Blackwater Ben by William Durbin (0-385-72928-6)
13-year-old Ben spends the winter of 1898 with his father cooking at a lumberjack camp in the northern Minnesota woods. The book is filled with incredible characters like the man who sharpens saws and hasn’t bathed in over 15 years. It also contains facts that bring the hardship of camp to life, like the amazing temperature of -50 degrees below zero, when the horses couldn’t work because they would die from the cold.
Ben is a wonderful narrator, he sees the logging camp from the vantage point of the kitchen, where all the loggers come every day. The story is funny, factual, and colorful.
I would recommend this book to any boy looking for a great read. It would also be a fun book to choose for a kid looking for a historical novel for an assignment. The colorful characters keep the story moving almost as fast as a a team of sawyers can eat 200 scones.