Dolphins at Daybreak

Dolphins at Daybreak is Mary Pope Osborne's underwater one, and for a 7 year old who loves sea creatures it is a treat.

What happens

Jack and Annie wake up having had the same dream. Morgan le Fay is waiting for them, and the magic tree house is back in the woods.

She has a job. She wants them to become Master Librarians so they can gather books for Camelot, and the way in is four riddles. This book is the first of them.

The riddle asks about something rough and grey as rock with great beauty hidden inside. The book Morgan hands them is called Ocean Guide. Off they go.

They land on a coral reef, which is why the ground under the tree house is pink. Then Annie finds a strange machine sitting half in the water and wants a teeny peek inside.

You can guess the rest. She presses a few keys. The hatch has already shut. The mini-sub slides off the reef and dives.

What follows is the lovely part. Coral shaped like deer antlers and lettuce leaves. A clam as big as a footstool. A stingray that looks like a giant pancake with a tail. Two dolphins push their noses against the glass and Annie names them both before Jack can object.

Jack looks everything up in the guidebook and writes lists, which is how the real facts get in without anyone noticing. Nearly 5,000 kinds of fish live around a reef. Scientists who study the sea are called oceanographers.

Then he opens the ship's log on the sub's computer and finds out why it was left on the reef in the first place. Cracks in the hull. Cannot be fixed. Waiting for a helicopter to take it to a junkyard.

So they are a long way down in a broken submarine, and there is still a riddle to solve.

A note on the scary bits. Eight arms come out from behind a sea plant and a giant octopus takes hold of the window with two rows of suckers. There is a shark in here as well. Neither goes on for long, but if being shut in underwater is your reader's particular fear, this one sits right on it.

If you've got a reader who wants a proper adventure and real animal facts in the same short book, this pair take some beating. Annie does something reckless, Jack panics and researches, and it works out because of both.

What to read next

If the sea is the draw rather than the tree house, have a look at Dark Day in the Deep Sea next.