Raptor (Paperback)

Zack’s father is a paleontologist so Zack knows dinosaurs. He never expected to hatch one, have it imprint on him, and then meet its terrible ferocious mother in all her gruesome glory. “Zack’s lungs filled with the wet, stinking graveyard breath of the raptor. Hot, yellow froth drooled down onto him from the spray of ginzu fangs that jutted from the raptor’s gums . . .” Paul Zindel takes us on a thrill ride into the bowels of the mountains in Utah as Zack and his friend, a Native American young woman named Uta, search for the hatchling and a herd of dinosaurs. They encounter unimaginable creatures and their nightmare trip into the dark regions under the mountains culminates in an encounter with nature’s proof that terrible lizards do exist.

Paul Zindel won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for drama for “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon-Marigolds.” As the author of The Pigman and many other books for young adults, he is one of the most important contributors to young adult literature. Both Loch and The Doomstone, the previous books in his thriller genre, have been New York Pubilc Library Recommended Books for the Reluctant YA Reader and Books for the Teenage.