‘Weirdos’: Up From the Swamp

Laguna Beach author Theodore Taylor first mentioned the Great Dismal Swamp in his 1975 young adult novel “Teetoncey and Ben O’Neal.”

“I used to go fishing up in there with my dad,” said Taylor, who grew up five miles from the massive swamp that spans the North Carolina and Virginia border. “It’s a spooky place. At the time I thought, ‘Someday I’ll do the swamp story.’ ”

Taylor, the author of more than 20 books for young people, has finally written his swamp story.

“The Weirdo” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; $15.95) is the story of a 17-year-old boy who is terribly disfigured in a fire. Not wanting to face the public, he retreats into a swamp that has the largest concentration of black bears in the country.

“It’s an ecological suspense story, if there is such a category,” said Taylor, explaining that the boy develops a relationship with the bears and when a five-year moratorium on bear hunting is lifted the boy and a girl he meets take on the job of stopping the hunters.

“Murder is involved, however,” Taylor adds.

The book, for readers aged 12 and up, was praised by Publisher’s Weekly as “an eloquent debate pitting human and animal rights against each other.”

“The Weirdo” is the second Taylor book published this year. “Tuck Triumphant,” the sequel to his popular, award-winning novel for young people “The Trouble with Tuck,” was published by Doubleday in March.

In addition, paperback reprints of six of his previous books also were published in recent months, including “Air Raid--Pearl Harbor! (The Story of December 7, 1941)” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; $4.95)

Says Taylor, a former movie studio press agent whose first book was published in 1954: “I’ve never had this many titles--six reprints and two hardbacks--in one year.”