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    The Goats
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    The Goats
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    The Goats
    Ebook172 pages3 hours

    The Goats

    By Brock Cole

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Harmless camp pranks can quickly spiral out of control, but they also provide a perfect opportunity for two social outcasts to overcome and triumph.

    A boy and a girl are stripped and marooned on a small island for the night. They are the "goats." The kids at camp think it's a great joke, just a harmless old tradition. But the goats don't see it that way. Instead of trying to get back to camp, they decide to call home. But no one can come and get them. So they're on their own, wandering through a small town trying to find clothing, food, and shelter, all while avoiding suspicious adults—especially the police. The boy and the girl find they rather like life on their own. If their parents ever do show up to rescue them, the boy and the girl might be long gone. . . .

    The Goats is a 1987 New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJun 22, 2010
    ISBN9781466803442
    Unavailable
    The Goats
    Author

    Brock Cole

    Brock Cole was born a year before the Second World War in a small town in Michigan. Because of his father's work, his family moved frequently, but he never regarded these relocations as a hardship. "I thought of myself as something of an explorer, even though my explorations never took me very far. I had a deep and intimate acquaintance with woodlots, creeks, lakes, back streets, and alleys all over the Midwest." He attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and received a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. After teaching philosophy for several years at the University of Wisconsin, he began writing and illustrating books for children. "I had always wanted to write, and I loved to draw. I had small children, who were a wonderful audience. Children's books seemed a perfect fit." His first book, The King at the Door, was published in 1979. Among his other picture books are The Winter Wren, The Giant's Toe, and Alpha and the Dirty Baby. He now lives in Buffalo, New York, where his wife, Susan, teaches at the State University of New York. His sons both live in Athens, Georgia. Joshua teaches French history at the University of Georgia, and Tobiah is a painter and works as a waiter. Joshua is married to Kate Tremel, a potter and a teacher, and they have a little boy named Lucas. Brock Cole's acclaimed first novel, The Goats, was published in 1987. It is set in the Michigan countryside of his childhood and captures the story of two loners' struggle for self-identity and inner strength after being made the targets of a cruel prank. In a Horn Book Magazine editorial, Anita Silvey wrote: "The Goats reaffirms my belief that children's literature is alive and thriving." Betsy Hearne, editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, lauded The Goats as "one of the most important books of the decade." In Brock Cole's second novel, Celine, sixteen-year-old Celine, a budding artist, is living with her young stepmother, only six years older than Celine herself, while her father is teaching in Europe. Celine dreams of escaping this situation, but she becomes involved with caring for Jake, her seven-year-old neighbor, who is going through his parents' divorce. Since he began his writing career, Brock Cole and his wife have traveled a good deal, living for one year in Washington and another in Germany, as well as spending frequent summers in Greece and Turkey. "To be honest, I simply tag along after Susan. It's her research which takes us all over the place. I enjoy it immensely, though. There's something about sitting down to work at a rickety table in a strange city that clears the head. It's the best thing for a writer, or for this one, anyway."

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    Reviews for The Goats

    3.5/5

    83 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      At a summer camp, a unbelievably cruel prank is played on one girl and one boy. Their fellow campers, boys on one side of the camp and girls on the other, take their victim to an island near the camp, strip them both naked, and leave them abandoned there for the night. In the morning, they will go back and get them. The author doesn't tell how old the kids are, but based on a couple of sentences describing their bodies (what stage of physical puberty they were in), I imagined them to be 11 or 12 years old.The boy and girl find each other. Needless to say, they are not eager to return to this camp. They manage to get off the island during the night and make it shore elsewhere. They decide they don't want to be found.What follows is part survivalist story as the boy and girl struggle to eat, find safe warm places to sleep, and avoid capture by anybody. But what made this book so superb was the quickly developing relationship between the two kids. They start out naked, then in improvised clothing, and then in stolen clothes. (I assume this book is frequently banned or challenged because of this nakedness. Neither the author nor the characters dwell on this, and at no point in the book do the kids have sex, or do anything sexual; but there are a few adult characters in the story who assume otherwise.) I was empathetic with these kids (as a child I was often the victim of bullying or at least the butt of mean jokes) and I loved the way the story played out.
    • 3/5
      An awkward journey of discovery.
    • 5/5
      Two misfits help each other through the torment of summer camp. I loved this story.
    • 5/5
      What a pleasure it is watching the shunned children get revenge on the mean kids.
    • 1/5
      This is an ALA recommended book, and usually I like their suggestions, but I really, really didn't like this book. I found it boring and slow, and even the font was aggravating. Not often that I give a book such a low rating, but this really, really did nothing for me, which is surprising because I liked the premise of the book. It just was not a good read for me. Would not recommend it to anyone. A boy and a girl are each marooned on an island as a camp prank, and they escape before their tormentors can return the next day and take them back to camp. They decide to go on the run, and cause the camp a bit of anxiety about their disappearance.
    • 3/5
      I read this book primarily because it has been one of the most challenged books in American libraries, and I'm always interested in reading challenged and banned books. The Goats tells the story of two teens, referred to mainly as "the boy" and "the girl" through most of the book, who are the victims of a cruel and humiliating camp prank. They are stripped and left for the night on a small island, a camp tradition that involves choosing two "goats." In a courageous move, however, they choose to make their way off of the island and disappear. I think that I would have appreciated the book more if I had read it as a teenager. The sense of isolation, hopelessness and embarrassment which I remember so well from my own adolescence were very well written, and tempered with the tentative happiness from finding a friend who understands you. The book does show its age, primarily through cultural references like breakdancing teens, but the story itself still feels relevant to me. Teens who don't mind reading older books would likely enjoy this story of two misfits searching for their place in the world.As far as the banning/challenging is concerned, it seems to me that the likely censorship premise centers around nudity. Since both teens were stripped and abandoned, they spend a large portion of the beginning of the book nude or in makeshift clothing. In addition, their predicament leads them to become very close very quickly, often holding hands and sleeping together for warmth. The nudity and closeness are not, in my opinion, sensationalist, casual, or really all that sexual in nature. I found The Goats to be entirely appropriate for its teenage audience.
    • 4/5
      I have learned not to underestimate “young adult” or “children’s” books. So far, almost all of them I have read so far have been amazing—many of them more poignant and thought-provoking than most “adult” novels I have come across.This one wasn’t as deep as books such as The Chocolate War or Fade, but it is still not one to be underestimated. It shows how some kids can be so thoughtless and cruel, with no forethought of how their actions might affect others. This story revolves around a pair of teenagers—actually, no, I think they might be pre-teens…--who are victims of a yearly “prank” at a summer camp. They’re confused and scared and angry… and they don’t want the other campers to win. So they rely on themselves instead of waiting for help from the adults who were supposed to be watching over them.It’s touching, seeing these kids form a relationship under such circumstances, watching them do things they normally would never do in order to feed and clothe themselves. Good story.
    • 5/5
      This should be required reading for every kid going to summer camp or working at a summer camp. The two main characters are great characters.