Dreamers and Doers: Gnu and Shrew by Danny Schnitzlein

Gnu and Shrew meet early each morning to surveil the crocodiles who dominate their deep and wide river. Gnu says there is a cave full of diamonds somewhere on the other side and dreams of digging them out and using the fortunes to see the wide world.

SHREW NODDED POLITELY.

Each dawn Gnu tells Shrew about his nightly dream. One morning Gnu says he dreamed of using the riches from the diamonds to build a boat and sailing the world with his friend.

"HMMMM!" SAYS SHREW. "THAT GIVES ME AN IDEA!"

Gnu starts digging a tunnel under the river, but soon finds it too hard. Meanwhile Shrew begins to build a boat to cross the river.

Gnu pooh-poohs Shrew's boat, saying the crocodiles will chomp it and eat them. But the next morning he tells Shrew that he dreamed that when he is rich, he will build them a Ferris wheel. Shrew incorporates the idea into his plan and builds a paddle wheel behind his boat to make it faster.

THAT'S NICE!, SAYS GNU, WITH A CONDESCENDING SMILE.

"WHEN I HAVE THE DIAMONDS, I AM GOING TO BUY A BICYCLE AND PEDAL AROUND THE WORLD!"

That gives Shrew another idea and he added two sets of pedals to power his paddle wheel. But a heavy rain sets in, and Gnu dreams of building a tall, strong house with a tarred roof to keep the rain out. That gives Shrew the idea of tarring the bottom of his boat to prevent leaking. Finally he is ready to cross the river.

"I'M LEAVING TO GO GET SOME DIAMONDS! WANT TO COME?" SAYS SHREW.

"I COULD REALLY USE YOUR HELP."

Gnu elects to take a nap, and Shrew safely makes the river crossing solo, digs up plenty of diamonds, and goes out to see the world. One day he returns to see his old friend Gnu and invites him to see the world with him.

"NO, I'VE GOT SOME PROJECTS TO FINISH," SAID GNU.

Some are dreamers and some are doers, in Gnu and Shrew (Peachtree Publishing, 2020).

It takes all kinds to make a world, in Danny Schnitzlein's little parable of wish fulfillment. Rather than form a dynamic duo, Gnu would rather continue to "entertain" ideas, while Shrew chooses to bring those ideas to fruition. Shrew goes on to build a home, a family, and a business, while Gnu continues dreaming up big ideas, some of which come true. Who's to say which is the best way? In author Schnitzlein's telling, the characters wind up doing both, and artist Anca Sandu comes up with whimsical illustrations for this little fable of an offbeat friendship.

Shove Off! Yellow Kayak by Nina Laden

Fish jump.

Loons float.

Seals watch.

Little boat.

Two adventurers go down to the sea in... well, not ships, but a little yellow kayak, waving goodbye to the watcher on the hill. Seagulls squawk as they soar across a cloudy gray sky, as the breezes become winds.

Maybe the two boatmen should have checked the weather forecast!

A sudden squall blows up, with howling winds, blowing rain, and roaring thunder!

But the little kayak rides out the storm as the sun begins to set in a pink sky.

Bail boat.

Good save!

And what's this? The denizens of the deep appear around them--seals rise, an octopus floats by, and hulking whales circle around to give them a gentle nudge toward their shore.

Lighthouse beams.

Welcome paddlers.

Sweet dreams.

It's certainly no jolly journey with the Beatles on their Yellow Submarine, but author Nina Laden and
artist Melissa Castrillon nevertheless create a magical mystery tour of the wonders of the ocean, in their Yellow Kayak (Paula Wiseman Books/Simon and Schuster, 2018, in the best nautical bedtime poem since Wynken, Blynken, and Nod sailed off in their wooden shoe! Castrillon's swirling colors and flowing line add a hypnotic aura of gorgeous fantasy to this imaginative sea story, told in soft, sybillant verse. Says Kirkus Reviews,"A gentle story of calm courage and of quiet, trusting perseverance that will comfort readers in their anxious times."

Challenges and Consequences: A Talent for Trouble by Natasha Tarrant

Three young people, all very different.
All searching for something, though none knew quite what.
All unaware, as yet, that they might find it in one another.

