Kid Moses By Mark R. Thornton
Kid mouse game
Finished this book just as we finished up our safari in Tanzania with the author Vivid descriptions of the landscape in the area much of which we experienced A quick read definitely recommend 9781431402656 I highly recommend this short novel Unless you know a lot about Africa or maybe did time there in the Peace Corps this tale will be unfamiliar to you It s well told and compelling I wanted Moses to have a happy ending 9781431402656 An orphaned boy Tanzania in his quest for survival 9781431402656 Really short with a distantly charming sort of tone I can t say I didn t enjoy it but I didn t get a strong sense of character or arc Moses moved from one bad situation to another without much agency relying on the kindness of strangers Also there were occasionally some pretty jarring for me shifts in point of view within scenes 9781431402656 Thornton has created the setting for a fine novel about East Africa he just doesn t do much with it The core conflicts between characters or between the title character and his environment aren t really resolved I definitely wanted than the ending offered Not badly written just not enough there there 9781431402656 
2 1 2 stars I wish good reads would let us do 1 2 stars on here The author according to the synopsis on the back of the book is a wilderness guide in Tanzania and has been doing so for quite awhile which makes sense bc his descriptions of the wildlife the landscapes were my favorite The scene with the poachers the most lively A few google searches to help me get the image in my mind really helped drive home the surroundings and what little Moses was faced with I always enjoy books that take me to different areas of Africa it helps with my knowledge of the continent and I do feel like I get to travel to these different areas through books This time I m in Tanzania which is near Kenya on the east side of Africa Moses is from Dar Es Salaam which is the big city in Tanzania from the richest to the poorest So Moses goes from I guess the urban jungle of Dar to the Serengeti wildnerness like areas The native language is Swahili also this is the area where the famous jumping Massai are from Boyd and Toroye hunt with a few The story itself at first I felt like it wasn t going anywhere lol I was waiting for Moses to get his come uppance then I settled into the story being about Moses journey He wonders he makes mistake after mistake I got mad Why Moses why did you do that Then I remember he s a kid It s learning in its rawest form he gets lost he meets good and bad people on the way He feels shame warmth yearning love fear I have read stories like this where the protagonist is a child or pre teen and they wonder and go on these adventures where it s literally just them their mind and whatever world they are living in around them but they still had some kinda direction to the story I felt just as lost as Moses Maybe that is what the author intended 9781431402656 Alas Mark Thornton s novel Kid Moses is truly one of the most underrated novels of 2019 The story takes place in Tanzania with the POV coming from the protagonist Moses Moses is a 9 year old homeless boy who must face the challenges and the adversity that his adventure in the wilderness holds He must go on this adventure whilst holding the guilt of his best friend dying and having to bury him Along Moses roller coaster of an adventure he runs into many people who some people might never expect to help a young 9 year old orphan on the run That is what makes this a great novel symbolizing how even people who have all different sorts of life paths can be good I really liked how Moses created these relationships with all these different kinds of people Although it was a great story I think it lacked character development It seemed like Moses was the same person at the end of the story I would have liked to see how Moses evolved at the end of the story I am also not happy about a specific part in the story where Moses is innocently yet inappropriately touches one of the people he meets along the way Unfortunately me being a 6th grade English teacher I could not imagine my students reading tha part of the book so I will not be letting them use it for their independent reading project For that reason I cannot give it a perfect rating However this is a great story for a young adult who is getting ready to enter the real world as Thornton gives a comparison of what other people in the world are going through and is a reminder to be grateful and appreciative I would say the overall theme of this book is to not judge a book one of my pet peeves by its cover because anyone can do good The overall tone of the story is hopeful as Moses is always determined and resilient throughout all the events of the story I am a big fan of adventure books so I thought it was a fun quick read If you like adventure books and do not really care about character development in stories I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK 9781431402656 I saw definite shape to this story and a real character journey Moses has routine loves routine has his shaken up many times and finds a sense of peace in late adolescence After this story one suspects that he will eventually grow restless again and that peace will once again be disrupted. Kid museum Thornton is amazing I look forward to reading of his books 9781431402656 I found this book at a library display it caught my eye and seemed interesting enough particularly with my interest in East Africa so I decided to give it a go. Kid museum I wanted to like this book But the plot just didn t really go anywhere which is fine stories can absolutely be character driven To do that however there has to be good character development and this story didn t really have that either Lastly I found the syntax and sentence structure a bit simple better suited for a young adult novel 9781431402656 Maybe the SJWs have gotten to me but I couldn t free myself to like this book when it was a white transplant to Africa writing about the plight of an African boy in which one of the plot points was a white transplant to Africa dying while saving the boys life I don t know something just made me feel icky about this 9781431402656 Set in Tanzania this atmospheric novel finds Moses wandering through the remote East African wilderness lost hungry and about to die He is nine years old a homeless street kid from the port city Dar es Salaam and he has just buried his best friend Attempting to flee the city violence and coaxed by the memory of his dead father who dreamed of returning with him to the rural farm lands Moses and his friend Kioso accept a ride from a disturbed stranger a decision that eventually separates the boys Searching for his lost companion Moses journeys to the regiments of a rural orphanage and finally to the hallucinatory state of starvation as he curls under a tree in a dry wilderness to give up but an unlikely cast of characters the prostitute Grace the shop owner Mama Tesha the crippled fruit vendor and the Ndorobo hunter gatherer Toroye saves Moses from certain death shelters him and exposes him to a way of life and value system different from anything he has ever known A stirring novel that juxtaposes urban homelessness with societies found in the wild this work reminds readers that even amid places of violence and indifference human compassion can be found Kid Moses.