Book review, Hidden In The Fog by Kristi D. Holl

Hidden In the Fog

I found that a good book for the adolescent to read is “Hidden in the Fog” by Kristi D. Holl.  This book teaches real life problems that we have to face every day.  This book is about a thirteen-year-old girl named Nikki who has endured many trials in her life.  One of these trials was her mother getting into a serious car wreck.  Her mother had to spend a couple of years in bed while Nikki had to work and take care of the home front.  Her dad was too busy working at a factory to pay off some of the hospital bills due to the mother’s surgery.  They finally ended up buying a boat called the Blairsburg Riverboat and started boarding families that were low income to survive.  Nikki worked doing maid jobs around the boat.  She did not do what the other kids her age did.  Most of the other kids played around while she was worried about every single family affair.  Nikki finally started realizing that she could not solve all of the problems in the world.  She then started her journey taking care of herself and having some time to do the things that she never thought she could do.

I thought this book would be very beneficial for children and teenagers to read.  This book is filled with so many of the issues that kids face today.  One of the issues is the lack of being motivated to help.  Many kids don’t carry enough responsibility in many ways.  They want to let their parents do most of the work, including cleaning and all of the other minor stuff around the house.  This is a thirteen year old girl that is being responsible.  I also think that if you flip it the other way, that there are a lot of teenagers that are doing too many things like Nikki and not having enough time to do some of the things that they should do while they are young because when they get older they will have to be responsible all of the time.

This story is a good lesson for how to balance your time and priorities.  Adults can go overboard one way or the other and kids are no exception.  Sometimes it is good to read something like this and know that there are other people who do experience really challenging times.  I like this book because even though it is a book that was written in 1998, a lot of the same problems they had back then still happen today.

Even reading about Nikki’s family members, her dad and her mother become good characters that one can learn from.  For instance, Nikki’s dad used to work so long the he didn’t have time for his family when his wife was sick.  Later in the book, Nikki’s dad gets offered a really good paying job, but it would take a lot of the time away from his family.  He turned it down because he realized that there were more important things other than money, like spending time with his family.  The mother having to be in a wheelchair the rest of her life looks at life in a positive way. She learns how to cope with her disability after her bad car accident. 

I thought this was a really good book, inspiring and one that a child or even a grown up could even learn from. I would recommend this book to anybody.