A school bus was supposed to meet them at Castlehaig, but when they got off the train, it wasn't there.
"Late," said Jesse bitterly. "It's not fair!"

Alice looked at him curiously, and he realized with a start that she didn't know about the First Day Challenge."

Since her mother's death, Alice Mistlethwaite had retreated into her own world of reading and writing fantasy tales. Now that she is eleven, her aunt and her father Barney have decided Alice needs to be forced out of her shell. They summarily decide to sell her much-loved house, Cherry Grange, where she can pick summer cherries from a tree at her window, and Alice is put on a train to a boarding school in Scotland. Aunt Patience has found a teaching job in London, and her father, a famously unsuccessful actor, is off, "on-tour," and Alice finds herself on a train headed for Stormy Loch Academy with a pleasant but peculiar passenger named Jesse. Jesse's chief skill, she learns, is  the ability to run really fast--an unfair advantage, as Alice discovers when Jesse jumps out of the school van and at top speed dashes toward the medieval-looking Stormy Loch School. It seem the last one to touch the school door suffers a Consequence.

It was only fair that she should have known. But sometimes it just feels impossible to do what is right. Jessie ran like a champion on his long, strong legs. Alice, in contrast... did not run like an athlete. She looked more like a small and furious terrier.

And then Jesse stumbled and fell. Alice sailed past him. She could see the door, the lion's head knocker gleaming....

And then Fergus Mackenzie, the red-haired genius and breaker of rules, stuck his foot right in her path.

Justice of a sort is meted out by the headmaster, Major Fortescue. Alice, the last to arrive, receives the Consequence of having to sound the early morning Reveille Gong for the semester, and for his perfidy Fergis is appointed Pig Keeper. Alice gains revenge for the unfairness of it all by banging the gong, not three times but continually until all sleeping students are awake and stumbling outside into the chilly dark for what they think is a fire drill, and Fergus finds a perverse satisfaction in enjoying the pigs. As the semester goes by, Alice also discovers that Stormy Loch "continues better than expected." and the three of them forge a connection born out of misdeed and mischief which leads to a truce and an unexpected friendship.

But visitation day arrives and Alice's father fails to show up as promised. What she does receive is a mysterious package with a heavy, tightly wrapped small object labeled DO NOT OPEN, and a letter from her father exhorting her to meet him with that object on the small island of Nish, off the coast of Scotland, a place where he purportedly remembers a castle and moat from his childhood.

And then, an opportunity presents itself. It is time for the Year Seven Great Orienteering Challenge, and Major Fortesque groups Alice, Jesse, and Fergus together, thinking they "might learn from each other," and indeed they do.

Alice persuades the boys to accept her plan to meet her father at Nish, sneaking away from the island of Lumb and faking their way onto the ferry, using their classroom French to pretend to be foreign students on holiday. But what seemed like a lark turns into a survival test, as a mighty storm strikes the tiny island. Their tent is blown away, and the three friends realize that they are being pursued by a gang of continental art thieves who rightly believe Alice's package contains a stolen museum piece. The promised castle turns out to be a towering rock formation surrounded at high tide by a moat of roiling sea water, and the three find themselves finally escaping the gang down the cliff by rope. It is indeed much more of a challenge than Major Fortescue had planned, and Alice, Jesse, and Fergus forge an unshakable bond of friendship in the process.

In the style of British boarding school stories, the three friends from Stormy Loch form a close relationship in the best tradition of Harry Potter, Hermione, and Ron, relying on each other's strengths in an adventure not quite like any other, in Natasha Tarrant's forthcoming A Talent for Trouble (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019). A real page-turner of a novel of three friends who pool their strengths and against all odds, come together in an amazing journey, this is a brilliant coming-of-age story that commingles unusual settings and developing emotional maturity in a great choice for those middle readers eager for unusual adventures without a single fantastical beast, mythic warrior, or evil sorcerer.

Passing It On: The Traveler's Gift by Danielle Davison

Liam's father was a sailor. After returning from sea, he'd weave tales for Liam of the faraway places he'd been.

His father's words fire Liam to imagine the glorious adventures, the exotic places, and strange creatures he will see with his father when he, too, is old enough to go to sea.

But one day, his father didn't return.

