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Tempest Terror by Ross Montgomery is a laugh-out-loud shipwreck story for 9 year olds about a school drama club that washes up somewhere very strange.
Frank is the quiet one. Everyone calls him Mr Sensible, and in the school play he's got the smallest part going (about ten lines). Nobody listens to him. Half the time nobody even remembers his name.
The drama club is heading to a Shakespeare festival in Italy to put on The Tempest. Their headmaster has booked the cheapest ferry he could find, and it looks held together with plasters and chewing gum. An hour out, a huge storm hits. The ferry sinks and their life raft flips over.
When Frank wakes up, he's on a tropical beach with five other kids. The headmaster's gone. So is Blake, the most popular boy in school. And the forest is full of mysterious music.
It's all there in the title, Tripwrecked!: Tempest Terror. A storm, a shipwreck, a missing prince, an island full of noises. Rianna, the new girl who barely speaks, points out that it's EXACTLY like the play they've been rehearsing. Then someone spots a monster that stinks of fish.
It's so much fun to read. The loud kids spend the whole time squabbling over who's in charge (one of them ends up tied to a tree in stage stockings), while Frank and Rianna quietly come up with every good idea. Isn't that always the way?
It's also a painless way into Shakespeare. You get the whole story of The Tempest explained in a couple of pages, in plain words, and then watch it play out for real. A line or two of the real thing turns up too, so your reader will know it when they meet it.
Is it scary? A little, in a spooky-island way. The headmaster is washed off the raft in the very first chapter, and the kids spend a night in the dark worrying about the monster. But it's played for laughs from start to finish, and the ending is a proper surprise.
If you've got a reader who's ever felt like the quiet one in a group of big voices, Frank's their man. It's a short, fast read with a lovely message about being heard.
If they'd like more of the same Shakespeare-mad headmaster, try Fortune's Fools. This time he names the school houses after the families in Romeo and Juliet, and Sports Day turns into all-out war.
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