Review: "Danger on Midnight River" by Gary Paulsen

Danger on Midnight River by Gary Paulsen
Published 1995
★★★

Oh gosh, okay. I've been going through a...not really a Gary Paulsen phase, but a childhood-rereads phase, and I'm in the Gary Paulsen phase of my childhood-rereads phase. I think we must have owned a copy of this book—I know I read it multiple times, and some parts (eating pine cones warmed by a fire) I remembered pretty clearly.

Spoilers ahead. But also, the book is 30 years old, so chances are good that if you're on this page you too have read the book before.

As a kids' book I still think this is pretty great. It's lively, and it's a story where not only does the underdog prove his worth, but the bullies voluntarily (eventually) come to their senses. Plus, you never know; maybe one of these days I'll get lost on a mountain and survive by eating pine cones, and I'll have this book to thank for it.

But I reread it as an adult. And with an adult's eyes, I have some questions. Like: When Daniel crawls out of the van, he doesn't think for a second about the other boys? He gets to the bank and starts a fire and starts to dry out his clothes...and only gives the others (dead or alive) a second thought when he hears voices. (And even then he takes the time to build up his fire before going to check it out.) Granted, Daniel owes the other boys nothing (they've been consistently terrible to him), but my gosh.

The number of perils these kids face is wild. In addition to their van crashing and the driver dying (Paulsen really liked to kill off the adults, didn't he?), one of the boys is trapped and almost drowns. The boys split up (TERRIBLE DECISION, CHILDREN; LEARN FROM THIS), and the three of them who are not Daniel immediately get lost, get sprayed by a skunk, and spend a miserable night in the rain...and then one of them falls off a cliff and breaks his leg. Daniel shows up just in time to save the day, of course, and performs a heroic and improbable rescue with some belts. (I've read my fair share of wilderness rescue memoir, and I rather suspect that a real-life version of this would have the injured kid screaming quite a bit more rather than just the occasional wince.) And if that's not enough, there's still a rabid dog and another near-drowning to keep the boys on their toes.

Again, this is a kids' book. The fact pace makes a certain amount of sense, and you can do away with occasional logic. But as an adult I'm bad at doing away with logic (well, except when I'm very good at doing away with logic, but this is not one of those times), so here we are. When Daniel insists that they boil their water before drinking it, how? Like, sensible, I'm not complaining, but... Earlier in the book we see that he's found "a large rock with a hollowed-out center", and somehow if there's a small fire nearby this will boil (would love to test this in real life—can you boil water by just putting it next to a fire, not above one? How big a fire is required to boil how much water?). But that was ages ago in the book, and even if they found that rock again (he hasn't been lugging it around), how did they move enough water from the river to the rock that they could drink boiled water "until they thought they would burst"?

I miss being a kid and not questioning these things.

I will note that earlier in the book Daniel suggests that they have three options—stay put and light a signal fire, try to continue on the road they were going on, or try to cross the river again and go back the way they came. The other three boys want to continue on the unknown road, and Daniel wants to go back the way they came. And I just don't know what to make of this. Daniel estimates that they went maybe a hundred miles in the wrong direction and took random turns along the way, so I can't possibly imagine that he thinks they'll happen upon the right turns and so on. I suppose he's hoping they'll get onto a bigger road and run into someone. But I can't help but think that the smarter thing to do would be to start with a signal fire—Daniel's proven himself perfectly capable of starting that fire and keeping all four boys fed and watered, and they'd have a lot fewer chances to fall off cliffs and almost drown if they just stayed put and built a smoky fire.

Oh well. It was fun, anyway. Ooh, one of these days I'll have to find that Sweet Valley High book where there's an earthquake and Jessica tries (and fails) to use her belt to rescue someone who's fallen down a chasm in the earth...