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Turner Publishing Company - Jonathan London

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98 pages

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From best-selling author Jonathan London comes Bella Bella, the heart-pounding sequel to Desolation Canyon. Thirteen-year-olds Aaron and Lisa and their fathers and seventeen-year-old Cassidy and his dad embark on a sea kayaking trip through the Inside Passage that brings them unexpected and even terrifying adventures.

Young readers will eagerly follow Aaron’s adventures in this suspenseful page turner, as he learns to navigate a kayak, discovers another side to a bully, shares a first kiss, encounters the desperate world of human trafficking, and challenges an evil smuggler who threatens the entire group.

CHAPTER TEN: THE SEA WOLF
Cassidy swore. Lisa grabbed my arm—or did I grab hers? The Sea Wolf moved slowly against the low stars. How did they know we were here?
The smoke from our fire!
They must have seen it from miles away. Luckily the fire had long been drowned by the tide, and our kayaks were drawn up into the forest, hidden from the sea.
We held still. Silent. The boat rose and fell with the swells and motored slowly down the beach.
I was about to relax when it turned around, just beyond the surf, and the spotlight slid across the sand again.
But even if they wanted to, how could they land their fishing boat in this surf?
The answer soon came. They dropped anchor— maybe two soccer fields away down the beach and about half that far out—and lowered a dinghy from their stern deck. Three men climbed into it, and one manned the oars and pointed the small boat toward shore.
It bobbed through the surf, and for a moment I thought it would capsize. But whoever handled it knew what he was doing. When they were close enough, in the backwash of the rollers, all three men managed to scramble out and splash ashore. Above them, a bone-white moon floated toward the west.
I gasped. Each man held a weapon at the ready: one a rifle, the other two spearguns. Moonlight glinted off the metal.
Proof! I thought. Proof of what I had thought all along: these were bad guys. Smugglers. My whole body clenched up. How do you breathe when it feels like life as you know it is about to end?
When life, period, is about to end?
The three men stopped halfway up the beach, then split up. One of the speargun men headed down the beach; the other two came toward us.
The two men with spearguns flicked on flashlights at the same time, walking in opposite directions. The leader gripped his rifle, sweeping it side-to-side, sighting through an ultraviolet scope, which would make his targets glow in the dark.
Cassidy swore again, crouched down beside me. Lisa said nothing, but I could hear her grinding her teeth.
I thought of the Swiss Army knife in my pants pocket. I thought of Lisa’s pepper spray.
And I thought about how they would do against two spearguns and a rifle.
My heart raced, but time stood still.
Chapter One How Hard Can It Be?
Chapter Two Down to the Sea in Kayaks
Chapter Three First Nations
Chapter Four Wolf!
Chapter Five Dinner for a Sea Wolf
Chapter Six Gunshots at Dawn
Chapter Seven Gooey Duck Divers
Chapter Eight Pirates
Chapter Nine The Rogue of Tide Rip Pass
Chapter Ten The Sea Wolf
Chapter Eleven The Root People
Chapter Twelve The Skull
Chapter Thirteen Burial Island
Chapter Fourteen Cat and Mouse
Chapter Fifteen The Barrel of a Gun
Chapter Sixteen The Kidnappers
Chapter Seventeen The Big Knife
Chapter Eighteen Captain Evil
Chapter Nineteen Go Go Go Go!
Chapter Twenty Bella Bella
Epilogue

Sujets

Jeunesse Aventure

Action

Adventure

Bella Bella

Juvenilee Fiction

Informations

Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	09 février 2016
Nombre de lectures	7
EAN13	9781943328291
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0650€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

