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Title: The Goats
ISBN: 0374425752
Author:
Publicate Date: 1990-07-01
Publish: 1990-07-01
List Price: $6.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $2.45
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $6.95
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Painful, Stirring, and Redemptive
Stranded naked on "Goat Island" at summer camp, Howie and Laura wrestle with humiliation and rage. They've been targeted as the camp "goats" - the unpopular kids who just don't "get it." They decide to extract revenge, wondering "[w]hat if we weren't here when they came back?" Howie and Laura swim to shore and disappear into the woods. Working together, they find food, clothes, money, and manage to stay one step ahead of the law.
With an exciting, well-designed plot, Brock Cole convincingly evokes the vulnerability, tension, excitement, and high stakes of being 13 in his young adult novel, "The Goats" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1987). The reader relives the embarrassment over puberty; stirring sexual curiosity; alternating feelings of invincibility and impotence, bravado and fear; the acute interest in morality; the pain of alienation; and the enormous potential for cruelty and compassion in other young people. While interludes narrated from Laura' mother's viewpoint intrude on the reader's adventure with Howie and Laura, they also reinforce and normalize teenagers' passionate but mercurial feelings toward their parents, swinging from resentment to adoration, and rejection to love.
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2: This book is sort of completely and utterly awful.
I picked up this book on the assumption that because something has been challenged, it will probably be good. After all, what's the point of banning an awful book?
Unfortunately, this was not the case. I read Amazon reviews that ranged from 'BEST BOOK EVAR!!' to 'O NOES NUDITY :(!', but I was not prepared for something that is an excellent idea, but so poorly executed.
I'm sad to say that my first Amazon review is a negative one: I don't judge books harshly and I rarely dislike anything I read. But I wouldn't wish this book on anyone. It's supposed to be the touching story of outcasts who bind together and find strength in one another after being made the sacrificial goats of their camp, but it falls miles short of that goal, being boring, poorly-written, and dated. There are moments that are almost decent, but they are brought down by repetitive writing in painful need of good editing. It's very disappointing; after reading Amazon reviews about how beautiful this book was, I was sad to discover what it actually is: a clunkily-written and boring book when I was expecting a lyrical and interesting one.
I should state, though, that I don't think there was any inappropriate subject matter in the book. It seems that adults sometimes forget about the curiosity that comes along with puberty. Are the characters in this book oversexed? Far, far from it.
Unfortunately, neither are they well-written.
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3: Outwardly Weak Find Inner Strength
Brock Cole's THE GOATS is a tastefully done (considering the opening circumstances) tale of how two kids at camp -- singled out by other kids for a heartless prank -- find inner strength in each other and in their run from authority. Separately left naked on Goat Island, Howie and Laura find each other and overcome their embarrassment and fear to make a run for it (well, after a little bit of swimming, of course).
Originally driven by fear of the offending kids returning for further pranks at their expense, they wind up stealing so they can eat and have clothes. They get better at it and more confident because of it, all along swearing they will "pay back" the people they need to "permanently borrow" things from.
This short novel picks up when they herd on to a bus of inner city kids heading out to a camp of their own in the wilderness. Laura and Howie are taken under the wing of streetwise Calvin and mother hen Tiwanda. There's this creepy Pardoe kid, too, who gives our runaway goats one of many creepy scares during their flight. Still, for a cameo, the appearances of the black kids who protect Laura and Howie stands out as a highpoint in the middle of the novel.
There are shades of the Garden of Eden here in all the spectacular nature (even the island where, like Adam and Eve, they are left naked with their embarrassment but without a fig leaf), and as the two get chased due to the mounting mini-crime spree, Howie begins to yearn for a life in the woods where he and Laura can live "like Indians" away from people and their troubles.
Each with parental issues troubling their pasts, Laura and Howie begin to sense the first tendrils of adulthood and confidence in this novel. It is a subtle, strong performance overall -- quiet, but of substance.
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4: The Goats
By:Alex premo
This is one of the best books I have ever read. It starts out really strange. These kids are at camp and they take a boat to get wood on an Island but the boys take all of Howie's clothes and leave him on the Island. But once I kept reading it started making sense. I like this book because of how exciting it is. I never knew what was going to happen next.
I think that Brock Cole did a good job thinking of this book and writing The Goats. Once you are about one-fourth way through the book you will realize why the title is called The Goats. The only thing that I did not like about the book was the end. It didn't make any sense at all. I was reading and it just ended. I hope that Brock Cole writes a sequel to this book.
The book is based around a girl named Laura Golden that is thirteen years old that ran away from the Island with a boy named Howie. They keep calling her mom and trying to get her mom to come get them. Well if you want to find out more, you are going to have to read this sweet book.
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5: Parental warning
If I could give zero stars, The Goats earned it. I would caution any adult to think twice before purchasing this book for a child. I couldn't believe this book was so highly acclaimed here at amazon. My eleven year old daughter brought this book home from her classroom library. What she read made her very uncomfortable. It embarrassed her. I read it and was surprised that Broc Cole thought his young readers needed a graphically descriptive passage about the nude body of his main character, Laura, by his other main character, Howie. I am surprised any adult that read this book could think it is a wonderful adventure story of overcoming obstacles to share with a young person. I can think of ten books that would do a better job without making a young reader uncomfortable.
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