Blackwater Ben [Library Binding]

William Durbin (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Thirteen-year-old Ben works at Blackwater Logging Camp as cook's helper to his Pa. Long days of flipping pancakes and peeling potatoes with his ornery Pa make Ben long to be out in the woods with the lumberjacks. Felling logs, sawing trees, driving a team through the snowy woods... that's what Ben wants to be doing.

But the long cold winter in a camp filled with outlandish characters teaches Ben a lot about himself. Especially when an orphan boy called Nevers arrives in camp. When Nevers signs on to work with Pa, Ben makes a friend and a rival, too.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-7-Ben and his father are the cooking team at a logging camp in northern Minnesota in the winter of 1898. Pa's in charge, and Ben is the helper hoping for a chance at other duties beyond peeling spuds and setting tables. The thread that carries through the episodic narrative is Ben's longing to know more about his dead mother and to feel closer to his reserved and demanding father. The "dentist," the man who sharpens the teeth on the saws, happens to have been one of his mother's suitors before she married; this unlikely coincidence provides Ben with a chance to satisfy his need to know more about his family. Maintaining a light tone, Durbin revels in his descriptions of the amount of work required, the intensity of the cold weather, and the cantankerous eccentricities of the members of the logging crew. The arrival of Nevers, who tells of his life as an orphan, helps Ben gain perspective on his own circumstances. The letters between him and his landlady back home add to the sense of remoteness of the camp, yet connect it to the world around. The glossary and an afterword summarizing facts about logging make this a tidy package for curriculum support. Vivid and often quite funny, the book is also a lively read.
Carol A. Edwards, Sonoma County Library, Santa Rosa, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gr. 5-8. In the winter of 1898, 13-year-old Ben Ward drops out of the seventh grade to work as a cook's helper for his pa at the Blackwater Logging Camp in Minnesota. He soon discovers that long days of cooking flapjacks, peeling potatoes, and washing dishes under the supervision of his cranky father is not the life of adventure he wants. He would rather be out in the woods with the lumberjacks, chopping trees, sawing wood, and driving a team through the snowy forests. Ben finds himself caring more about his job after Pa hires an orphan boy to help, and a rivalry develops between the two boys. In time, Ben comes to appreciate the importance of his father's work; he also manages to learn much about himself through his interactions with the lumberjacks, who seem to have an inexhaustible supply of hilarious, outrageous tales. Lively details about logging add depth to this warm, colorful historical novel, which is a good choice for fans of Will Hobbs and Gary Paulsen. Ed Sullivan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Library Binding: 208 pages
• Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books (November 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385901496
• ISBN-13: 978-0385901499
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,721,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Durbin is an award-winning author and a former teacher who lives at the edge of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Wilderness. A winner of the Great Lakes Book Award and a two-time winner of the Minnesota Book award, Mr. Durbin has published eleven novels for young readers. His novel El Lector was optioned for film by Jane Startz Productions; and his most recent work, The Winter War, deals with Stalin's invasion of Finland in 1939. His other honors include a Junior Library Guild Selection, Bank Street College Children's Book of Year list, the ALA's Amelia Bloomer list, New York Library Books for the Teen Age list, Maud Hart Lovelace nomination, Jefferson Cup Series of Note Award, America's Award commended title, and a Book Sense Summer Pick.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!!!!!!, October 10, 2004

By 

A Happy Reader (The Northwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blackwater Ben (Hardcover)

This book is a wonderful historical fiction about a boy going to work with his father and getting out of school, every kids dream of course. I read it over the summer and finished it in three days it was so good!

4.0 out of 5 stars Eddies review, January 24, 2007

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Blackwater Ben (Paperback)

Backwater Ben
By William Durbin
230 pages
Book review by Eddie macari







Have you ever wondered how much cooks have to feed lumberjacks in the 1900's? Well a lot. Ben a 16-year-old boys father is a cook for a lumberjack camp and Ben has to work twice as much for hid dad because they just fired their skipper. Until Nevers comes into the story and he is fast as cheetah at peeling potatoes and cleaning up. So now Ben has less work and he decides to talk to a dentist Charlie who used to date his mother who passed away when Ben was young. Charlie tells Ben stories of how his mother looked liked and acted like.

In the book "Black Water Ben " By William Durbin Ben gets into a lot of mistakes or incidents. Like one time Ben was riding a carriage and the horse stopped suddenly so he got out to see what's wrong, and whoosh the horse ran and Ben ran after it and he stopped and herd a word and it said TIMBER and than everything turned black!!!!

This book is a good book for boy's 11-15. This book also has a lot of different slang like, black jack (coffee), and swamp water (tea). This book is about 230 pages and 31 chapters. This is a good book for you if you like stories that you can't put down and a story that is enjoyable and with laughter, and some parts are really exciting. Also
This book is relativistic fiction.

5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting and highly enjoyable book ., June 16, 2004

By 

A Customer (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blackwater Ben (Hardcover)

For Ben, being able to get out of going to school is like a dream come true. School was such a waste of time after all, and now, at last, he can be with his father and work in a logging camp. It was hard to leave Mrs. Wilson. She had taken care of him since his mother died and they were close friends. Still, he was now almost grown up and ready for a change.

What Ben wasn't ready for was the work itself. It was grueling. He had to labor such long hours and his father was a hard taskmaster with exacting rules that must never be broken. After a sticky accident involving a lot of spilled molasses, Ben's father fired the other cook's helper or "cookee" who worked in the camp. So now it was just Ben and his father who had to feed the always hungry lumberjacks three times a day, seven days a week. Ben couldn't help hoping that his father would hire someone else soon before more "jacks" arrived. If he didn't, Ben feared he wasn't going to be getting much sleep. No sooner had he finished cleaning a stack of dishes and closed his eyes to sleep than he was roused in the freezing dark to start cooking and preparing all over again. Surely there was more to this work than just peeling potatoes and scrubbing pots and pans.

Ben gets to know all the characters in the camp, and there are some truly peculiar types among the men who choose to spend the winter working as lumberjacks. There are those fleeing the law and those trying to forget some great sadness in their past. There are also those who simply like the hard work and rugged life of the lumberjack.

With humor and sensitivity, author William Durbin takes us into the north woods of Minnesota at the end of the nineteenth century. Through Ben's young and impressionable eyes Durbin shows us the very hard life found in a lumberjack camp, while at the same time sharing Ben's own journey from boyhood into young adulthood. Ben learns a great deal about the man who is his father and the young woman who was his mother and, in the process, discovers what his own strengths and weaknesses are. It is difficult not to laugh at some of the outrageous behavior shown by the lumberjacks and to marvel at their courage and determination to get the job done no matter what.

BLACKWATER BEN is an interesting and highly enjoyable book about a little known, yet important part of American history.

--- Reviewed by Marya Jansen-Gruber (...)