Written by: Michael Selden
Publisher: Woodland Park Press LLC
Paperback: 160 pages
Ages: 8-12
ISBN-10: 1940640008
ISBN-13: 978-1940640006
About the Book
He was the sole survivor when his village was massacred. The boy spends his days alone in the woods feeling more of a kinship with animals than with the villagers who took him in but never really accepted him.
“To The People, he was an unexceptional looking boy, not especially tall, nor obviously talented. Few paid much attention to him if they thought of him at all. But the boy could move through the forest in a way that seemed almost magical – and he could run very, very fast.
For the boy, running was what was best in life. He sometimes ran across the wide open pastures to the west, even the wild animals might pause to look on at this strange human; to watch the lithe, smooth motion as he hurtled the rocks that seemed to grow from the soil. But it was in the woods where his talent was really special. He could run amazingly fast and in absolute silence through the densest forest without slowing. His body seemed to defy gravity as he slid between trees and through brush as though it were not there – a ghost. The boy saw and used his environment in three dimensions rather than the two that most people and animals perceived. This expanded vision provided him options the others didn’t notice, and he was as comfortable ascending and moving along paths high in the trees as he was on the ground.
There was a freedom and joy in his stride that belied his demeanor in the village. Nothing in the world was better than to run; and there was no place as special to run as the forest. It was his greatest pleasure and could lift the weight of his long sorrow like nothing else. No one could run like the boy, and no one but the boy knew this – it was his most important secret.”
THE BOY WHO RAN is a Middle Grade novel about a native American orphan finally attempting to find his place in the world. The story is set 6000 years ago in the mid-archaic period of North America.
