It “was both the best month and the worst month,” this new escapade begins. Best because, as anyone who lives in this little corner of Alaska knows, August is berry time — salmonberries, blueberries, high-bush cranberries. This is the time of year when the hills are alive with the fruits of long summer days. Worst of times because the beginning of the school year is just around the corner. Actually, it begins the day after this adventure of Sam’s commences.
Piling into a friend’s wired-together, litter-filled, rust-pocked pickup truck, Sam, Billy, Neptune and Sam’s mother head to the outskirts of Seldovia in the annual ritual of blueberry picking done on the last day of the boys’ summer vacation. Accounts of recent bear encounters and the beat-up condition of the vehicle almost persuade Sam’s mom to call the outing to a halt, but the boys’ begging to please, please, please continue wins out.
Promising to stay where they can be seen, Sam and Billy head into the blueberry patch, locked in a competition to see who can pick the most berries. Lured deeper and deeper into the bushes by the abundant crop of berries, Sam soon finds himself alone.
Or is he?
A snap, crack and rustle alert him to someone or something else that is enjoying the berries just as much as he is. When the berry-munching muzzle of a black bear cub appears in front of Sam, Sam turns on his heel and is ready to head quickly back to the truck, only to discover the cub’s mama right behind him.
The excitement that follows will put young readers on the edge of their seats, and provides Sam with a subject for the “What I Did This Summer” essay contest when the school year begins.
But is it enough to win the contest and the $200 grand prize so he can finally buy the X-Treme Trail Smasher bike he had his eye on in “Seldovia Sam and the Wildfire Escape”?
The answer awaits readers at the end of this enjoyable, fun to read story.
Other books in the Misadventures of Seldovia Sam series include “Seldovia Sam and the Very Large Clam” and “Seldovia Sam and the Sea Otter Rescue.”
McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibben.jackinsky@homernews.com.
He’s baaaaaack. Seldovia Sam and his cast of characters — a Cessna-flying mom, commercial-fishing dad, his buddy Billy, dog Neptune, feline friend Trouble Cat and his hometown community on the south shore of Kachemak Bay — return for this fourth installment of the Seldovia Sam series written by Susan Woodward Springer and illustrated by Amy Meissner. And this time Sam has unknowingly brought the bear population with him, as he takes to the hills and disappears into the head-high blueberry bushes of August.
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