Hunt for the Last Cat - Hardcover

Justin, Denzel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399221018 ISBN 13: 9780399221019

Publisher: Philomel, 1991

Synopsis

Ten-year-old Thorn feels conflicting loyalties when members of his clan blame his friend Fonn, a girl from a rival clan, for the marauding actions of a man-eating sabertooth cat

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Reviews

Florida in 6000 B.C. could have been the time and place where the last of the saber-toothed tigers met its death. A boy and girl from different clans, using flint spears and leather slings, might have defended themselves against the fierce tusks and watched as the creature sank to its death in the great sand pits. Such is the scenario that Denzel suggests in this detail-packed account of the rapid extinction of these giant prehistoric mammals. Precise, well-conceived reconstructions of botanical, biological and geological points of interest are deftly interwoven with a mythological coming-of-age story; together the two elements create a well-rounded, compassionate view of prehistory sure to spark further interest in and conjecture about this intriguing time. Ages 9-up.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As an aging saber-toothed tiger prowls prehistoric Florida, a young paleo-Indian struggles to escape his tribe's superstitious beliefs. Is the old cat the ghost of a saber-tooth slain four years earlier, come to take its revenge? Is the wanderer Fonn that same ghost, in the shape of a young woman? Dour, the shaman, insists that these things are so, but 12-summer-old Thom wonders: Fonn seems real to him, and she says that the cat is only an animal, huge and ferocious but mortal. As Bonnie Pryor did in Seth of the Lion People (1988), Denzel paints the prehistoric scene in some detail but is less conscientious about creating believable early people--''It is the mark of Smilodon,'' Fonn remarks learnedly, looking at a pawprint. Nonetheless, Denzel offers another well-paced adventure that, like his Boy of the Painted Cave (1988), captures a transition between old and new, ignorance and knowledge. In the end, Thom escapes Dour's influence, and he and Fonn witness an epic battle between Great Claw (the last giant sloth) and the wounded, rabid saber-tooth. Their deaths mark the end of the age of giant mammals; for readers who don't get the point, the author suggests in an afterword that we too shall pass. (Fiction. 11-14) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Philomel
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0399221018
• ISBN 13: 9780399221019
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 191