Touching Spirit Bear
by Ben Mikaelsen

HarperTrophy, 2001, 240 pp., $5.99
ISBN-13: 978-0-380-80560-0
ISBN-10: 0-380-80560-X

In Touching Spirit Bear Ben Mikaelson does a fantastic job of capturing the issues of what life brings when you have had a harrowing childhood.  As we learn, Cole Mathews experienced a childhood of his father abusing him and his mother drinking to hide the abuse. After Cole smashes fellow classmate Peter Driscals head (Peter Driscal) into the sidewalk, he is sent to circle justice, a group of people that have come together in the community to help him grow as a person.

He gets banished to an island where he has to learn that he is just a small portion of a much bigger circle: a circle of life, animals, forgiveness, and trying to help those we have hurt. But Cole isn’t so sure; he is just as livid and bitter as ever. After a justified attack by the ever-so- special “spirit bear”, he lays on the beach with gulls picking at his flesh and wounds he realizes that either he is going to have to try to help Peter, who is crippled for life and psychologically damaged or end up in jail and possibly face losing the little bit of respect his family has for him. He doesn’t know what to do but he knows that he needs to make the decision fast because he can feel his last breaths coming, but then he hears a distant voice in the background…

Touching Spirit Bear is a book about how your actions affect the rest of your life. There is a very subtle theme of karma. And that is exactly what Cole learns: that you come, you live, and then burn all traces of yourself when you leave because the earth does not revolve around you; you revolve around it.

Although I loved the story, I have to say that Mikaelsons writing technique just doesn’t work for me.  I think that he kind of tries too hard to try to foreshadow throughout every chapter, for example when there are pelicans eating at his flesh and he can feel them picking at his bone, and he then hears a voice. I guess it made me want to keep reading but overall I just wanted to take a breather for a few seconds because of the overall graphicness of it.  I have to say sometimes it work’s and sometimes it doesn’t, but just to give you a warning this book is very dark and gloomy, and gets a bit graphic when he gets hurt so this is not for younger kid’s.

This book is more appropriate for young teens aging from 11-14 because it teaches you a lesson of honesty and respect for the world around you.  If you like a book that you learn a lesson from, and like books that are an easy read and you don’t have to analyze to try to understand which character is which with vague descriptions, then this book if for you! I think people will come away from this book inspired, by the lessons it teaches, and the way it shows its most important lesson: that you can always turn your life around.

So for an overall rating I would give it a 7 ½ because although I thought that the storyline was overall genius, sometimes the writing, vocabulary, and constant foreshadowing gave me a headache!

~ reviewed by Jessica