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2002
finalists.

2002 Hackmatack

Children's Choice Book Award/Prix littéraire - le choix de jeunes

The first in a series of novels about the adventures of Dylan Maples, this action-packed suspense story is set on Ireland's Eye - a small island off the coast of Newfoundland. Twelve-year-old Dylan and his parents are taking an ocean kayaking trip to the island - it is Dylan's first kayaking trip and he has worked hard to prepare and prove he is up to the challenge. It is something more than just the thrill of the journey, however, that has motivated Dylan. Ever since he heard his parents planning the trip to Ireland's Eye, something inside Dylan began to mysteriously draw him to the island and he knew he had to go.

Dylan's grandfather has recently died and Dylan misses him terribly, but thinking about the trip to Ireland's Eye provides a distraction. What sort of spell is being cast by this abandoned ghost town of an island out in the North Atlantic? The journey to the island has its dangerous moments, and Dylan has begun to have frightening dreams involving his dead grandfather. To add to his fears, a mysterious old man warns him not to go to the island but an unknown force keeps pulling Dylan toward it.

Readers 10 and up won't want to put this spine-tingling tale down until they, like Dylan, discover the secret of Ireland's Eye.