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The Boy Who Couldn't Die
 
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The Boy Who Couldn't Die (Paperback)

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4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Young teens will rejoice at this just-for-fun creepy adventure by William Sleator, one more in a long line of such stories going back to his classic sci-fi novels, House of Stairs, and Interstellar Pig. Here he shifts from science fiction to horror, with a plot based on Hollywood-style voodoo lore. When seventeen-year-old Ken's best friend Roger dies in a plane crash, Ken suddenly realizes that he too could die at any moment. Terrified, he seeks out a plump, middle-aged psychic named Cherie Buttercup, who grants him invulnerability from death in exchange for his soul. Eager to test his new powers, Ken talks his family into a vacation in the Caribbean, where he can swim with sharks. There he is entranced with Sabine, a young scuba instructor, and shares his story with her. When Ken begins to have vivid dreams of secret murders, he and Sabine realize that Cherie Buttercup is using his soul as a zombie to do her will. But the dreams also give clues as to where his soul is hidden--so the pair set out to retrieve it. Breathless action is leavened with the unconscious humor of typical Sleator touches in which preposterous fantasy collides with the details of reality, only adding to the fun. (ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


From School Library Journal

Grade 7-9-After his best friend dies in a plane crash, 16-year-old Ken Pritchard keeps thinking of a folktale about a monster that hid his soul, ensuring eternal life. Determined to avoid death himself, Ken finds a woman who removes his soul from his body. At first he is pleased; as in the folktale, he gains physical invulnerability, along with a respite from his misery. But, as readers will suspect from the many creepy details Ken willfully ignores, the rest of the folktale comes true as well. The woman is a zombie master, and he has become a modern-day monster partially under her control. Ken's increasingly desperate first-person narration, as he struggles to find his hidden soul and escape the zombie master's ever more brutal commands, makes for a gripping read. Particularly well rendered are the scuba-diving scenes in the shark-infested waters of the Caribbean and under the thick ice on a wintry Adirondack lake. Sleator spends little time on the spiritual or emotional consequences of Ken's transformation, and characterization is secondary to plot development, but teenaged horror fans won't mind. From the photo of a just-unearthed skull on its cover to the plot twist in its final pages, this fast-paced, suspenseful book will appeal to reluctant and avid readers alike.-Beth Wright, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, VT
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Product Details