BELLA BELLA
Jonathan London
Illustrated by
Sean London
Text 2016 by Jonathan London Illustrations 2016 by Sean London All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: London, Jonathan, 1947- | London, Sean, illustrator.
Title: Bella Bella / written by Jonathan London ; illustrated by Sean London.
Description: Portland, Oregon : WestWinds Press, [2016] | Sequel to: Desolation Canyon. | Summary: Thirteen-year-olds Aaron and Lisa and their fathers, and seventeen-year-old Cassidy and his dad- embark on a sea kayaking trip off the coast of the Pacific Northwest that brings them unexpected and even terrifying adventures.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015024271 | ISBN 9780882409238 (pbk.), ISBN 9781943328291 (e-book), ISBN 9781943328338 (hardbound)
Subjects: | CYAC: Kayaks and kayaking- Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers- Fiction. | Northwest, Pacific- Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.L8432 Be 2016 | DDC [Fic]- dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015024271
Editor: Michelle McCann Designer: Vicki Knapton
Published by WestWinds Press An imprint of

P.O. Box 56118 Portland, Oregon 97238-6118 503-254-5591 www.graphicartsbooks.com
For Sean, Steph, Roger, Lisa, Maureen, Doug Lamb the Sailor Man, and with thanks to the people of Bella Bella .
-Jonathan London
To my mom and dad, Maureen and Jonathan, for all the bedtime stories; to my brother, Aaron, for inspiring me to be the best; and to my beautiful wife, Stephanie, for her valuable assistance, support, and love. With special thanks to Roger, Lisa, and Rowan for introducing me to the fun and adventure of island hopping in BC s wild outer central coast .
-Sean London
CONTENTS
How Hard Can It Be?
Down to the Sea in Kayaks
First Nations
Wolf!
Dinner for a Sea Wolf
Gunshots at Dawn
Gooey Duck Divers
Pirates
The Rogue of Tide Rip Pass
The Sea Wolf
The Root People
The Skull
Burial Island
Cat and Mouse
The Barrel of a Gun
The Kidnappers
The Big Knife
Captain Evil
Go Go Go Go!
Bella Bella
Epilogue
Author s Note
Discussion Questions

CHAPTER ONE
HOW HARD CAN IT BE?
We drove the windy roads over the hills to the coast and dropped a borrowed sea kayak into the shallows of Bodega Bay-the protected inner bay. The tide was out and there was no wind, and the bay was flat as glass.
Dad put on a life jacket and said, Okay, Aaron, I ll go first. Just watch how I paddle, then you can try it.
Geez, Dad, I said. How hard can it be? I stepped into the kayak and-whoosh!-it flipped over! I toppled backwards into the shallows and almost banged my head on the shore rocks.
I lay there, dazed, like a beached jellyfish.
Aaron! Dad said, grabbing my arm and pulling me up. You don t just step into a kayak. You have to bend over and hold the gunnels and slide in, without tipping the boat. And you have to wear a life jacket!
Geez! I can swim, Dad! I said. But he handed me a life jacket and I shrugged it on-unbuckled-over my sopping wet clothes. Then he helped me flip the kayak right-side up, and I tried again to climb into the kayak.

This time I squatted and placed my right foot in the center of the bottom, and held on to the sides and slipped in. No prob. Dad handed me the long, double-bladed paddle and said, You sure about this?
I gave him a thumbs-up and he shoved me out into the bay. Birds were watching me. A long-legged egret stood in the shallows and cocked its head. A lone loon-maybe a visitor from Canada-pointed his round red eye at me. And a family of ducks, black and white on the blue-gray water, stopped gliding and stared.
I took a deep breath and-holding the paddle almost vertical, like a canoe paddle-dug in.
ZWOOP !
Next thing I knew, I was hanging upside down in the water. It was surreal!
And it was cold.
The water was only about three feet deep so my head hit the crunchy bottom. I thought it was going to tear my scalp off. I swallowed salt water and gagged, and thought: What a way to die! Drowning-in two feet of water!
But the next moment and I was coughing and gagging and breathing air.
Air!
Dad waded in and flipped the boat right-side up. He looked horrified. But you could see he was fighting something, too.
He was fighting laughter.
I guess it was kinda funny. But it didn t bode well for my future at sea.

