Readership: Young readers age 9+
Genre: Fantasy Adventure
From the inside cover:
Thatcher Hill is bored stiff. Fake mermaids and strange mummies don’t seem as exciting when you have to dust them every day–but that’s just what Thatcher is stuck doing for his summer job at his uncle’s seaside museum of curiosities.
Then a mysterious girl steals an artifact from the museum, and suddenly Thatcher’s on an adventure that takes him from the top of the Ferris wheel to the bottom of the sea. He soon learns that she is a princess of the lost city of Atlantis. Her people have been cursed by an evil witch to drift at sea all winter and wash up on shore each summer for an even more terrible fate–working the midway games and food stands on the boardwalk. Can Thatcher help save them before he, too, succumbs to the witch’s curse?
I bought this book for my ocean-mad son, even though he’s only just turned 6 and is likewise only just learning to read, but as soon as I saw the title I knew it would be a hit–and it is! While I do leave out all of the scarier “big kid” content when I read it to him, he loves all the weird and wonderful variations on sea creatures–the jelly boys and lobster men, and especially the kelp people.
I love the subtle and witty humour that Greg Van Eekhout brings to the story in the form of his main character, Thatcher, who is just that little bit cheeky and dorky in a deliberate and endearing way. Right from the start Thatcher describes himself as “more jokey than punch-kicky. Jokes are my armor.” But as the story progresses we see Thatcher come out of his shell more and more to the point where he is incredibly brave and determined in the end.
Since patience isn’t one of Mr 6′s strong points, I have to admit that we read the ending first because “we” couldn’t wait to find out about the squid (which only appears at the end of the story). But that was okay because I’d read the story first myself to make sure the content would be okay for a younger child (and to make mental notes of which bits to skip).
This is a really great read for boys and girls–but especially boys–and I can’t wait for the day when I pass by my son’s bedroom at night to see him sneak-reading some more pages of this one with a flashlight under his blanket.
