Young Zorro [Kindle Edition]

Diego Vega (Author), Jan Adkins (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-7-This rather odd book is designed to be a tie-in to the recent movie, and was inspired by Isabel Allende's novel (HarperCollins, 2005). An initial chapter introduces Zorro's fictional descendant, who is telling this story based on information that came from a chest of papers found in Zorro's secret den. Readers first encounter the legendary hero as a mischievous boy who just won't get out of bed in the morning. With his friend, Bernardo, he gets involved in a Hardy Boys-style mystery that involves missing cattle and people, and, of course, a chance to mete out justice. The narrative reads like something written by a Stratemeyer Syndicate employee who had been writing for adults and was suddenly told to produce a work for children. Diego speaks in an unbelievably formal way, not like a child at all. The movie did not necessarily appeal to kids, and it's unlikely that this book will. A few Spanish phrases are scattered throughout the text.-Tim Wadham, Maricopa County Library District, Phoenix, AZ
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 5-8. In the sleepy, out-of-the-way Spanish colonial hamlet of Los Angeles, young Diego de la Vega is determined to discover the cause of an outbreak of cattle rustling and the accompanying disappearances of some of the pueblo's craftsmen. Eventually, he and his best friend, Bernardo, find that an evil aristocrat, don Moncada, is responsible for the kidnappings and is planning to set up his own kingdom. Diego's fearless, upright father leads a small army to rescue the kidnapped men, but ultrasmooth and slippery don Moncada proves to be a challenging foe. Diego is actually the boy Zorro, but he isn't quite as dashing as his adult counterpart. Though readers may miss the famous swordplay, the cape, and the black steed, Adkins' historical novel, inspired by Isabel Allende's Zorro (2005), has enough action and rich detail of old California to engage readers. Todd Morning
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 308 KB
• Publisher: HarperCollins (March 9, 2010)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00395ZYTK
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #531,164 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #87 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Children's Fiction > People & Places > Multicultural Stories > Hispanic & Latino

More About the Author

Jan Adkins was raised in West Virginia and Ohio, around Wheeling. He spent a lot of time wandering the woods around his home with a .22. He was at Ohio State University for many years studying architecture, first, then literature. He worked as a draftsman for one of Eero Saarinen's senior designers, W. Byron Ireland. Married, he moved to his wife's wonderful hometown of Wareham, Massachusetts, which is still home for him. Many of his books are set in New England waters where he sailed up and down the coast with his family.

He has three children: Sally lives with her husband Patrick in Gainesville, Florida, with grandsons Max and Luc; Sam is a chef in DC with his lovely partner Aphra; Web and his Cyn live in Seattle with grandchildren Alder and River.

He moved to Washington, DC, to be an art director for National Geographic Magazine for almost nine years, living in DC and then in Annapolis. He's written for Smithsonian Magazine, Cricket and Muse Magazines, Harper's, Chesapeake Bay Magazine, WoodenBoat, Maine Boats Homes & Harbors and others. He also works on museum exhibits with Eisterhold Associates out of Kansas City.

For several years he taught editorial illustration, history of illustration, and graphic design at Rhode Island School of Design and at Maryland Institute, College of Art. He misses teaching.

He writes books of non-fiction for young people, his special audience. He also writes humor and feature articles for several magazines. He has illustrated for all his books and for dozens of mainstream magazines, especially on marine and technical subjects.

He lives presently in Novato, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he hikes, cooks, sails, skis, plays tennis, and writes every day.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My Suggestion: Skip Chapter 1 & start reading at Chapter 2, February 15, 2006

By 

Lu Ann Staheli "allstars" (Spanish Fork, UT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Young Zorro: The Iron Brand (Hardcover)

Young Zorro: The Iron Brand by Jan Adkins (Harper Collins Publishers 0060839457)

The young hero, Diego de la Vega is a different from his best friend Bernardo as can possibly be, despite the fact they were raised together. Diego is a chatterbox, tall and thin, and always looking for some mischief to get into. Bernando is cautious, short and compact, and never speaks. More than once, Diego's enthusiasm for adventure pulls Bernardo along into a situation where he'd rather not be. The Iron Brand takes the two boys into the intrigue of several men who have gone missing from the pueblo of Los Angeles and solving the mystery of the missing cattle from his father's ranch, introducing him to the exciting world he will one day seek to tame. Set in early-nineteenth century Spanish California, this novel was inspired by Isabel Allende's novel. Although the book got off to a slow start because of the set-up of being told by Diego Vega, a descendant of Diego de la Vega, readers should enjoy the escapades of the two boys enough to be patient until the mystery and excitement begin.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars DISASTER FOR A HOPEFUL BOOK, February 10, 2010

By 

Jan Adkins "Inkfish" (Novato, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Young Zorro: The Iron Brand (Hardcover)

I wrote Young Zorro, so it pains me to see a hopeful little book crippled by misconceptions.

Though I was a technical advisor to Isabel Allende when she wrote her adult novel, Zorro, my book for young people was NOT "inspired by Allende's novel." Isabel is a wonderful and charming woman I genuinely like but we're different writers. She writes about mystic powers and destiny; I write about places, people and things as they really were. Isabel felt that pueblo des Los Angeles in 1800 was a dull, barren place and hurried to get her characters off to Spain, where they could find civilized adventure. To me, the fascination was with the pueblo and the mission at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, the Gabrieleño Native Americans, the vaquero cattle culture, the horse-culture life of the pueblo's Californios, perched on the edge of the known world, more distant and harder to visit than old Beijing or Mumbai. The real, historical adventure that spoke to me was in the exotic, fresh grasslands and forests around the pueblo.

This book was NOT a spin-off of the Banderas Zorro movies, as entertaining and fun as they were. The primary reviewer saw this as a "quickie," hammered out to take advantage of the movie press. The movie version has almost nothing to do with Young Zorro. Young Diego and his brother Bernardo came out of the existing deep well of Zorro lore. If any movie inspired Young Zorro, it was the original silent by Douglas Fairbanks. The brilliant Fairbanks took a stiff, conventional hero-with-a-sword from a pulp magazine story by Carson Macaulay, and re-visioned him as a genial rogue, intelligent and humorous and playful. The Zorro Fairbanks created and played is an American Robin Hood with egalitarian American ideals. It escapes most readers that no trail of bodies follows this superhero. He has no special powers, only skill and stealth. He chastizes and humiliates but doesn't slay, and he does it with a light laugh. Next to most of our heroes, he's astonishingly mild.

Young Zorro WAS an honest attempt to interest boys in reading, and to interest girls in adventure tales (the character Trinity, our scrappy red-haired waterfront tomboy, is a match for the boys). It was more specifically an attempt to interest young readers in the Hispanic heritage of California and of Hispanic influence in United States history. We were hoping to make the planned Young Zorro series a part of the California curriculum, which gives special attention to the life-line of missions along the coast to Sonoma.

An error was made in giving the books its cover. Instead of citing me as the sole author, we took a flight of fantasy and made up young Vega as the narrator. The sad consequence is that "VEGA" appears on the book's spine and only two or three reviewers bothered to write a piece on this wholesome, hopeful, young adult novel. Sigh.

Jan Adkins