Let me back up a minute.
Last year, after surviving an awesome but also terrifying white-water rafting trip down the Green River through Desolation Canyon-with Roger and his daughter, Lisa, and Willie and his son, Cassidy-we d talked about rafting or kayaking down the Owyhee or the Snake in Idaho this year.
Change of plans, kiddo, Dad said. We re going sea kayaking off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Ten days of island hopping. Living off the sea.
I thought we were going river kayaking, Dad! How come we re going sea kayaking all of a sudden?
Roger s idea, and I think it s a good one. He found out about a ferry that stops on Vancouver Island on its way to Queen Charlotte Island, off the west coast of British Colombia. They drop you off at midnight at an island called Bella Bella on the way up. Lisa and Cassidy have done lots of sea kayaking and they re cool with it. They wanted to do something different this year.
Great, I said, like I didn t mean it. And I didn t.
I thought about how I d finally mastered white-water rafting last year and was kind of an expert now: rowing through haystack waves and around boulders and keeper holes. But later in the day, I thought about Lisa. We had grown close-and I mean like more than just friends-last year in Desolation Canyon. And now I thought: ten days! With Lisa. Running on island beaches. Playing in the surf! Sweet!
A few days ago school ended. That s when Dad gave me the news that our river trip had morphed into a sea trip in kayaks, and now this morning Dad had suggested a trial run to get ready for our trip tomorrow. We were headed to Bodega Bay, on the California coast about a half hour west of where we live.
I was used to canoeing in Spring Lake and on mild stretches of the Russian River. But I d never stepped foot in a kayak.
Dad had borrowed a one-person sea kayak from a neighbor, and I helped him strap it to the roof rack of our Toyota. I wasn t too happy about it. I d planned to see friends today. Do some tricks at the skate park in Sebastopol. Maybe buy a book for our long drive north.
But no. We needed a trial run. Dad had done a little sea kayaking when he was a young, and that was like a million years ago, but he figured it was like riding a bike. You never forget.

After flipping the kayak right-side up again, he pulled it in and told me to watch him. He d show me how it s done.
So Dad climbed in and showed me how to paddle a kayak, pulling with one hand while you push with the other, dipping the double blades in smoothly, one after the other. He made it look easy-at least here on this mirror-flat water-but I acted like I wasn t watching. It was too embarrassing.
Last year I d learned to read the river-the rapids-and how to maneuver a raft through white water. Now this was a whole new thing. In a way, it was a little like starting life all over.
In another element. The sea .
I could swim well, though rarely swam here in the ocean. I boogie-boarded some and was good at it. But everybody thinks the water here in California is warm.
Wrong! Down in southern California, yeah, but up here, north of San Francisco, no. It s the Humboldt Current flowing down from the Arctic, and it s cold.
How much colder would it be up north, off the Pacific Northwest coast?
Freezing. That was my guess.
That was my dread.
I thought about Lisa and Cassidy, both experienced sea kayakers. And I thought about me floundering in the ocean, like a baby pelican with a broken wing.
Now I just stood there-still dripping wet-on the rock-and-sandy shore of the smooth inner bay, and half watched Dad gliding like a swan through water.
My mouth tasted like salt.
It tasted a little like fear.
CHAPTER TWO
DOWN TO THE SEA IN KAYAKS
I did take a spin in the kayak-with Dad calling out stuff like Don t dig your blade in so deep! -and after awhile I got pretty okay at it. A nervous kind of okay.
The next day, on Highway 5 driving north toward the great Northwest (as Dad calls it), Dad told me a little more about Bella Bella, and the whole trip. He said we d be getting on the ferry in Port Hardy at around sunset, because that was when the ferry stopped on its way north from the city of Vancouver.
So why don t we just get on it in Vancouver? I asked.
This way s quicker, Dad said. And cheaper. Driving s fast up the coast of Vancouver Island. And I think you re gonna love Bella Bella, and all those tiny islands up there. I ve never been, but I Googled photos of the area, and read a book about the native seagoing cultures up there. It will be a real adventure, kiddo.
It sounded okay, but I said, I still don t see why we couldn t just go rafting again, or river kayaking, like you promised.
Dad shook his head. I never promised, he said. He made a deep sigh, and kept driving, eyes straight forward, gripping the steering wheel with both hands.
So I picked up my book, and started reading ag