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A review by katykelly
School Ship Tobermory by Alexander McCall Smith
5.0
I really think this has the potential to be a popular series with 8-13 year olds. Great idea from McCall Smith, with a ship-set school story that includes adventure and intrigue.
Brother and sister Ben and Fee join the Tobermory, a school ship, when their parents need them to board. They try their best to adapt to nautical language, begin to make friends (and enemies), and along wth their classmates find excitement looming when a nearby ship turns out to be making a film.
This is almost wish-fulfilment stuff - an exciting school at sea, with secrets and parts in a movie part of the plot.
Unusually, there are full page illustrations in each chapter rehashing some of the action (with the text of the story included), which breaks it up nicely, and the drawings are good - we also get portraits of the characters as they are introduced.
It was good to see a school story in such a different setting, this could have been based on a Blyton boarding school tale in terms of basic plot, and I picked up a few usual terms to do with sailing along the way.
I did find parts of the writing a little lazy, but this is an adult reader noting this, with convenient twists in there, some unrealistic speech and actions. There is a plot strand that seems to have been placed in there to fit in with the larger one, and is wrapped up rather quickly and easily. The bullies, I thought weren't too well characterised, very flat, but I can see that they make good love-to-hate bad guys.
I have still awarded this 5 stars as I don't think a reader of the target age will notice the points I've raised. I did still really enjoy the read, and if I was still 10 I would be eagerly awaiting the next instalment from Tobermory.
Brother and sister Ben and Fee join the Tobermory, a school ship, when their parents need them to board. They try their best to adapt to nautical language, begin to make friends (and enemies), and along wth their classmates find excitement looming when a nearby ship turns out to be making a film.
This is almost wish-fulfilment stuff - an exciting school at sea, with secrets and parts in a movie part of the plot.
Unusually, there are full page illustrations in each chapter rehashing some of the action (with the text of the story included), which breaks it up nicely, and the drawings are good - we also get portraits of the characters as they are introduced.
It was good to see a school story in such a different setting, this could have been based on a Blyton boarding school tale in terms of basic plot, and I picked up a few usual terms to do with sailing along the way.
I did find parts of the writing a little lazy, but this is an adult reader noting this, with convenient twists in there, some unrealistic speech and actions. There is a plot strand that seems to have been placed in there to fit in with the larger one, and is wrapped up rather quickly and easily. The bullies, I thought weren't too well characterised, very flat, but I can see that they make good love-to-hate bad guys.
I have still awarded this 5 stars as I don't think a reader of the target age will notice the points I've raised. I did still really enjoy the read, and if I was still 10 I would be eagerly awaiting the next instalment from Tobermory.