Explorer Academy – The Tiger’s Nest

Trudi Trueit's The Tiger's Nest is an Explorer Academy adventure for 8 year olds in which Cruz finally gets his hands on the submarine controls.

What happens

He's flying back to Orion after the winter break, held up by snow and a broken plane, and arrives just as the sub carrying his team heads out to the reef. Luckily the new aquatics director, Jaz, turns it round. Then she hands him the joysticks.

So Cruz squeezes through a gap in the coral (gripping so hard his hands go numb), meets a blacktip reef shark and a green turtle as wide as a monster truck tyre, and docks the sub on his very first dive. His reward is a bucket of lemonade over the head. It's a tradition, apparently!

That's the feel of the opening chapters. It's school on a ship, and school is FUN. Sunday afternoons are Funday, and this week it's robotics.

Cruz's group builds Planet Pup, a toy for Hubbard the dog that can be a ball, a stick or a flying disc. It goes completely haywire and smashes the glass in the room. Emmett's team invents a robot egg to guard sea turtle nests, which sets off so many egg jokes that Sailor screams into a cushion.

Underneath the fun is the hunt. This time the clue from his mum's hologram is "the third time's the charm", and Cruz digs out a tiny crown charm engraved with a word nobody can find in any dictionary. Is it a code? Which one? The friends start shifting the alphabet along, letter by letter, and your reader can try it with them.

There's a quieter thread too. A warning says one of the explorers is a spy, and Cruz isn't sure who to trust (even the girl he likes). Far away in London, the villains are making plans of their own.

It's worth saying this is the fifth book and it leans on everything before it. Cruz's mum is a big, sometimes sad presence, and one night ends with him and Lani in tears over what the cipher might cost. A reader who's new to Cruz will get much more from starting at The Nebula Secret.

What to read next

If your reader's the one who cracks the code first, try The Explorer's Code next. Charlie turns every name he sees into a secret alphabet, while his big sister Anna just wants to find the hidden corners of a huge old house.