Maze

\ Chapter One\ \ Rick Walker tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry.\ "The state of Nevada has a problem with you... " the judge began, then paused to glare at him over his reading glasses.\ Rick Walker glanced at his social worker, seated beside him on his right. He wondered if the pause meant he was supposed to answer. He wasn't sure what to make of this bald and bony-headed old man who was the judge. The sign on the door of his courtroom said he was The Honorable Samuel L. Bendix. At the moment he seemed more hostile than honorable.\ "Why?" the judge suddenly demanded.\ Rick was confused. Why what? What was the judge asking him? Once again his eyes went to his social worker for help. Janice Baker seemed confused too.\ As Rick looked back toward the black robe, he felt his lip quiver. In an instant he forgot that his social worker had warned him about the judge's "enormous discretionary power." He reverted to his instincts for dealing with powerful adversaries: don't show fear, or you'll be eaten alive.\ With a slight shrug he asked, "Why what?"\ He saw the judge's skin flush red up and over his skull. "Why were you throwing the stones, repeatedly, at the stop sign? Why would anyone throw more than thirty rocks at a stop sign?"\ Rick knew he couldn't afford to say anything further that would get taken the wrong way. He hesitated, looking deep inside for the real answer. That's what the judge wanted: the real answer.\ His hesitation lengthened. Rick didn't know the real answer. The only thing he could think of was his grandmother dying. Everything that went wrong happened because of that. But the judge wasn'tgoing to accept excuses, especially something that happened four years ago. Why was he throwing those rocks?\ He didn't know the answer himself. It was all too confusing. All he could remember was being in a sort of trance. It had happened only a few blocks from the group home, on his way from school. He didn't know he had thrown so many rocks. He couldn't even remember what he'd been thinking about. "I don't know," he said at last.\ "You don't knowthe judge repeated incredulously.\ Rick tried his best. "It wasn't for any specific reason," he explained.\ "Not for any reason.\ The rising cadence of the judge's voice felt ominous. Rick unfolded his arms and put them down by his sides. "Just general frustration, I guess," he managed.\ The judge looked aside, put his fist to his chin, looked back at Rick. "General frustration is what I'm feeling right now myself," the judge said. "Just this morning, over coffee, I read about two juveniles no older than you bludgeoning a nine-year-old to death with a baseball bat. "\ So? Rick thought. What does that have to do with me?\ The judge paused. His eyes had drifted, unfocusing, to the floor. "So many with no conscience," he said as if to himself. "A petty offender one day becomes a murderer the next. It didn't used to be like this."\ The judge's eyes were suddenly back in focus and locked on Rick. "Didn't I tell you just six weeks ago that I didn't want to see you in my courtroom ever again?"\ "Yes," Rick agreed.\ "Yes, Your Honor," his social worker said under her breath.\ "Yes, Your Honor."\ Rick felt so light-headed he thought he might faint. In the corner of his vision he was aware of a man in a police uniform coming up the side aisle. It was young Mike Brown, his probation officer, with his trim dark mustache and his face blank like a robot's.\ "Say you're sorry," Janice Baker whispered.\ Rick glanced at her. He should have said it himself, before this. Now the judge was glaring worse than ever, knowing he'd just been instructed to say he was sorry.\ He couldn't, not now. Not when he was being forced to. He had a certain amount of pride. What could the judge do to him anyway? Janice Baker had told him about a place near Lake Tahoe for kids like him who'd gotten into a little bit of trouble. It didn't sound so bad, being in the pine trees and the mountains. It couldn't be much worse than the group home he was in now in Reno. The couple running the group home was only doing it for the money. They didn't even care enough to come to court with him.\ His social worker appealed to Rick with a glance. He shook his head.\ With a disapproving look at him, Janice Baker rose to her feet "Please take into account Your Honor, Rick's background. He's only fourteen. In the last four years, he has lived in foster homes in Fresno, Stockton, Merced, and Sacramento, California, as well as a foster home and a group home here in Reno. During that time he has been enrolled in six different schools...\ The Maze. Copyright © by Will Hobbs. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

\ Children's Literature\ - Sue Reichard\ Author Will Hobbs' books are often on the Best Books for Young Adults list. His new book, The Maze, is also sure to be a winner with young teens. Rick Walker is 14, alone, on the run and desperate. Rick has been in foster homes all over the state of California. He has been in six different schools in four years. He has never known either of his parents, and the grandmother who raised him has just died. Rick steals away in the back of a pickup truck and finds himself in a place called The Maze. Readers will devour this tale as Rick searches for himself and also a way out of his troubles.\ \ \ \ \ VOYA\ - Sarah K. Herz\ Fourteen-year-old Rick Walker runs away from Blue Canyon Youth Detention Center near Las Vegas, hides out in the rear of a camper truck, and finds himself "at the end of the world"-Canyonlands National Park in Utah. The truck delivers supplies to an isolated campsite, where bird biologist Lon Peregrino is feeding and observing fledgling condors recently released in the area. Rick is afraid that Lon will notify the authorities, but Lon proves to be the best person Rick could hope to meet. Rick has been in a series of foster homes, and does not trust adults-they have let him down too often. Lon does not pry into Rick's past; he accepts Rick's help in tracking and feeding the condors, and teaches Rick hang-gliding. Gradually Rick trusts and respects Lon, and tells Lon about his past. When Rick risks his life to save Lon, he learns what it means to care about another human being. Through his relationship with Lon, Rick is ready to become responsible for his actions and prepare for his future. Hobbs has written an exciting adventure story about a teenager who changes his negative attitude about rules, adults, and authority. Rick is a richly-textured character who reveals his curiosity about the condors, his appreciation of the Canyonlands, his theory about the Icarus myth, and his realization that his anger and self-pity will not help him mature. VOYA Codes: 5Q 4P M J (Hard to imagine it being better written, Broad general YA appeal, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8 and Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9).