Rating: 
Summary: Summerland
Review: Summerland was quite a book. It's full of fantasy, lore, adventure, mystery, and excitement. As soon as you begin reading stopping will be impossible, for it will hook you with a hook that is so sharp and so curved, giving it up would be like letting your life go. It begins with a boy named Ethan Feld. He's a Little League baseball player, and he's just about the worst player in the whole history of baseball. But soon the worst baseball player of all will rise into something much better than them all. His adventure begins when some ferishers (little people from Native American lore) choose him for their hero. But what am I supposed to do, he wonders. He soon finds out that he is supposed to save the world from an infamous Coyote who plots to destroy the universe. He meets many amazing creatures along the way, and chalenging baseball games. He soon rises from the worst baseball player to one of the best, and he saves the world. It just goes to show you that, anyone can do almost anything as long as they are determined to.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Author Gone Bad
Review: As the other reviewers mention, this book is over written. Perhaps there is a marvelous story that Chabon is trying to tell us in Summerland, but I was hard pressed to find it. Telling the tale of a mystical island in the Northwest, this book fails to integrate a sports story, fantasy/tall tale of the Holes variety, with that of a family drama. There is superior work in each genre and the interested young reader should turn their attention to the superior and more accessible books found with-in those genres. The ambitious young adult reader should read Chabon's adult literature, much of which is truly excellent.
Rating:
Summary: renewed interest in baseball
Review: I have read Mysteries of Pittsburgh and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and also enjoy fantasy novels so I was excited when I saw this book. I think it would take an older child to endure the length of the book (although Harry Potter Books are quite long). It made me have a new appreciation for baseball again having thought it an old tired game. Each new challenge is interesting and incorporates many wonderful folk tale characters.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated
Review: I loved Kavalier&Clay. I enjoy the Harry Potter books. I love books about baseball. This story tries hard but has little cohesion, and never develops a reason to love these characters. It reads as if Chabon just starting writing one morning and wrote 700 pages. Then turned it into his editor without rereading it. I had hoped it would be a book I could read my son when he's about ten years old, but it's too confusing and convoluted for kids to enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: My opinion on Summerland by Michael Chabon
Review: I got the book Summerland as a gift. This person who got me the book, is one who I love and respect dearly. She read in an article that Michael Chabon had written this book and would have read when he was 11 year old, close to my age. I am usually a fast reader, so I thought that this was going to be easy and that I could finish it quickly. We were going to Hawaii soon so I decided to take Summerland with me. When I started reading the book, it took me half of an hour to read 13 pages. Since I respect this person, I tried and tried to get into it. On page 100, which took me several hours to get there, I told the person that I could not get into the book and that maybe I should try another. The person asked me to try a little farther; that maybe it was the kind of book that is not so good at the beginning and gets better in the middle or end. Knowing that, I read a little farther. A month later, I was on page 323. I STILL could not get into it. I talked with the person who got me the book and she said that it was ok to stop. A month after that, a magazine came out with a list of books. Most over-rated book-- Summerland by Michael Chabon.
Rating:
Summary: A fun read, but disappointing in a lot of ways
Review: Having read and loved Kavalier and Clay, I was hoping, early in the book, Chabon would be trying to make another stab at creating a magical realist America (there is even a character named Buendia). Although I liked the book overall, I was a little annoyed when it descended into pure fantasy of a decent, but not exceptional sort. Everything seemed considerably more interesting before the booked switched from something reminisicent of Marquez to something reminiscent of the entire fantasy section of the bookstore. Also, seemed a little long and dense for a kid's book. That being said, it's a nice, light read, and good for any Chabon fans.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this book!
Review: I absolutely loved this book. You should read it too. It is about baseball and magic and includes mythical creatures such as Sasquatch. The main characters are Ethan Feld, Jennifer Rideout and (definitely), Coyote. If you have not read this book, I have three words for you. READ THIS BOOK!!!
