Treasure Hunters

James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein's Treasure Hunters is a fast, jokey sea adventure for 9 year olds about four children who decide to keep the family treasure-hunting business going by themselves.

What happens

The Kidds have lived on a sailing ship called The Lost since the twins were three. Mum and Dad taught them everything on board, from steering by the stars to diving on real shipwrecks. (It's their school as well as their home.)

Then it all goes wrong. Mum goes missing in Cyprus. Three months later a huge storm hits in the Caribbean, and Dad never makes it back from the deck.

So it's just the four of them on a leaking boat. Bick is twelve and tells the story. His twin Beck does the drawings and argues with most of what he says. Storm remembers everything she's ever read. Tommy is seventeen, steers the ship and spends a LOT of time on his looks.

They decide to carry on treasure hunting anyway. First they have to get into The Room, the locked cabin where the maps are kept. Then a man with a pet iguana (and a rifle) tows them into Grand Cayman. A very sweaty treasure dealer called Louie Louie is waiting there for whatever Dad promised him, and if he doesn't get it in two days he takes the ship.

It's literally like having Bick next to you telling it. He stops to check you're keeping up and squabbles with Beck halfway through a sentence. The twins have rows they call Twin Tirades, which are numbered, very loud and over in about a minute. Does that sound like anyone in your house?

The opening chapters are short and nearly every one ends on a shock. It's the first book in the series, and the family's story runs on from here.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Both parents are missing from the first pages, and the children fear the worst. Storm says so very bluntly (sharks come into it) and they hold a funeral at sea with Dad's old cap. There are guns too. A stranger shows them a rifle, and twelve-year-old Beck points Dad's shotgun at a visitor.

It's all told with jokes, and Bick flatly refuses to believe Dad has gone. But if your reader has lost a parent, or worries about it, the jokes might not be enough. If they love danger with plenty of silliness, they'll probably race through it.

What to read next

If they'd like another twelve-year-old getting by without parents, the same two writers also wrote The Genius Experiment. Max Einstein lives above a horse stable in New York and has far more big ideas than money.