World of Adventure 18 – Flight of the Hawk

Gary Paulsen's Flight of the Hawk is a fast superhero adventure for 10 year olds about a boy who finds out he can heal from anything.

What happens

It's the eighteenth World of Adventure book, and it starts in a very sad place. Andy Hawkes is fourteen and his parents have just been killed by a driver who didn't stop. He's sent off in a limousine to live with a grandfather he's only met once.

Grandpa Hawkes seems frail and rather strange. Except he isn't either of those things. It's all an act to fool the criminals who want his inventions, and his whole top floor is a secret laboratory.

There's a rocket pack that runs on a tiny battery and a bookcase that swings open onto hidden passages. And there's a bubbling green potion he thinks might make old people young again.

Then two men from a cleaning company burst in. In the fight Andy lands on the needle full of potion, and afterwards his body starts doing impossible things. So what do you do when nothing can hurt you? If you're Andy, you order a feathery costume with golden wings and become the Hawk!

It reads like a comic book. The chapters are short, the gadgets are brilliant (a Gloop Gun that sticks villains to the wall) and there's a lot of fun in Henry, the very proper butler who calls him Master Hawkes.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There's a fair bit of violence for this shelf. Andy's grandfather is killed during that break-in, Andy is shot and falls from a terrace, and he even cuts his own finger with a kitchen knife to prove it heals. There are guns and a punch that knocks out his teeth (which grow back). Andy is also fourteen, a good few years older than the readers it's shelved for.

So it's probably not the one for a child who'd be upset by a parent dying. But if your reader loves superhero stories and fast action, and takes the scary bits in their stride, they'll whizz through it.

What to read next

If they enjoy the secret lab and the gadgets, try Time Benders from the same series next. Two twelve-year-olds win a trip to meet some of the country's top scientists, and one of them packs his latest experiment in his bag.