Liam is lost, his future gone. Other sailors' tales do not fill the void.

But then a very old white-bearded man named Enzo, disembarks.

The other men call him "the Traveler."

When the Traveler spoke of his voyages, a peculiar thing happened. His beard grew.

As Enzo recounts his travels, his beard seems to grow longer and longer like a tapestry filled with fantastic images. And Liam is thrilled when one day the old man invites him along on a final voyage, to be the teller of their adventures.  Liam cannot believe his fortune and his heart swells. It is almost as if he is taking the voyage he always dreamed of with his own father. As they share their experiences, the old man teaches Liam his wisdom.

Enzo taught him to really listen.

He taught him to see truly see things, with more than his eyes.

Time passes and Liam is happy, but when Enzo comes to the end of his days, he asks Liam to become the Traveler, the new teller of stories. Liam is overcome with sadness, but eventually he finds his own voice and he sees the future ahead of him, in Danielle Davison's forthcoming The Traveler's Gift: A Story of Loss and Hope (Page Street Books, 2019). Everyone has his or her own story, and wisdom is really seeing and hearing the story of everyone and everything. We are our own stories and those of others, and this book, whimsically and symbolically illustrated by Anne Lambelet, turns on the value of the work of the storyteller in life.

In the Deep: Song of the Abyss (Tower of Winds 2) by Makiia Lucier

They came in the night as she dreamt, in her berth, in a ship sailing home to del Mar. Two carracks, painted Scorpion black. No emblem flying to hint at a kingdom of origin.

"Quiet!" Gunnel ordered. She wore her sword. "Up, up, quickly, Reyna!

Sea raiders!"

To the sound of sound of soft humming, the crewmen lie still, as if somehow enchanted, while the guttural sound of a vaguely familiar language is heard, ordering the crew of pirates looting the ship. As a map maker, Reyna knows she must save the charts of trading routes, the lifeblood of the kingdom of del Mar. With them safe in a water-tight quiver, she goes overboard and swims through the monster-filled sea until she reaches an island, a land which she recognizes as Lunes, one for which she has learned the language, but still strange and seemingly undergoing a crisis, with no torches or signs of activity, but where she hopes to find a del Marian trading ship to take her home.

As the rising sun shows her a landing, she sees the dark figure of a young man slumped, as if in grief.

In Lunesian, in a voice that rolled deep and pleasant in the dark, "Between the two of us, I wonder who's had the worst night of it!"

He tells her that he is Levi, a son of the King who has just died.

Reyna vanishes into the dawn, but later, she meets up with him again. He is the second son of the king, and when Reyna's ship is towed into the harbor with its dead, the two of them find themselves assigned the task of finding his older brother and locating the mysterious raiders before they strike again.

With Reyna's navigational knowledge and Levi's knowledge of sailing ships, they sail out from Lunes into the Sea of Magdalen and through the Strait of Cain, with its maelstrom filled with drowned but undead souls, and trace their pirates to the distant land of Miramar, a secretive and xenophobic people with exquisite etiquette and with the barbaric custom of tutto mortise, burying their ruler with his chosen retainers. It is to this land that the mysterious raiders belong, inexplicitly swapping their stolen booty for shiploads of Lunesian clay. In managing to stay alive and discover the unthinkable logic behind the piracy, Reyna and Levi find themselves falling in love.

In her Song of the Abyss (Tower of Winds) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), author Makiia Lucier fashions an compelling fantasy romance within an extravagantly imagined world drawn from the Mediterranean society of the early Enlightenment period. Del Mar resembles Portugal in the days of Henry the Navigator, and Lunes is reminiscent of the Venice of Marco Polo, while Miramar suggest a rigid, ingrown Asian empire. Within this exotic setting, Lucier tells the intrigue-filled story of two strong-minded, star-crossed, but chaste lovers whose love and loyalty grow during their own odyssey through their world. The sequel to Lucier's Isle of Blood and Stone (Tower of Winds), this title sets the roles of the characters for the last book of the trilogy, perfect for knowledgeable young adult readers with promise for those who crave a bit of sophistication, an amalgamation of familiar cultures with fantasy, in their romance novels.

