Book Review on Red Kayak by Priscilla Cummings

By: Annabelle Ma

Red Kayak is about a thirteen-year-old boy named Brady who lives by the Chesapeake Bay, where he goes crabbing and fishing often. But one day at school, disaster strikes when his neighbor’s kayak capsizes inside of the bay. Immediately, Brady comes to the rescue by attempting to save their young son Ben (whom Brady has a special relationship with).

Later, Brady discovers the horrendous truth about who committed this harmful attack. As he finds clues, he faces a moral dilemma about what he should do with his evidence.

Red Kayak is an amazing book overall. The author keeps the reader captivated by making them wonder “what will happen next?” or “will Brady end up finding out who committed this crime?”. The details in this book are evocative, enabling readers to visualize settings, people, and scenarios vividly. The book also delivers a clear message: ALWAYS do the right thing.

While there are a lot of positive things about this book, there are some things that I thought weren’t amusing. For example, after Ben died from the disaster, Brady was stressed because he thought it was his fault. Even though this thought process was important to include in this book, I feel that the author overemphasized it. In total the author spent around 50 pages explaining Brady’s stress and anxiety over his situation which I felt was a bit too much.

Overall, I recommend this book for kids in grades 3-5 because of the difficult language use in some parts of it. This also might be of interest to you if you enjoy reading interesting realistic fiction books.

For these reasons, I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars.