Explorers at Pirate Island

Alex Bell's Explorers at Pirate Island is an undersea adventure for 9 year olds about four young explorers, a half-mermaid among them, and a very small pirate.

What happens

Ursula Jellyfin grows a tail whenever her legs touch the sea. She and her friends from the Ocean Squid Explorers' Club are crossing the ocean in their submarine, the Blowfish, on a mission nobody sent them on.

A villain called the Collector has been stealing places and trapping them in magical snow globes. She's taken their whole explorers' club. She's also holding some kidnapped children, and one of them is Max's little sister, Jada.

So the crew are heading for Pirate Island. Jai is the captain and knows every rule by heart (he got one hundred per cent in a submarine exam, he'll tell you). His sister Genie makes brilliantly silly hats and has a shadow kraken called Bess. Max builds robots and breaks rules for fun.

Then they meet Captain Zara Silver, a pirate fairy a few inches tall, with a parrot who mostly shouts pirate curses. Jai's horrified. Explorers don't work with pirates! But her tiny fleet turns a whole galleon's crew into hamsters in twenty minutes, so maybe she's worth having around.

It's a proper romp. There are water horses, a mermaid city of shells and pearls, and a deck full of pirate hamsters. The world is stuffed with ideas, and the teasing between the friends keeps it light.

Jai only has one arm, by the way, and it's simply part of who he is. That's rather nice to see.

It's worth saying this isn't where the explorers' story begins. It opens partway through a big adventure, so a reader new to the series might need a chapter to catch up. Ursula's explorer dad has also died, which comes up as backstory.

What to read next

Pirate fans could try Calista Chase in Blackbeard's Treasure next. Calista wakes up locked in the brig of Blackbeard's own ship, and has to think fast when the plank comes out.