Once Upon a Snowy MidWinter Eve: Podkin One-Ear (Longburrow) by Kieran Larwood

"My darlings, if you are reading this, then our worst nightmare has come true. The dagger you hold is our warren's greatest treasure, Starclaw. It is one of the Twelve Gifts given to the tribes back at the start of time. The Gorm are hunting the Twelve Gifts, so this dagger must be kept from them. That is now your job. Run fast, my darlings. Your father and I love you more than you will ever know.               --Mother."

It is a dark and snowy Bramblemas Eve when the wandering old bard finds his way into a snug warren to earn himself a meal and a mug of mead with a well-told tale. The little ones are eagerly awaiting the visit of the Midwinter Rabbit, but they are soon enthralled with the bard's tale of their legendary hero, Podkin One-Ear, master of the Five Realms.

As the bard tells it, Podkin was once the pampered son of the warrior chieftain Lodkin of Munberry Warren, too lazy to master history, geography, and especially the ways of warfare, easily bested by his older sister Paz in swordplay. But his easy life ends in a single night when the warren is overrun by the dreaded Gorm, horrible creatures, half-rabbit, half rusty-eyed, iron-armored warriors, corrupted by their lust for iron. Podkin's and Paz's father and his warriors are swiftly slain, and Pod and Paz, with their baby brother Pook, barely avoid the same fate with the aid of their Auntie Olwyn, who shows them a secret tunnel out of the burrow and gives Podkin a letter from their mother and the magical copper dagger, Starclaw, a gift of the Goddess to his Realm, that can cut through all but the iron armor and weapons of the Gorm.

The three escape through the frozen night, but are soon followed by a squadron of the Gorm. Podkin manages to make use of the magic of Starclaw, downing a tree and dispatching the detachment of Gorm warriors in one fell swoop, and the three at last find themselves sheltered by the mistress and chieftain of Redwater warren, who warn them again of the corrupting powers of the iron that drives rabbits to the dark side:

"Keep your warren warm, but ... don't dig too deep."

And there's many another hairsbreadth escape from the Gorm, who are hot on their trail, in one of which Podkin loses an ear, many a disguise and loyal followers found, and rip-roaring adventures in their quest to rescue their mother from the evil iron-clad warriors, and at last it comes down to Podkin One-Ear and Starclaw's magic facing down the evil warrior-king of the Gorms, Scramashank.

With the proper mood-inducing frame story of the old bard and his midwinter's eve tale and with all the tropes of classic English fantasy tales--from The Hobbit, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and sequels, and all the rest--well in place, Kieran Larwood's forthcoming Podkin One-Ear (Longburrow) (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2017) manages to hit all the requisite elements--iron as symbol of the lure of power, as in Tolkien's Ring, the young hero, somehow marked, chosen to defeat that evil, and the threat of the malevolent power capable of turning a beguiled seeker toward wickedness.

And, as is suggested in the planned sequels to this title, this riveting novel begins a courageous quest in which certain tasks must be undertaken and magical objects recovered, as in Harry Potter's search for the horcruxes and his showdown with Voldemort. Not only does this new adventure satisfyingly hit all the marks, it is also superlative storytelling, an original one-of-a-kind story with a young hero and heroine and a theme with which middle readers just finding their way into to the classic fantasies of the genre will readily identify:

"You don't have to be brave or strong or powerful to do incredible things."

Mighty Mite! Hercufleas by Sam Gayton

He seized up his bead of blood and glug-glug-glugged it down. A wonderful fiery feeling spread through his body. He felt BRAVE. Not like a flea at all. He was a CHAMPION!

Before he knew what he was doing, he leaped onto the table and roared. "Whatever size his enemies, the winner's always HERCUFLEAS!

It's prophetic that the little just-out-of-the-egg flea's first feeding is a tiny bit of lion's blood. He's going to need all the courage he can get.

Restless on his first night as a hatchling, would-be hero, Hercufleas cannot go off to bed like the rest of his fleamily. He wanders restlessly downstairs just as a gargantuan giant taps at their window.

Outside there was a monster.

Its head was the size of his whole fleamily's house-hat, with pale speckled skin and eyes, one green, one brown. Its hair was a tangled mess. A hideously big mouth twisted into a scowl, with rows of square white teeth, each as big as Hecufleas. There was a rumble like thunder as the monster's mouth moved.

