line. A sure-fire literary thriller. (author's note) (Fiction. 9-12)

School Library Journal

Gr 5-9-While camping out on the south flank of Kilauea, Dylan endures taunts and threats from older, glowering Louie, newest member of his Boy Scout troop from Hilo and with whom he has had a previous encounter. A campfire ghost story sets a suspenseful mood, which is heightened by the suggestion of some paniolos-Hawaiian cowboys who have camped out nearby-that the Goddess Pele, in the form of a dog Dylan has repeatedly seen, foretells trouble to come. That night there's an earthquake, then a bigger one. As the boys struggle to regain their senses, they are struck by a tsunami. Louie and Dylan, relatively uninjured, work together to find and help the others. Dylan swims out to rescue their dazed and injured scoutmaster and Sam, who desperately clings to a small rubber air mattress. Louie and Dylan undertake an arduous hike along the shore to obtain help. Spotted by a Coast Guard helicopter, the troop is rescued. Dylan and Louie may not have become best friends, but they've reached an appreciation of each others' strengths. An author's note explains the details of the story that are based on true events. Like Ivy Ruckman's No Way Out (HarperCollins, 1989), Salisbury's tale of courage, strength, and survival is appealing, exciting, and insightful.-Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Junior High School, Iowa City, IA Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Voice of Youth Advocates

Eighth grade Boy Scouts and best friends Dylan and Casey are excited about their weekend camping trip to Halape, a remote beach campground at the foot of the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. At first, their only concern is the inclusion of Louie Domingo, a tough kid from the wrong side of town brought along by the scoutmaster, Casey's father. But during the hot, rugged hike to the campsite and again each evening, the eerie howling of a pair of feral dogs, one white and one dark, unsettles the friends even more than Louie's hostile attitude. A Hawaiian ranch hand who visits the campsite tells the boys that the volcano goddess Pele often appears in the guise of a white dog as a warning before the next eruption of the active volcano Kilauea. The scouts are skeptical, but that night an offshore eruption triggers a tsunami that threatens their lives and forces Dylan to team up with Louie to try to rescue several of their scattered and injured companions. Based on an actual event experienced by the author's cousin in 1975 (as described in a lengthy author's note), this survival adventure is dynamically integrated into one of those beautiful but potentially deadly Hawaiian settings for which Salisbury's stories are renowned. The tsunami that roars over the campers dramatizes the power of natural forces to overwhelm mundane human concerns. Salisbury skillfully weaves together the elements of scouting, male bonding, outdoor adventure, and natural disaster in a spectacular setting.-Walter Hogan.

Word Count: 38,094
Reading Level: 3.5
Interest Level: 3-6
Accelerated Reader: reading level: 3.5 / points: 5.0 / quiz: 116706 / grade: Middle Grades
Reading Counts!: reading level:3.2 / points:11.0 / quiz:Q41688
Lexile: 530L

