Review: Parched by Melanie Crowder

Parched by Melanie Crowder.

Harcourt Childrens Books
Publication Date: June 2013
List Price: $15.99
ISBN-13: 9780547976518

Review: If you like dogs and suspenseful stories, then Parched is the book for you. Parched, by Melanie Crowder is a realistic fiction book and is about a dog and its journey with the small group of kids. The small group of friends needs to survive in a harsh barren land. But the dog is older and might not make the journey. These friends need to find food to eat and take care of a dog. Can they survive?

Parched begins with group of teenage kids playing with the dog having fun and just being kids. But they have to use what they can to survive. All they have is a dog that keeps them company. They start moving in search for a more civilized area with pre-made food and purified water but they will have little success. They have to struggle in the wild and collect food for themselves and the dog. They are running low on supplies and the dog is getting older. Will they find civilized land? Will they survive?

I think Parched is okay because the book is very suspenseful and you want to know what will happen. But I think that the plot would be uninteresting to a 6th grader like me because the book moves slowly so they can find food and other objects. The characters personalities are all kind of the same and no one has their unique traits like in real life fore example no one is more funny or serious than the other person. This book can happen in real life but the way they describe the land and the setting makes it sound like a science fiction novel instead of a realistic fiction book. I think the book is best for middle school readers that like a suspenseful story with not much action.

Review written by Eric (6th grade student).

We would like to thank Houghton Mifflin for providing a copy of Parched for this review.

Have you read Parched? How would you rate it?