Eddie Proffit lost everything. In the same week both his father and his best friend died. As his best friend comes back as a ghost and “haunts” him by giving Eddie advice, he finds condolence in a book written by an author whose other books were banned. He did not choose, however, to read it, as it was assigned. Now the Reverend Tarter is trying to get the book banned and Eddie will have to do some serious detective work to beat Tarter’s allies on the school board.
This review will be from two points of view, that of the fantasy fan and that of the realistic fiction fan. I am both. From the perspective of the fantasy fan, the book was well written, but not very exiting. The only actions besides verbal ones were when both of the people died. In retrospect, the book had great characters, but not as many plot twists as I would have liked. However, in my individual opinion, this book was great. I loved the fact that the author, Chris Crutcher, put himself into the book. This book doesn’t really talk about mature issues, but it mentions them quite frequently. The Sledding Hill also has a large vocabulary, so you need a good reading level. I thought the last chapter was awesome, but the very last few paragraphs were hard to understand. For the fantasy fans—skip over this. For the realistic fiction fans—buy it and read it 3 times. This is my fourth favorite book of all time!
Rating (0 - 10 scale): 10
Reviewer Age: 11
Reviewed by: JMc
