Shark Adventure

Anthony McGowan's Shark Adventure is a South Pacific adventure for 10 year olds about two cousins sent to help baby turtles reach the sea.

What happens

This is the second Willard Price Adventure, and it picks up a few weeks after Leopard Adventure. The book catches you up quickly, but book one is the better place to start.

Amazon's mum and dad are missing somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. Her Uncle Hal is leading the search and he won't take her along. She's thirteen and he tells her straight that she'd be in the way.

So he gives her another job. On a far-off coral island, leatherback turtle eggs are waiting to hatch, and most of the babies get eaten before they make it down the beach. Amazon, her cousin Frazer and their friend Bluey are sent to see them safely into the water.

Nobody will sail them to the island, though. Their only way across is a millionaire's schooner, and the man who arranges it is Matahi, a huge, silent islander covered in tattoos. Should they trust him? Amazon isn't sure (your reader won't be either).

Frazer's cure for seasickness is catching flying fish in a baseball mitt, and Amazon is VERY seasick. There's a swim under a waterfall with giant eels that turn out to be friendly. Bluey and Frazer can't stop sharing facts, which is great if you've got a collector of them at home.

Then a flying fish knocks Amazon overboard, right into a shoal of big red squid.

There's a huge storm in this book too, and a smuggler with his eye on the turtles, and yes, sharks.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Matahi tells the cousins about the islands' past and he doesn't soften it. Prisoners were kept in a stone pit with their arms and legs broken, then killed and eaten. He also explains how European guns and disease cut a hundred thousand islanders down to two thousand.

It's brief but it's stark. The squid scene is frightening too, and the man who dives in after Amazon gets hurt. And the very first scene is an old mother turtle, too tired to run, turning to face a shark.

So it's not one for a reader who's upset by people or animals getting hurt. A reader with a strong stomach and a head for facts will be glued to it.

What to read next

For more of Amazon and Frazer, try Bear Adventure. This time they join Uncle Hal's search in the mountains of western Canada, and Frazer starts the book being chased by a wolverine.