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Alex Bell's Explorers at Stardust City is an undersea adventure for 10 year olds with a half-mermaid engineer, a ghost ship and a villain who steals whole places.
Ursula's legs turn into a tail the moment they touch salt water. She's also the engineer on the Blowfish, a submarine with its own skating rink and ice-cream parlour (every submarine should have one).
She and her friends Jai, Max and Genie are chasing Scarlett Sauvage, the Collector. Scarlett locks stolen places away inside snow globes. She's also got Stella, an ice princess, trapped in golden handcuffs that make her do whatever she's told. With Stella's magic, Scarlett can make brand new globes.
The plan is to free Stardust City, home of the galaxy fairies, and ask them for help. First comes a detour to a mermaid academy, a fire magician who is very sorry indeed and a sleepy pet called Pog. She's a dizard (half lizard, half dragon) and the only creature whose bite can break those cuffs.
Then the Nebula Sea refuses to let the submarine in. So the four of them hold a pearl, say a ship's name three times and land on the deck of the Jolly Rosa. The crew are ghosts. They're also pirates! Nobody had mentioned the pirates.
This book is packed with ideas. A storm stallion delivers a message in a shell. The mermaid headmistress serves seaweed-flavoured cream buns. Ursula practises her persuasive singing on a tank of puppets. Your reader gets a new marvel every few pages.
The four friends are great company too. Jai is the acting captain who loves plankton facts and hates anything that isn't regulation. Max builds robots and yawns loudly through the plankton facts. Genie makes her own hats, including a nightcap covered in knitted sharks. They bicker a lot, but they always decide the big things together.
It carries straight on from the crew's visit to Pirate Island, so a child who's read that one will settle in quickly. The opening chapters explain enough for a newcomer to follow along.
If you've got a reader who loves a fantasy world with its own rules and creatures, this is a very generous one.
If they'd like something from Alex Bell that's a little spookier, try A Most Peculiar Toy Factory. Tess Pipps takes a summer job at a toy factory that's opening again after five years shut, and every child in town is sure the toys there went bad.
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