Book Review: Man-Eater by Justin D'Ath

Man-Eater
by Justin D'Ath
Extreme Adventures

Kane Miller
ISBN-10: 1-61067-011-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-61067-011-1
Publication Date: March, 2011
List Price: $5.99

Review: Imagine being stuck in Africa and forced to face killer hippos, elephants, crocodiles, ivory hunters, and a man-eating leopard. For half the time your only companion is a ten-year-old boy with a spear, otherwise you are alone. You get squirted in the eye with snake venom and you can barely see. What would you do in a situation like this? This is all Man-Eater is about. Man-Eater, written by Justin D'Ath, is the sixth book in the Extreme Adventures series. Sam Fox is in Africa for a youth conference and when his bus leaves him in the wild with an angry elephant, things go wrong. This is when all of the action begins in this fiction adventure story.

After getting left behind by the bus to face an angry elephant, Sam crawls down in a hole to protect himself from the elephant. This is where he gets squirted in the eye with venom from a snake and almost completely loses his vision. This becomes a constant problem for Sam, besides him being alone in the wild in Africa. Sam hears a car driving down the road but soon realizes that these men are Ivory Hunters and illegally hunt elephants for their tusks. They also leave Sam behind, and he soon finds a river to clean his eyes out, knowing hyenas are watching him down by the road. Then, after thoroughly cleaning his eyes, he sees the hippos. Escaping the hippos is how he runs into the crocodile. After he escapes the crocodile, he finds two Masai brothers that treat his eye and run a farm by themselves. One of the brothers, Olki, says he will go with Sam to the village and get his eye cured if the wants to keep his vision. The only problem is to get to the village, you need to go through the jungle. When in the jungle, Sam and Olki face many creatures and eventually become heroes.

I love Man-Eater. What I like about this book is as quickly as in the fourth paragraph action and problems start stirring up. This means the reader doesn't need to read a chapter all about the character or background before getting to the action. Also, Man-Eater includes multiple facts about the animals Sam goes against in the text. " It was a honey badger… they are the meanest animals in the world. Even though they're no bigger than corgis, honey badgers have been known to chase lions from their kills." I love this because not only am I reading a fiction adventure story, but I'm also learning some information from it. Next, I love the creative solutions the author thought of to get Sam out of trouble. I would never have thought of doing what Sam does for a solution to some of the situations. This is a fantastic book that anyone would enjoy reading.

I rate Man-Eater with five stars.

Review written by Abigail (6th grade student).

We would like to thank Kane Miller for providing a copy of Man-Eater for this review.

Have you read Man-Eater? How would you rate it?