In a year of mostly cancelled book events and shuttered brick & mortar bookstores, I got a little bit of good news regarding my book, Hostile Territory, in the Anchorage Newspaper. It was chosen as a favorite book for 2020.
Below is the text of the article regarding Hostile Territory:
“Hostile Territory”: By Paul Greci. Imprint. 352 pages, 2020. $17.99.
Food is on the minds of the four teenagers who find themselves thrust into a survival situation after an earthquake wipes out the leadership camp they’re attending in Paul Greci’s latest novel “Hostile Territory.” What begins as a survival tale, with the kids trying to reach safety from a remote Alaska location, morphs into a political thriller, as they learn there’s a lot more going on than just a natural disaster. Greci is emerging as the state’s best author of young adult fiction. An educator who targets kids in the age range when many quit reading, he keeps them engrossed with a fast-moving plot and plenty of cliffhangers. It’s a formula that will keep adults turning pages as well.
It has been my life’s work as an educator and a writer to get reluctant readers to open a book and keep turning the pages. My first book, Surviving Bear Island, was a Junior Library Guild Selection in the category that’s guaranteed to engage even the most reluctant of readers.
While I hope that my stories will engage avid as well as reluctant readers, when I write I keep that population of struggling and reluctant teen readers I worked with for much of my teaching career front and center. Here’s a link to a post on my thoughts about engaging struggling and reluctant readers.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection and Hostile Territory (Macmillan Jan. 28, 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020. Forthcoming is Follow the River (Move Books 2021) . You can order all of Paul’s books here.
Northwriter 