Rating:
Summary: Alright but I was expecting a bit more
Review: The title says it all. Summerland was good don't get me wrong, I never lost interest in it but I was expecting more from an author who had just won a Pulitzer. But hey, you can't win 'em all right. Summerland is about a boy on a small island who has a father entranced by baseball. But the boy is not great at the game and one day as he wonders far from the diamond and notices a strange little creature. He follows it and is soon faced with the task of saving their world. Once again I thought it was good, but if you want a really astounding novel, read The Voyage by Philip Caputo.
Rating: 
Summary: It's OK to stop in the middle of this one!
Review: I turned to these customer reviews in the middle (well, the first quarter, to be honest) just to make sure I wasn't totally missing something. This is such a disappointment! I really enjoyed Chabon's Kavalier & Klay, but even that took forever to plod through because of his unfortunate need to populate his worlds with almost excruciating detail. But in Summerland, I just find this over-detailing just makes the whole thing grind to a halt. I read, and enjoy, books for younger readers, too, so I wasn't turned off by that. I'm a baseball nut, too, especially the philosophy of the game and its history, but even all these tantalizing details don't bring this story to life. There are many moments when the writing itself is wonderful, but if this book hadn't been written by Chabon, I don't think it would have raised a buzz at all.
Rating:
Summary: Half Baked
Review: Soon after the theatrical release of the first installment of the Lord of the Rings movies, I asked some friends what they thought of the film. 'Aw man, we hated it,' they replied, 'after an hour and a half all we wanted was for that little kid to die.' Shocked at this answer (which comes close to heresy in my mind), I continued to question them to find out what exactly they disliked about the film and it came down to one thing ' the character arcs were not completed by the end of the film. My friends were dissatisfied because the movie followed the books by developing the characters and the plot slowly and thoroughly when what they wanted was action followed by resolution. I found I was dissatisfied with Michael Chabon's new novel, Summerland, in the opposite manner ' it did not develop the characters or the plot but just rushed at break neck speed to the conclusion.
Chabon writes, 'But when a mind like your father's falls into the grip of one of Coyote's deep puzzles, there's not much a rude creature such as my ownself can do.' Chabon uses this language to describe the fate of one of his characters who, after toiling long and hard on the elaborate plans of the villain Coyote, turns into 'a flat, hollow man.' But Chabon could have easily used the same language to describe his own fate in writing the book.
It is clear from the beginning that the Chabon has a whale of a story on his hands as he attempts to intertwine his love of baseball and American mythology into a fantastical tale of a young man coming of age. The tale itself, as one can imagine it in its nebulous state, is wonderful. It tells of the explorations of one Ethan Feld, a young boy who is the worst baseball player on his native Clam Island, WA, as he attempts to save his father and the universe. In order to save this universe, which is a complex maze of overlapping tree branches of the Four Worlds, Ethan leaves the comforts of home and travels to strange and exciting lands. On these travels, he meets up with (of course) eight other teammates and they along the way learn to play baseball 'the right way' together in order to beat the evil Coyote. All of this combines for what should have been a terrific story.
Unfortunately it becomes equally clear throughout the novel that Chabon falls prey to the sheer magnitude and glory of this tale as it moves much more like an epic than a novel. The story jumps from one exciting event to the next while the author spends very little time developing the individual characters ' as often happens in a movie; and that is my final indictment of the novel. It develops (as it is told) as if the author was much more interested in writing a screen play than a novel. His main group of characters, Ethan's baseball team named the ShadowTails, are woefully underdeveloped as it seems that Chabon is focused on moving them from one tall tale to the next. There are nine companions on the team, not to mention peripheral characters whom they encounter, yet for long stretches they seem to fade out of the story. This is acceptable in a film where they are still visibly in the story but it leaves the reader feeling disjointed as he or she must continually imagine what the other characters are doing as well as what their motivation could be for doing it.
In the end I give this book a two star rating because there is evidence enough the story could be great, but Chabon is too good of an author to underdeveloped it the way he does. If he wanted to write a movie (which he has stated he enjoys and is seen in that two of his previous novels' Wonder Boys and The Amazing Adventure of Kavelier and Clay, were adapted for the big screen) then he should have written it as such; but if he wanted to write this story as a novel, may I suggest he take heed of the method of the likes of Tolkein and due justice to the entire story by giving it due detail.
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