  • Reading level: Young Adult
  • Paperback: 184 pages
  • Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (April 1, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0810987902
  • ISBN-13: 978-0810987906
  • Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 5 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #193,818 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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16 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars THe boy who couldn't die, March 6, 2005
This review is from: The Boy Who Couldn't Die (Hardcover)
The boy who couldn't die is one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. With so many things going on at once, you can't be more satisfied with a fiction book. Im not in favor of Science fiction type books, but this one was in the top five on my list. It all starts out with the main character Ken. After his best friend Roger died in a plane crash, Ken simply decided he didn't want to die. Cheri Buttercup, a "Practitioner of rare art" is the one who Ken believes can do the job. Hesitating, he finally pitches in for fifty bucks. After the treatment, he feels different, and is ready to fight the world, or for the world to fight him. He wants to test his invulnerability by getting beat up, which he doesn't get hurt at all, and for his final test. He wants to go to St.Calao in the Caribbean, were the only thing to do is Scuba Dive. He found out someone died form a shark attack there, and he wants to put him self to the test and also keep his parents safe. He there meets a girl, Sabine. At fist he doesn't like her, but then as time goes on, he is on the verge of being madly in love with her. After these realistic dreams Ken had been having, he tells Sabine, and she tells him that Cheri Buttercup turned into a zombie. She is actually an evil voodoo soul stealer person. There are two kinds of these Zombie priests, according to Sabine, and The only thing to save him from his realistic dreams, which are really happening, and his soul is starting to do some horrible things, that he can't control is to get his soul back. When he goes to Cheri Buttercup to get his soul for fifty more dollars, she charges fifty thousand, and he can't afford that! From there the tale gets more serious and fun. All these strange things happen to him and Sabine that will make you want more. It's worth it all the way to the end. I could seriously not put this book down. William Sleator is a genius writer, and I will certainly be looking into other books of his for hopefully more thrill and excitement.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Boy Who Couldn't Die, May 16, 2004
By Eric Bogen (Bak Middle School of the Arts-West Palm Beach) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Boy Who Couldn't Die (Hardcover)
The Boy Who Couldn't Die, by William Sleator, was a great book. It was suspenseful, full of action and romance, as well as a book that you would stay up all night to read. It starts off with the main character, Ken, walking from his house in New York to Cherri Buttercup's, an evil spell caster, house in Queens. He is going to this her house because he saw her ad in the newspaper which said she can take away the risk everyone takes everyday of dieing by making you invulnerable.
After Ken's friend, Roger, died in a plane crash, Ken realized how easy it is for something to go wrong and, so he decides to see Cherri Buttercup. After she makes him invulnerable by taking his soul out of his body. Ken wants to see if it worked so he asks out the girlfriend of the quarterback on the football team. When her boyfriend finds out Ken asked her out, he goes to kill Ken. However, because Ken is invulnerable, he can't hurt him and is embarrassed in front of every kid in the school.
When Ken gets home, his parents tell him that he can pick where they go for vacation this spring break and while looking online for a cool place to go, he finds a site about an island in the Caribbean called St.Calao. The sites say that recently there has been a shark attack there and this makes Ken excited to go there. "What a time to test if I am truly invulnerable and can't be killed," Ken thinks to himself. Ken then finds tickets for a plane and hotel rooms for him and his family.
Once on St.Calao, Ken and his father take lessons on scuba diving. Ken becomes very good friends with one of the instructors, Sabine, who tells him that the drums he hears at night are voodoo ceremonies held by good voodoo priest and there are also bad voodoo priest who study black magic and make people into zombies by saying that they make people invulnerable, just as Cherri Buttercup did to Ken. Ken then realized that Cherri Buttercup was a black magic studying voodoo priest and has made him a zombie and she has control over him at night. Sabine then tells Ken that he must get his soul back or she will always be able to control him at night. Sabine tells Ken that she will help him get his soul back through e-mail.
Ken and Sabine continue to e-mail each other and Sabine tells him what he must do to get his soul back. She tells him that he must find where his soul is held and get it back. Does he get his soul back and stop Cherri Buttercup from controlling him and others or does Cherri Buttercup continue to control people. That's what you must find out for yourself by reading the great book The Boy Who Couldn't Die, by William Sleator. Prepare to stay up all night.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Boy Who Couldn't Die - Jenny from Shanghai , May 23, 2005
A Kid's Review
This review is from: The Boy Who Couldn't Die (Hardcover)
An unusual book title, "The Boy Who Couldn't Die", by William Sleator, caught my attention when I first saw it. Not only the title but also a picture of a skull on the cover took my attention too. Before I have even started to read it, I had my expectations highly and the book did not disappointed me at all in any ways. This book was basically about zombies, and one thing I learned about zombies through this book was that not all of them are evil. For example, Sabine, who is a friend of Ken (the main character), helped Ken in every single way to fight off his enemy and she was a zombie herself. This book also had a lot of examples of conflicts. Not only external conflicts with enemy vs. main characters, but also a lot of internal too. When I was reading this, I thought this book would have been easier to read when I studied about conflicts at school. The book I read was okay, but this book was way more interesting. Sometimes during the whole story, Ken had bad dreams about him doing unacceptable and cruel things, which really happened, and the dangers he and Sabine faced gave me something like chills and sometimes it really scared me a little at some scenes. When I was reading, I thought that William Sleator's descriptions were fantastic! I think it was very descriptive enough. Although this was my first time reading one of William Sleator's many books, I think I could enjoy other books he wrote because I really enjoyed this book. I though it was absolutely amazing! And it's been a while since I read books that I really liked and a while since I read a book that was beyond my expectations.
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