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The Sign of the Beaver Review

I bought this audiobook for my son to listen to in the car on a long trip. The first thing I will say is actually a negative, that the reader was just a bit annoying, and the accent he used for the characters was off. (It's a story about Maine, why are you using a cheezy generic country accent?) Apart from that though, and regarding the actual content of the story, we really enjoyed it. It's a great story about growing up, friendship, respect and learning responsibility and self-reliance. I think especially for boys, the parts about how Matt and Attean fished, made bows and arrows, etc. are intriguing. We listened to this twice on our trip, and since we got home my son has also been listening to it on his CD player at bedtime, so I would have to say it is a hit with him (I think 8 years olds are maybe not as sensitive to cheezy, misplaced accents as other people might be.) I would definitely say this CD is worth the money.

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Customer Reviews

The Sign of the Beaver - V McMullen -
The book was not that great. It was not well written. If you do not have to DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. The movie was terrible. horrible book

Sign of the Beaver - The best book ever! - -
Sign of the Beaver is one of our favorite books that we read in our third grade reading group. It was very exciting, emotional, and fun! It is about a boy named Matt and his father, and his father went to get his sister and mother and the new baby. It is really interesting because Matt meets an Indian boy named Attean and they make bows and snares, and they encounter a bear. We would recommend this book for other schools and young people who like adventure books. Sign of the Beaver is great, and we suggest you read it!

3.5 Stars - Teaches Some Difficult Concepts But... - Pam Tee -
"The Sign of the Beaver" is a book that my children and I enjoyed; they are boy and girl, 8 and 10.

The story is about a boy named Matt whose family is moving to the 'wilds' of colonial Maine. His dad and he have gone out ahead of the rest of the family to prepare a clearing, plant some crops and build a small cabin. Matt's dad then leaves him behind while he returns to Connecticut to retrieve the rest of the family which includes his wife, the baby they are expecting, and his daughter. While Matt's alone, he has a few life defining experiences; amongst them an encounter with a trapper who steals from him, and a tribe of nearby Indians. In particularly, he struggles to have a relationship with a Native American boy named Attean, who is a couple of years his senior.

TALKING POINTS:::
The book is an award winning chapter read that is written at nearly the 5th Grade level (AR 4.9)

I thought the value of the book was that it directly addressed the 'myth of white guy superiority'. Speare used both examples from DeFoe's "Robinson Crusoe" and some of the adventures of the boys to demonstrate how ridiculous it is to assume that newcomers would understand an environment better than the natives who grew up with it. In DeFoe's case, she ridicules his precepts and roundly shows how the man's prejudice was hurtful.

The other concept I like was that the book tried to show children that most of the time it is individuals who can behave badly, and not groups. Although it could be argued that by making it clear that the Europeans were 'grabbing up' the land without consideration of the people who already live there, that they were in fact behaving badly as a group.

All this said, I think the pacing suffered on account of the complexity of the ideas that the author was trying to get across. And certainly her choice of grammar made the book, in my experience, an exceedingly difficult read-aloud.

Pam T~
(booksforkids-reviews)

My Amazon purchase - Natalie Lischalk -
I had to purchase this book for my son for school. The whole process went smoothly and I was delighted in the condition that the book was in when I received it.

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Oct 18, 2010 08:00:13

Children's Books

Monday, October 18, 2010