At 3:20 in the morning I woke and rode my bike down the old coast road to Casey Bellows's house. I followed the broken white line in the middle of the road, ghostly gray under the stars. Every now and then somebody's yard light blinked from the jungle, but mostly it was black as tar. The only living thing I saw was a toad that sprang out and leaped across the road. Scared the spit out of me.
By 3:45 I stood with Casey by the old Ford van in his yard, our camping gear strewn around us in the yellow glow from the garage. We both wore T-shirts, shorts, and hiking boots strong enough to take a beating. My boots were new, and stiff. I hoped they wouldn't give me blisters.
I was wide awake now, and could feel the anticipation jumping inside me. This time tomorrow we'd be sleeping under a volcano in a place so remote even rats had no business going there.
I looked east, out toward the black ocean across the coast road. No hint of dawn. "Jeese," I said, wiping the back of my neck. "Already I'm sweating."
Casey grunted, securing his sleeping bag to his backpack. "Wait till you feel the heat where we're going . . . you'll wish you were dead."
"You always come up with just the right thing to say, Case."
"That's why I'm here, bro."
Casey was my shaggy-haired best friend, a redhead with freckles and a raspy voice. He wasn't big, but he was strong. He played eighth-grade football with the hunt-and-kill mind of a Cro-Magnon, and I felt sorry for anyone who had to face him.
I took off my glasses. For this trip I'd tied nylon fishing line to the stems and made a cord so that if my glasses fell off I wouldn't lose them. Without them everything looked blurry.
"Where's your dad?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.
"Making coffee." Casey picked up his mess kit and checked to see if everything was in it.
My dad was a few thousand miles away. He was supposed to be flying in tomorrow or the next day from a job that had ended in Alaska. He was a big-ship skipper and took freighters all across the world, which meant he was away a lot. But when he was home he was on me like a four-star general. We got along okay, I guess, but it took him a few days to get out of his big-boat-boss mode. He wasn't a fan of my spending time with the Scout troop because he wanted me home helping Mom while he was away. But I liked Scouts, and was learning good things, and I wanted him to be proud of that.
"Hey, Dylan," Casey said. "We're packing the van, remember?"
I blinked and put my glasses back on. "Yeah, sorry."
"So," Casey said, his hair sprouting up like a pineapple top. "Take both our tents or share one?"
"Why take two?"
"Yeah. Mine's bigger."
"Yours, then. Hey . . . you need to rake that weed patch on your head."
He grinned and pulled his camo boonie hat out of his back pocket and slapped it on. "That help?"
"Not really. Ugly is ugly, ah?"
Casey threw his mess kit at me. I ducked. "Watch your back while you sleeping, punk," he said. "Anyway, you just jealous 'cause I got the ladies'-man hair, right? They like red, you know, not that rotten-banana color you got."
I laughed. "That's good, that's good."
"We aim to please."
He tugged his boonie hat closer to his head. It used to belong to his dad, a former U.S. marine. "Still a marine," Mr. Bellows always corrected us. "Once a marine, always a marine, and don't you forget it." Casey wore that hat everywhere--school, Scouts, church, even to my cousin's wedding, though my mom snatched it off his head and stuffed it into her purse. Casey was going to be a marine, too. "Special Operations," he said. "Only real men survive." I'd known Casey all my life and knew he could do it.
We piled our gear in the middle of the van, leaving room to sit around the edges.
"Help me with the quartermaster box," Casey said, heading into the garage. "Weighs a ton." The box was the size of a giant cooler and held our big cookstove, lanterns, cooking gear, first-aid kit, ropes, knives, U.S. Army foldable shovels, and other tools. "Grab that end."
"Stand down, shrimp," I said. "I'll carry it by myself."
"Be my guest."
It was heavy, but I was taller than Casey and I could get my arms around it better than he could. I was used to lifting because we were working out with a weight set in my garage, trying to bulk up for high school football. But we were only eighth graders and still had a long way to go.
I lugged the box to the van and shoved it in, wondering how we'd fit into that shoe box on wheels with all the gear we had. There'd be eight Scouts, two adult leaders, and a driver.
We waited in the yard for Mr. Bellows, who was our scoutmaster. Casey dropped to the grass and started doing push-ups, grunting. "Five, six, seven--"
"What's taking your dad so long?"
"Coffee . . . nine, ten . . . gotta have it. You know . . . cops." Mr. Bellows was a Hilo Police Department detective.
Casey fell to the grass.
"How many?" I said.
"Twenty. . . . Usually do fifty . . . every morning."
"You're an animal."
"Thank you."
Mr. Bellows opened the door from the kitchen and ducked into the garage. He eased the door shut and winked. "Don't want to wake the boss."
"No, sir, we sure don't," Casey said. He stood and slapped bits of grass and dirt off his hands.
Mr. Bellows often referred to Mrs. Bellows as the boss, as though she ruled the house and if we woke her she'd come out with a stick. But I knew he was kidding. She was one of the nicest people I'd ever met, and always treated me like her own son. Mr. Bellows did, too.
Mr. Bellows still looked like a marine, clean, lean, and fit as a boot-camp drill sergeant. He measured six foot one the day all of us in the troop marked our height on the wall in Casey's garage. He had red hair like Casey, but his was whitewalled, military style. On the inside of his right forearm was a four-inch tattoo: Semper Fidelis. "Got that before I got my brain," he'd said. "But I like what it says, Always Faithful."
He raised his coffee cup and silver thermos. "I'm a whole man now. You boys ready?"
"Just waiting for you, old man," Casey said.
Mr. Bellows grunted and glanced around, saw that we'd packed everything. "Excellent. Let's roll!"


 



Excerpted from Night of the Howling Dogs by Graham Salisbury
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

DYLAN'S SCOUT TROOP goes camping in Halape, a remote spot below the volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. The only thing wrong with the weekend on a beautiful, peaceful beach is Louie, a tough older boy. Louie and Dylan just can't get along.That night an earthquake rocks the camp, and then a wave rushes in, sweeping everyone and everything before it. Dylan and Louie must team up on a dangerous rescue mission. The next hours are an amazing story of survival and the true meaning of leadership.


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