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NORTHERN EXPOSURES

Page history last edited by RichiesPicks 14 years, 7 months ago

02 October 2002 NORTHERN EXPOSURES by Eric Walters, HarperCanada, 2001

 

I was not very surprised to find that one of Eric Walters' careers has been that of psychologist. There is an utterly priceless scene in NORTHERN EXPOSURES that takes place in a counselling session...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

NORTHERN EXPOSURES is the story of Kevin Spreekmeester, who is an average student with high-powered parents: the lawyer mom and the doctor dad who have high expectations and zero time for their son. As a result, Kevin has hit that point where he's lost interest in most everything except hanging out with friends. One of those friends convinces him to join a scam to bail on school for a day by forging their parents' signatures on an entry form for a photography contest. Unbeknownst to Kevin, the camera he uses to quickly take his obligatory roll of photos is so funky that it's not consistantly advancing the film, and so the last five exposures are atop one another. Of course, that photo wins the prize and the local paper shows up for the interview and picture-in-the-paper. That's when we get to that counselling session where it's safe to reveal to the 'rents that he's won the great new camera, tons of film and processing, AND the trip to Manitoba to photograph polar bears on a tour with a reknowned wildlife photographer! Of course, the parents can't logically stop Kevin from doing something positive that he's actually shown an interest in, so it's off to Canada. Then the luggage doesn't make the plane, and then it turns out that he's been booked on a tour that's entirely senior citizens except for him, and then there's the girl...and the bears...and the fact that he barely knows one end of the camera from the other.

 

NORTHERN EXPOSURES is full of laughs and adventure, as well as a bunch of interesting facts about polar bears, and Kevin does, in fact, grow as a result of his journey. The only drawback to NORTHERN EXPOSURES is its lack of availability in the States--it's a Canadian publication and so it doesn't appear in books in print or anywhere in the library systems of Northern California. But I just got back my one and only copy from the student who grabbed it after my booktalk a few weeks ago. He told me it was the best book he had ever read.

 

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com

 

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