In our class, we have been doing reading circles; our group is reading Danny the Champion of the World. I have only read 12 chapters (102 pages) but I will give you a review of what I have read.
Danny’s mother dies when Danny was 4 months old, leaving Danny to his father. They lived in a caravan and Danny’s father opened up a filling station. Danny started helping his dad in his filling station when he was a few years old. At the age of seven, he learned how to put an engine together and separate the parts. After he was able to do that, he started to go to school.
Late one night, Danny woke up, his father wasn’t in bed. Danny thought that his father was in the filling station to finish something off but he couldn’t hear anything. So he searched around the caravan and checked everywhere in the filling station. After the search, Danny was tired, then he heard footsteps approaching the caravan, and the door swung open. Danny was glad to see his father back at home, and then he asked where his father had been. Danny’s father asked Danny if he could keep it a secret, he nodded. Danny was led into a dangerous secret, his father was poaching! He was poaching pheasants at Hazell Woods; he had vowed to Danny’s mother that he would never poach again. He told Danny that he became so excited again because Mr Hazell was a snob.
Every evening Danny’s father would poach and sometimes bring back a pheasant or two. One day Danny’s father promised Danny that he would be back at 10:00. Later that night at 11:00, Danny woke up, his father wasn’t back yet, so he looked around the caravan, but his father could not be found. He was starting to get scared, What if father was captured by the guards? What if his father had been shot and is lying around some where. He had to find out, so he drove Baby Austin (their car) to Hazell Woods.
He knew the way to Hazell Woods, when he was near Hazell Woods a police car was behind him. He swerved his car into Hazell Wood and hid behind a tree. The police car didn’t follow, so Danny trotted out of the car and started searching for his father. Dad! He yelled, there was no reply, he kept calling his father, and then there was a low moan, Danny. Danny was running towards the sound, he heard it again, Danny. Then the sound was really close, and then he saw his father at the bottom of a pit. His father told him that they made pits while covering them with dirt.
They needed a ladder or a rope, and then Danny remembered that there was a rope in the car. He ran to get it and tied one side to a tree and Danny’s father tied it around his waste. One of his legs was broken so he couldn’t get up properly. Danny helped pull his father up and at last he was up. Danny helped his dad to his car and drove back to the caravan. He went to the hospital and came back the next day.
This book is really exciting and interesting at the same time because Danny has to save his Dad. I don’t think that I would have been able to save my Dad in the same situation because I really don’t know how to drive a car. Next time he might be more careful if he goes again.
I recommend this book for children ages 10 – 14.
