Publish or Die Audio Cassette – Versión íntegra de Alan Durant (Author), Eve Karpf (Narrator)

Grade 5-8-Calico’s first week at Prairie Books introduces her to a side of publishing that she never knew existed. It is a world of plotting and scheming, exploding packages and arson. Soon after Calico begins working there, chapters from a book by an author known only as Nemesis appear, chapters that ominously mirror the terrifying events that are happening at the publishing company. The reader and Calico are set on a quest to discover the identity of Nemesis. Who is responsible for the goings on at Prairie Books? Are the events connected? While the premise of the story has the potential for great suspense, the trite writing prevents it from ever becoming anything more than melodramatic. The story by Alan Durant is packed with so many characters it is often difficult to keep them straight. When not employing overused phrases such as “limpid blue eyes,” “lustrous hair,” and “customary smile,” the vocabulary tends to be on the difficult side for the intended audiences, with words like aquiline, anglophile, verbosity and acrimonious. One disturbing event described in the story involves Calico, a character in her twenties, accepting an alcoholic drink from her supervisor because she does not want to appear childish. Even Eve Karpf’s narration which brings Calico to life by so aptly portraying her innocence and naivete does not have the strength to help the story achieve its suspenseful potential.
Vernoica Schwartz, Des Plaines Public Library, IL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.