5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good, March 12, 2000
By A Customer
I thought that Dancing Carl was an amazing book about a drunk named Carl who teaches Marsh, and his best friend Willy a lot about just over-all life. Carl also finds love in a woman and expresses it to her through an amazing dance. I suggest that you read this book, I did and I couldn't put it down. I think this was a great piece of writing just like all of Gary Paulsen's books. I think that it would take a pretty amazing mind to come up with a extrodinary plot like this one. You'll get to know carl, Willy, and Marsh just as if they were real.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Dancing Carl, March 27, 2003
Dancing Carl is a book about two boys who meet a mysterious man named Carl. They live in a small town, McKinley, Minnesota, that revolves around winter. They have a gravel pit that they flood and freeze. After it is frozen, they divide it into smaller arenas for hockey, kids skating, music skating, and freestyle. Carl takes over Stan Johnson's job of deciding when to flood the gravel. He takes over the warming house, along with the rinks. He also has a strange power that he uses to solve many problems and also has the ability to skate on the ice in sneakers. Willy and Marsh think there's more to Carl than just the insane, drunk, depressed bum that the townspeople see so they decide to check it out for themselves.
I think this book was a good book. Although it is dull in some places, it gets interesting in the end. Usually, the plot jumps around at the end of chapters but it stays still in the end. First you have to understand that Carl is thought as insane and some of the townspeople aren't exactly glad for him to live in the warming house. " `I guess he's been doing some pretty weird stuff. Dancing or moving or something. And he's taken over the rinks like it was his town or something...' "
Willy and Marsh find out about Carl, about his life and his power. If Marsh had not brought the B-17, an army fighter jet, model then Carl wouldn't have gone over the edge. He truly goes insane and, using his power, reenacts what had happened in his past. Willy and Marsh see why Carl has all the beat-up army gear and why he is all washed up. If it weren't for Helen, Carl may have been really gone mental.
Helen appeared one day in a Russian square hat and the same type clothing as Carl's flight jacket. This is my favorite part in which Carl performs several dances dedicated to Helen on the ice rink, with the entire town watching. I don't like the end, though, when Marsh learns that Carl and Helen move and suffer from many problems. "And I heard many things still later. I heard that Carl went crazy and should have been put it the state hospital and I heard that Helen had some part of her brain hurt many years before and I heard they moved into a house together and shared government checks. I heard they couldn't be married because of something in Carl's life and I heard even later that Carl died of drink and Helen had to go to a special home to live and all of this happened in some other town they moved to and none of it, not one single thing of what I heard, makes any difference at all."
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and Breathtaking, December 4, 2006
This book is one of those that will leave you breathless and dazed. I loved Carl and what he did. The tender love story part will melt even a hard heart. I loved the ice skating and cold atmosphere. That made the "rose" part even more beautiful.
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