"Rainbow" (rainbeaux)
10/18/2019 at 11:44 • Filed to: None
3
14|
"Rainbow" (rainbeaux)
10/18/2019 at 11:44 • Filed to: None | 3
| 14 |
If you never read “The Car” by Gary Paulsen, you missed out in your late childhood. It’s easily my favorite young adult novel. It follows the story of a kid whose parents both independently decide to abandon the other on the same day, leaving him alone with his dad’s unfinished kit car. He builds it the rest of the way and sets off on a mission to drive across the country to his uncle’s house. He meets two older men along the way and they join him to keep him safe, and from that point it’s like a Huck- Finn-style collection of short adventures. And then comes the part I can’t stand.... it ends while he’s still only partway through his journey. He never reaches his uncle’s house. There’s no sequel to the book. It just ends while he and his friends are driving through the mountains. It’s been at least 12 years since I read it, and I still want closure.
slipperysallylikespenguins
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 11:54 |
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Never heard of that one, I grew up with “Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen though.
If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 11:55 |
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Better than that scene in Hatchet with the underwater dead pilot.
This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja:
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 12:04 |
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Sometimes in life it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.
facw
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 12:04 |
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Think I only read Hatchet and Dogsong.
Aremmes
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 12:06 |
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Kit cars are never finished, so it's only appropriate that the novel doesn't actually finish either.
CobraJoe
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 12:07 |
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I read it, but I don’t remember it very well.
But maybe the ending was intentionally vague? I take it as the kid found his home as a wanderer in the car he built, knowing he can take hold of his own fate instead of trusting an adult to tell him what to do .
vicali
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 12:10 |
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I read Hatchet, then I started Cujo and Christine.. I had an older brother helping with my book selection..
nerd_racing
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 12:20 |
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hatchet, the rifle, and one other I can’t remember were both Gary Paulsen novels I enjoyed. The car sounds like a bummer.
Thomas Donohue
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 12:39 |
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The second half of the story is contained in the song “Red Barchetta”
Longtime Lurker
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 14:33 |
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Supercharged Pinto motor!
Pixel
> Rainbow
10/18/2019 at 16:13 |
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I read that ages ago and didn’t think about it for years. It happened to pop into my mind a week ago, and here it is being discussed on oppo. Weird.
Nauraushaun
> slipperysallylikespenguins
10/18/2019 at 18:53 |
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Yesss
Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious
> If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
10/19/2019 at 00:27 |
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That's the part that made Hatchet "real" to me. Like, Paulsen didn't forget the fact that he was still down there, that the fish had been working on him, and the raw, visceral reaction that a young teen would have when seeing that. I read it in sixth grade and was wowed by it.
Variance
> Rainbow
10/19/2019 at 10:20 |
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Genuinely didn’t know that Gary Paulsen wrote anything other than the Hatchet trilogy.