But as monsters go, Hercufleas hasn't seen anything yet.

Actually, the "giant" is no monster, just a woefully unkempt orphan girl named Greta, come to beg for help from the self-made demi-hero in defeating the real monster, an actual giant appropriately named Yuk. Yuk is a hideous ogre of insatiable appetite who visits the town of Tumber with every new moon, voraciously guzzling whatever townspeople he can grasp, Greta's parents have vanished into Yuk's maw, and her only hope is to find a fearless hero to help her save what is left of the town.

A quick trip to the magic isle of Avalon with her hostage Hercufleas yields only a magical bird, Artifax, capable of carrying them across the sea and into the Woodn't, a magical but dangerous woodland, over the frozen steppes of the ice-bound Kingdom of Petrossia, to the redoubt of Sir Klaus of the Mouse Kingdom, the ruler whose mission it is to protect all life by guarding the last remaining bit of the Black Death.

Greta and Hercufleas understand the danger of setting the Plague free again upon the Earth, but they are sure it is the only weapon they can use to destroy Yuk and save the remnants of Tumber and Hercufleas' own fleamily. Hercufleas agrees to swallow the deadly blood and give a fatal bite to Yuk. But first, he must win the blood in a deadly duel with Sir Klaus and his enchanted sword.

Author Sam Gayton's forthcoming Hercufleas (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2016) pulls out all the stops as his unlikely mini-mite grows in his his improbable quest through loyalty and self-sacrifice and becomes a true hero. There's plenty of off-beat humor, with not a small supply of snot and giant nose-boogers, barely believable characters, and wild twists and turns of plotting that makes for a sure-fire page turner for middle readers with a taste for the disgusting side of hero-hood as well as the glory.

Heartfelt Hero: The Tick-Tock Man (Gadgets and Gears) by Kirsten Hamilton

Tick-Tock.

The sound was unsettling, and when you are with a Kennewickett, anything unsettling could spell disaster

My name is Noodles. It is my duty to keep Walter Kinnewickett, boy genius and scientist in training, as far from disasters as possible.

Which is why I found myself on a dark street corner in London.

Young Walter and his sometimes flying dachshund Noodles are in London with Wally's older sister Rhodope, a dedicated photographer and ardent British Suffragette. Amid the crowd at the ladies' march, Wally is singled out by a strange ragamuffin boy, Dobbin Winckles, equipped with what appears to be a gasoline powered, gyroscope-equipped monowheel. But before keen inventor Wally can study the machine in full, he notices a strange ticking sound. Then Dobbin delivers a sudden warning.

"Run, Kinnewickett," he whispered. "Leave London. Tick-Tock is out to nab you! He'll kill me if 'e knows I warned you."

But safe back in Rho's lodgings, Wally soon receives an urgent note from Dobbin, begging him to meet him late at night.

"NEED HELP.

Come to the Courtyard behind Chopin's Pub at midnight. It is a matter of life or death!"

Wally and Noodles learn that Dobbin's tiny sister Briney has a mechanical heart which must be rewound by a key now in the hands of the nefarious Tick-Tock, who the distressed Dobbins confides, has gone missing.

And soon Wally Kinnewickett, boy inventor extraordinaire and detector of evil geniuses worldwide, is off on a new case. Engaging the assistance of his friend, Sherlock Holmes, he and Noodles are off on a chase through the dark and dangerous sewers and steam tunnels beneath London in pursuit of Tick-Tock, master watchmaker and master criminal, reputedly equipped with a mechanical heart. No one, not Holmes nor Scotland Yard, knows who or what Tick-Tock is, but only that his metal heart gives off a tick-tock wherever he goes. With a nose-to-tail shiver Noodles realizes that he and Wally have already had a near encounter with Tick-Tock.

But there's nothing for it but that the inventive Wally and his intrepid dachshund head down into the dark underground below the foggy streets of London, dodging killer sewer swine (which Wally dispatches with pyrotechnic devices brought along for emergencies), and finding themselves allied with the infamous criminal Spring-Heeled Jack in the quest to capture Tick-Tock in time to save the, er, rundown and expiring Briney.