\ \ \ Children's Literature\ - Christopher Moning\ Rick Walker is on the run-from the law, from a series of foster homes, from a pair of gutless gun smugglers, and from the countless knocks that life has handed him ever since his grandmother died four years ago. After a daring escape from a corrupt youth detention center, Rick finds himself lost in the Maze section of Canyonlands National Park. Rick's luck begins to change when he encounters Lon Peregrino, a rough, grizzled loner who is a bird biologist. The two forge a deep bond as Rick aids Lon on his quest to return the endangered California condor to the wild. In this lightning-paced adventure, Rick begins to understand the power of trust and forgiveness. There are vivid descriptions of the condor and also of the arroyos, spires, and rock formations in Canyonlands. Anyone who has ever had a flying dream will thrill to Rick's breathless hang gliding experiences. In the rousing climactic scene Rick takes a desperate gamble and, like the fledgling condor, he learns how to fly solo.\ \ \ \ \ School Library JournalGr 6-9-Fourteen-year-old Rick Walker feels that his life is a maze. He's been bounced around from one foster family to another and is sent to a detention center for hard-core juvenile offenders after committing a petty offense. After he reports corruption at the facility, the boy is forced to flee for his life and ends up in an isolated part of Utah's canyon country, near an area called the Maze. Here he forms a friendship with Lon, a biologist who is trying to reintroduce condors into the wild. The two work together, observing and assisting the birds, and Lon teaches Rick to hang glide. When they run afoul of a pair of nasty antigovernment types who are hiding a cache of weapons in the area, their lives are placed in danger. Certain elements of the plot are pretty conventional, appearing in countless young adult novels troubled teen runs away and finds redemption with wise friend in a remote area. What sets this book apart is the inclusion of fascinating details about the condors and hang gliding, especially the action-packed description of Rick's first solo flight above the canyons in the face of an approaching thunderstorm. Many young readers will find this an adventure story that they can't put down.-Todd Morning, Schaumburg Township Public Library, IL\ \ \ \ \ Horn BookRick Walker, product of too many foster homes, is sentenced to serve six months in Blue Canyon Youth Detention Center near Las Vegas. His crime-throwing rocks at a stop sign-hardly seems to warrant such severe punishment. Aware that Rick is not a hardened criminal and concerned for the environment in which he will serve time, his social worker pleads unsuccessfully with the judge. The facility is worse than imagined. Except for the librarian, Rick has little support in a corrupt organization. When he learns that he is in danger from the other inmates, he escapes, eventually finding refuge with a bird biologist in the canyons of southwestern Colorado. As he learns to work with the giant condors that Lon, the biologist, is attempting to introduce into that area, he learns much about himself-his capacity for growth, endurance, and commitment. Ultimately, he must return to society, face the judge who had sentenced him, and resolve his future-but not before he has helped Lon to bring two dealers in illegal weapons to justice and negotiated the Maze, a harshly beautiful landscape of deep canyons and awesome pinnacles. This time, his social worker is not alone in attesting to his character, for Rick bids fair to extricate himself from the maze in which life has placed him. As in Far North, Hobbs spins an engrossing yarn, blending adventure with a strong theme, advocating the need for developing personal values. Again, as in the earlier book, there is a character who serves as mentor and explicator of those values-but the author's sure sense of story prevents him from overwhelming his narrative with philosophical commentary. .\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsA well-crafted, straight-up adventure story from Hobbs (Ghost Canoe, 1997, etc.). Confined to a juvenile detention center after traveling through a series of foster and group homes, Rick escapes after trying to blow the whistle on corrupt guards. His flight ends at an isolated camp on the edge of a bewildering system of canyons known as the Maze District, in Utah's Canyonlands National Park, where self-named biologist Lon Peregrino is nurturing six young condors bred in captivity. More accustomed to birds than people, Peregrino doesn't pry into Rick's past, allowing him instead to help keep the condors under observation while they acclimate themselves to new surroundings; he also fills Rick in on their history and behavior and, as the two become friends, teaches him to hang glide. As Rick eagerly soaks it all up, enter two rough locals, Carlile and Gunderson, with chips on their shoulders and a mean pit bull who immediately attacks and kills a condor. Lon suspects them of collecting Anasazi artifacts for the black market until Rick trails them to a cave full of pipe bombs and assault weapons. Hobbs sets the stage for a dramatic hang-glide rescue and throws in a major storm, after which the bad guys are collared and Rick is set on a more promising road. Both the breathtaking setting and the huge, rare birds are strong presences in this page-turner; Hobbs appends a condor release program's web address for interested readers. (Fiction. 11-13)\ \