After struggling to grit-my-teeth-and-bear-it my way through this book's casual racism ("magical Natives" trope, anyone?) and just shy of racist "country" turns of phrase (I literally had to put the book down at one point to go check the origin of the phrase "in a coon's age" to see if Wallace was literally talking about raccoons or if there was a straight-up slur in this children's book...), I give up. I made it to the scene in which the two little boys get into a pages-long fist fight over whether or not one of them is "chicken".

He kept slugging at Gary. Every once in a while, he felt the soft "give" as his knuckles slammed into Gary's stomach. [...] Brian tried to throw him off--only every time he raised his head, Gary'd hit it, making Brian's face bounce against the pavement. [...] Now he was on top. He started pounding Gary in the face. He'd punch him, then wait until Gary's head had time to bounce against the road before he hit him again.

The scene lasts for multiple pages and finally ends with the two boys literally falling into a bunch of shit, and if that's not an apt metaphor, then I don't know what is.

When it comes to the casual racism alone, I could probably convince myself to push on and keep reading. When it comes to the violent displays of childhood toxic masculinity alone, I could probably convince myself to push on and keep reading. But I'm not going to struggle against multiple different fronts of toxic bullshit just to read a children's adventure story. Neither of these issues should even be in a children's book in the first place.

I'm quite content to just leave this book back in the 80s where it belongs, thanks.