A few weeks ago I found I nice little young-adult pulp called Downriver by Will Hobbs and asked, kinda rhetorically, who is Will Hobbs? Whoever he is, here he is again, with Down the Yukon. This one’s a hardback, first edition even, and as such it’s got a jacket, and so a back-flap author blurb:
Will Hobbs is the award-winning author of eleven previous novels for young readers, including FAR NORTH, GHOST CANOE, THE MAZE, and JASON’S GOLD, to which DOWN THE YUKON is a sequel. Seven of his books have been chosen by the American Library Asociation as Best Books for Young Adults. In addition to his novels, Will has published two picture books for younger children, BEARDREAM and HOWLING HILL.
The adventures in JASON’S GOLD and DOWN THE YUKON were inspired by the author’s childhood in Alaska, his travels in the north, and extensive research into the Klondike gold rush days.
A graduate of Stanford University, Will lives in the mountains near Durango, Colorado, with his wife Jean.
Now we know. He’s even got a website.
I bought this for the cover. It has perhaps not escaped notice that I’ve got a thing about rivers, and especially about canoeing. These co-ed campers are going to be in real trouble when they get sucked up under that log, and that dog isn’t helping at all, but they’re showing remarkably good form (though not, apparently, for the maneuver they ought to be attempting), especially for a couple of paddlers better dressed for baling hay than running rapids. Remember, kids: cotton kills!
Curiously enough, at the same Goodwill, on the same day, I found Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, by Stephen E. Ambrose, and what should be on the cover but a canoe paddled through heavy water by two guys who clearly know what they’re doing? The drawing looks remarkably like a photograph of famous Canadian father-son paddling team Bill and Paul Mason, but that must be true coincidence, because according to the table of contents there’s nothing about the Masons in this book on male friendships.
(Though the canoeing conceit is certainly appropriate to male friendships, as opposed to the hetero romantic sort; there’s a reason tandem canoes are called “divorce boats.”)
Comrades also resonates personally, if only because my canoeing buddy Matt in Missoula and his half-dozen brothers are originally from Wisconsin, like the 3-brother Ambrose clan, and learning to canoe with your dad and brothers is apparently the sort of thing they do a lot of in Wisconsin.
It’s a nice, wholesome pastime, like drinking beer and chopping wood, that well prepares a boy for a lifetime of friendship, brotherhood and fatherhood.
Oh, yeah, and wringing their panties over Brett Favre.
Add to your list of out-of-print must-have canoe books – a children’s classic called “Paddle-To-The-Sea.” Probably dates from the late 40s or early 50s – I read it in grade school in the early 60s. Beautiful 10×14″ hardcover, wonderful illustrations, about a Native American boy who carves a foot-long lead-ballasted model canoe being paddled by an Indian and carves on the bottom “My name is Paddle-To-The-Sea. Please put me back in the water.” THe toy has decades of adventures floating downstream through Canada, and is eventually reunited with his now-adult creator who is working as a dockhand on the St. Lawrence seaway. Great book. The author did another great one about a hermit crab named Hermit who is constantly outgrowing his shell and needs to find a new one.