In her third book in series, Kersten Hamilton makes the most of late Victorian London as the setting for the forthcoming The Tick-Tock Man: Gadgets and Gears, Book 3 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2016), with fogbound streets and dark sewers, ravening subterranean boars, a giant mechanical creature, Cy (short for Cyborg), and plenty of the darkly inventive illustrations of James Hamilton portraying the steampunk science that has made the Gadgets and Gears books favorites of young middle reader science fiction fans.

Described by Kirkus Reviews as "Steampunk for the chapter book set," this unique series has plausible but eccentric inventions that presage those of later centuries, coupled with colorful characters and bizarre mysteries to be solved by the genius of Wally, who alone in his era intuits that steam has had its day and that the future belongs to electricity. As in the earlier books, which featured cameos by Teddy Roosevelt and Nicola Testa, Wally hangs out with one of the icons of the period, Sherlock Holmes. And as in the other books, this one is wittily narrated by Wally's wiener wonder dog Noodles, who is, in addition to his loyalty and courage, shares his extensive vocabulary freely (and often) with his readers.

Other books in the Gadgets and Gears series include The Mesmer Menace (Gadgets and Gears) and The Ire of Iron Claw: Gadgets and Gears, Book 2. (Read reviews here.)

Bot Glut: Robots Rule: Lots of Bots by C.J. Richards

A section of the butler-bot's head melted away, and a moth-bot launched itself into the air as the robot began to spin in a circle. "Foreign Body contamination!" it said, and drove itself into the swimming pool.

George dropped all but one of the towels he was holding. He twisted and hurled the towel over the moth-bot, trapping it on the ground. George brought his foot down on top of it with a satisfying crunch.

Now he had proof to show Professor Droid that he was right about Micron and his robotic bugs. He leaned down to gather the pieces carefully in the towel.

A buzzing noise at his back sent a tingle up his spine. He felt the air go cold as a strange shadow spread over the ground. George turned slowly and found himself face-to-face with a massive swarm of deadly moth-bots.

After his near-destruction ordered by the evil genius Dr. Micron, the cyber-talented George Gearing is at last beginning his promised internship at TinkerTech, which is in the throes of the upcoming release of their hot new product, the Mod, something like a super iPod married to Google glasses, but after a series of suspicious accidents, George finds himself shunted off by Professor Droid to cleaning detail under the supervision of OCD-Bot, an obsessive-compulsive cleaner who speaks only in rhymes. Even more annoying is George's special robot Jackbot's romantic obsession with George's nemesis, Patricia Volt's personal bot, Cookie.

But OCD-Bot's janitorial duties allow access to every part of TinkerTech, and George manages to get inside the abandoned office of the imprisoned Dr. Micron to download information about his parents, former TinkerTech employees who disappeared after an unexplained accident. and uncovers a link to the secret Project Mercury. In trouble for being AWOL from his cleaning assignment, George is demoted to work with assembly bots, packaging the Mod in mailing containers in preparation for its media launch the next day.

But people at TinkerTech who are beta testing the Mod are behaving strangely, even the CEO himself, Professor Droid, father of George's best human friend, Ann Droid, who seems to be somehow mesmerized. Suspicious, George swipes a Mod, puts in the contact lenses that form its screen and the earbuds in his ears, and finds out what the Mod can do (besides a constant individualized entertainment and news-feed)--receive alpha waves which effectively suspend the conscious mind and turns humans themselves into robots--bots controlled by (whom else?), Dr. Micron, a sort of nefarious Steve Jobs on steroids whose plan is to control the world through his purported entertainment device.

When Micron discovers that his plan is again compromised by George Gearing, he unlooses his deadly moth-bots and threatens to destroy George's parents, held in suspended animation in the underground Project Mercury bunker into which he lures George, Ann, and Jackbot.

It's a classic BWWAAA-HA-HAAAA! moment for Micron.

"If I could save my atomic data indefinitely, I could live forever. I could be a god!" Micron raves maniacally.

For kids who liked the non-stop chases, bot battles, and bad-guy comeuppances of Book One in this series, The Junkyard Bot: Robots Rule, Book 1, there's plenty more where that came from in C. J. Richards' second installment, Lots of Bots (Robots Rule) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015).

