Ivan the Giant
by Philip A. Creurer
GENRE: Middle Grade/Young Adult Fiction
BLURB:
Ivan Morrow has spent his short life waiting for things to happen. Now something has happened. An unknown ancestor has entrusted him with something of great value and it has gone missing. But who stole it and how to get it back? He's grown extraordinarily over the last year since turning eleven, but his mind is stuck in a kid-sized brain. Now he must match wits with a desperate thief if he is to honour the trust placed in him by his distant relative.
Excerpt:
Leese took a few more samples of documents from her backpack. They were in a clear plastic folder separated in individual pockets like a silent accordion. She had a selection of wills, she stated matter-of-factly, the human being’s attempt to prolong life after life has ebbed, wreaking havoc or charity according to strictures of justice or caprice, wherever an errant heart beat its last retreat. Why do we always insist on having the last word? “Look, this one left everything to a niece in Guatemala…” The writing was not easily read. It was formal with curved capitals and forward leaning letters that somehow ran together while fighting to remain distinct. Great letters three lines high began significant phrases, the whole thing officiously impressed with a great disc of red wax sealed by the letter “J” in an elaborate setting of wavy lines and curly ends. “J” obviously had thought a lot about what would go on after he had ceased gracing the Earth with his worthy presence. He felt the weight of his responsibility to hold the world together from the grave and dispense his beneficent suzerainty from the throne of a granite tombstone. Well, it was true his parchment had made it into history for the general edification of succeeding generations, so maybe he had been on to something after all.
I looked at my stamps that had raced around the world in the last hundred years, spreading news of the new world to the old, raising hope again in an age of cynicism, and boasting of the progress of human effort. It didn’t change the fact that I still didn’t know where Papua New Guinea was. But that was my fault, I guess. I took an atlas off the back shelf in the classroom and shifted through its pages littered with orange and blue and red. Papua New Guinea was colonized when ships were the vessels of discovery, and I sailed my finger over the great reaches of blue, condensed and distorted to fit on a large page. The pilgrims of adventure would have tucked away a cargo of sheets of paper, parchment, wax, and stamps, all necessary to the exploration of new lands and the communication of novelty to the wearied world they had left behind. Stamp collecting was opening up a horizon of endless vistas, imperceptible until now in the fog of my listless brain. An unaccustomed stirring of adventure pulled somewhere from within.
My Review:
Eleven-year-old Ivan Morrow has to come up with a project for school. Ivan doesn’t really have any hobbies so when his teacher asks him what his hobbies are he just blurts out stamps not knowing why as he knows nothing about stamps. He has never sent a letter or received one.
Ivan’s journey takes him on the search for stamps. His dad takes him to a shop that sells old stuff. At the shop, Ivan meets Mr. Carruthers the owner of Carruthers Collectors’ Stamps. Mr. Carruthers introduces Ivan to the world of stamps which opens lots of doors that take him to whole new worlds.
A friend of Ivan’s, Tom Andrew planted a seed in his brain that opened even more new worlds for him. The more research Ivan did on stamps and where they came from the more doors were opened to him and the more knowledge he desired.
Ivan was entrusted with a rare and old stamp that his father gave him. Ivan wanted to take the stamp to school for show and tell. At the end of the day, he found the stamp to be missing. The missing stamp took Ivan and his friends on a mysterious journey. Who took the stamp and why?
Ivan the Giant pulled me in with the summary but what I found inside was way more than I ever expected. Ivan the Giant holds more than mystery, it holds a history of its own, a history of stamps and places in the world.
I think Ivan the Giant has more for middle grade or young adults than a mystery to solve. It shows young adults or middle graders to look outside the box. If you come across something you know nothing about it investigate it, search for that knowledge. If someone plants a seed in your mind, water that seed and allow it to grow.
I really enjoyed reading Ivan the Giant and would recommend it to anyone looking for a great mystery to solve. One-click your copy of Ivan the Giant today to begin this awesome journey with Ivan and his friends.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Philip Creurer has spent a large part of his life studying at home in Canada and abroad in France and Germany. From his origins in rural Saskatchewan, he returned to the Canadian Prairies in 2013. Long inspired by his English teachers who initiated the Prairie Writers' Workshop in his high school, he took up the passion of his younger years and began writing fiction again in his fifties. The Canadian Prairies form an expansive canvas from which his ideas and his characters arise. Philip lives in Edmonton, Alberta.
Connect with Philip Creurer:
WEBSITE ~ GOODREADS ~ INSTAGRAM
Purchase Links:
AMAZON.COM ~ AMAZON.CA ~ KINDLE
BOOKSHOP ~ INDIGO CHAPTERS ~ BARNES & NOBLE
BOOK DEPOSITORY ~ KOBO ~ SMASHWORDS ~ APPLE
2 comments:
Sounds like a very interesting book.
Thank you for your review! I am thrilled you enjoyed the book.
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