Marty S. Dalton’s Captain Tomahawk and the Sky-Lion is a swashbuckling desert adventure for 10 year olds about a girl pilot who crash-lands somewhere nobody is ever meant to leave.<\/p>\n
Captain Anna Tomahawk is, by her own account, the greatest pilot there ever was. Her airship, the Sky-Lion, is the best airship ever built. And she’s just been shot down over Highsand Desert.<\/p>\n
She survives (just, after dangling off a cliff edge by her fingertips) and sets off across the sand to find help.<\/p>\n
Highsand is full of talking animals and steam-powered machines. Water runs everything, and a dung beetle king called Adax owns every drop of it. He also has a secret. There’s green, growing land beyond the desert, and he’ll do anything to stop his people finding out.<\/p>\n
So a girl who drops out of the sky with a canteen of river water is very bad news for him.<\/p>\n
The first creature Anna meets is Maximilian Howl, a royal scout. He’s a coyote (not a wolf, as he has to tell her) who fights imaginary duels when he thinks nobody is watching. She calls him Max. He’d really rather she didn’t.<\/p>\n
Their double act is the best bit. Anna is bold and chatty and a champion show-off. Max can’t decide whether to hand her to the king or keep her safe, and you’re never quite sure which way he’ll jump.<\/p>\n
There are rebels in the dunes too, and a pair of bickering hedgehog engineers called Burp and Belch who drive a giant digging machine called the Worm.<\/p>\n
Worth knowing before you hand it over. There’s real fighting in this one. A rebel holds a knife to Anna’s throat and draws a bead of blood, she shoots him through the toe of his boot, and then there’s a proper sword fight. The king talks about burying people alive and burning the jungle to ash.<\/p>\n
None of it is dwelt on, but it’s more than a cartoon scrap. A reader who’s happy with peril in their adventures will love a heroine who can beat grown men in a sword fight and still wants to keep the borrowed cape because it’s warm.<\/p>\n
For another story that opens with an airship being shot out of the sky, try Cogheart. A clockwork fox escapes the wreck with a secret letter for a girl stuck at a finishing school, who’d much rather be reading about air-pirates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marty S. Dalton’s Captain Tomahawk and the Sky-Lion is a swashbuckling desert adventure for 10 year olds about a girl pilot who crash-lands somewhere nobody is ever meant to leave. Captain Anna Tomahawk is, by her own account, the greatest pilot there ever was. Her airship, the Sky-Lion, is the best airship ever built. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12469,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7109,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Cogheart","lr_seo_hook":"A show-off girl pilot, a crafty coyote and a desert kingdom with a secret."},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[29],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[689],"class_list":["post-7043","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-10-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-marty-s-dalton"],"yoast_title":"Captain Tomahawk and the Sky-Lion by Marty S. Dalton | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A show-off girl pilot, a crafty coyote and a desert kingdom with a secret. For ages 10+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n