Richard's text is easy, action-packed, and studded with humor, especially in the character of OCD-Bot ("A break is what I do not take!) and the lovelorn Jackbot's AI-assisted yearnings for the truly heartless Cookie. But in the final chapters Richards also introduces more serious themes--George's longing for his parents, the role of friendship--human and robot, and the very real fear abroad in the land of intrusive digital media which threatens of overwhelm the human side of us all. With Dr. Micron still a force and the quest to locate his parents' atomic data to restore them to life, George Gearing has his work cut out for him in the no-doubt forthcoming Book Three of the series.

Time of the Tiger: The Sultan's Tigers by Josh Lacey

The pagan shrine was no more than a few golden bricks built around a hole in the ground.

I had already wrapped my tiger in my second-best shirt. Now I pushed aside the bricks and lowered myself into the hole.
I found a place to hide the tiger. No one will find him. No one but you, my sweet wife.

If you are reading these words, my dear Susanna, then I shall have been buried here, in the Hindoos' soil. Please remember this: as I slipped away, I had only thoughts of you.

Your beloved husband,
Horatio Trelawney

Tom is a true Trelawney, the descendant of Cornwall smugglers and a long line of  crooks and bandits, but only he and his ne'er-do well Uncle Harvey seem to have inherited the Grandpa's risk-taking Trelawney genes. Assembled in Ireland with his family when Grandpa is found mysteriously dead in his cluttered house, Tom has an encounter with the gun-and-knife-wielding Marko, who offers 2000 euros if he will he hand over the bejeweled tiger taken by his ancestor Horatio from an Indian sultan in 1799. Tom immediately begins a search of his grandfather's house and finally uncovers a series of letters from his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather which explains why Marko thinks the Trelawneys have the priceless tiger, sought by the Indian billionaire Jalata Jaragami.

So now I understood what Grandpa had been selling. And now I knew why Marko was here. These letters were worth a lot more than two thousand euros.

Tom knows his boring by-the-book father will simply hand over the letters to the authorities, so he takes his find to Uncle Harvey, who, as usual, is in grave need of funds. With a handshake the two skip town together and take off for India in hopes that Horatio's tiger, the last of a set of eight stolen in the Hindu wars, is still in its hiding place.

With Marko in pursuit, the two Trelawneys arrive in India and make their way across the sub-continent by train, taxi, scooter rickshaw, and finally on foot, along the way meeting up with the billionaire collector J.J. who ups the offer to five million dollars.  But for the treasure-hunting Trelawneys, that's too easy, and besides, they have first to actually retrieve the tiger, a detail they are loathe to reveal. At last they reach the area where Horatio plundered Tipu Sultan's treasures, and while Uncle Harvey is chatting up an attractive tourist, Tom spots a temple on top a likely-looking hill and discovers that in the center of the temple room is a large hole which the priests claim is the home of their local god. Tom is sure that there is something else down that hole that has been keeping the god company for the last 200 years:

This was my chance.

I ran into the inner sanctum. I pulled the planks from the hole. I looked down.

A rock jutted out there. And another. I lowered myself down.

Now I could see what was around me.  I could see holes and bits of rock and a bundle of something, covered in dirt and dust. My fingers brushed away what remained of some cloth. My ancestor's shirt had decayed into dust. But it had done its job, protecting the treasure.

But finding the tiger is only the necessary first half of their quest, with the murderous Marko and the unprincipled J.J., who keeps the other seven Tipu tigers in a museum surrounded by a moat filled with real tigers, still ahead for the intrepid Trelawneys, in Josh Lacey's just-published The Sultan's Tigers (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). It's a non-stop, flat-out adventure story, a thrill-a-minute road trip with two Indiana Jones-type protagonists, filled with local color and engaging characters who help the two along the way. And even if they can outwit Marko and J.J., dodge being dumped into the tiger pit, and make the best of their booty, Tom still has his problems to deal with when he returns, triumphant but still AWOL, to his parents in Connecticut. A perfect guy-type road story, with exotic locations, perfect stock villains, and plenty of humor, this one is a worthy successor to the first book in the series, Island of Thieves. Kirkus Reviews says "Lessons both social and geographic are laid on lightly in this rip-roaring adventure."