Red
Stephanie McCarthy
A Scholastic Press Book
167 pbk
ISBN: 1-86504-370-2
Red is a realistic novel about a teenage boy called Red, who lives near a coastal town called Walliston. Red has a brother called Dillon and a girlfriend called Tara. He writes the book to tell us about the amazing things that have happened to him in the last year, like escaping narrowly from death many times. Red has the chance to be the diving partner of his friend Jordan but has no money. It is during his moneymaking ventures that exciting and extraordinary things start to happen to him.
I enjoyed reading Red and thought it was an interesting book to read. The themes of the book, like moneymaking and life on the sea, are very realistic and make a very exciting story. The storyline was good except for some of the comments in brackets, which I thought didnt always fit in. The text was easy to read and the language was easy to understand. I think it was a read-alone book because of the format. The general layout of the book was well done and this made the book easy to read. All in all I found Red both interesting and exciting and I gave it 8 out of 10. I recommend it to people between 10 and 14 years of age especially to people who like action stories set around the sea.
Jeremy, aged 12, Canberra, ACT
