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A review by katykelly
The Polar Bear Explorers' Club by Alex Bell
5.0
Excellent comic adventure/fairy tale with a 'thing' for moustaches...
It's a man's world for orphan Stella, found in the Arctic by an explorer and adopted, brought up to look on the globe as somewhere exciting to discover... but girls are NOT expected or encouraged to this kind of career. Persuasion and determination and Stella finds herself, alongside several other boys, on her first expedition to the cold lands in which she was found.
I won't describe deeply what happens next, but alongside a few obvious plot developments that see the children having to call upon their own strengths and form alliances, they get to become true explorers and meet creatures nobody has ever seen before. Some benign, some deadly...
A great set of characters in Stella and her comrades, with a fab set of skills between them (including magic!) and the story moves quickly from one escapade to the next, returning to the heart of Stella and her story with a rather dark heart in which all the characters get a chance to grow.
I was reminded of Phileas Fogg and his world in this, the world of the 'gentleman traveller'. Each of the several groups of explorers, of which the Polar Bears' is just one, each have different rules, priorities and specialties. All seem obsessed with moustaches though, amusingly. And the end of the book gives us a glimpse of the rules of each exploring club, which are hilarious. Excellent addition.
Really enjoyable, it's a joyous and thrilling adventure, with echoes of a certain Hans Christian Andersen story and sets itself up for a whole series of adventures in new contexts. I hope this gets picked up as a potential film, it has some wonderfully strong characters, features friendship and teamwork and has a lot of heart that would transfer superbly to a children's film.
One for ages 9-13.
It's a man's world for orphan Stella, found in the Arctic by an explorer and adopted, brought up to look on the globe as somewhere exciting to discover... but girls are NOT expected or encouraged to this kind of career. Persuasion and determination and Stella finds herself, alongside several other boys, on her first expedition to the cold lands in which she was found.
I won't describe deeply what happens next, but alongside a few obvious plot developments that see the children having to call upon their own strengths and form alliances, they get to become true explorers and meet creatures nobody has ever seen before. Some benign, some deadly...
A great set of characters in Stella and her comrades, with a fab set of skills between them (including magic!) and the story moves quickly from one escapade to the next, returning to the heart of Stella and her story with a rather dark heart in which all the characters get a chance to grow.
I was reminded of Phileas Fogg and his world in this, the world of the 'gentleman traveller'. Each of the several groups of explorers, of which the Polar Bears' is just one, each have different rules, priorities and specialties. All seem obsessed with moustaches though, amusingly. And the end of the book gives us a glimpse of the rules of each exploring club, which are hilarious. Excellent addition.
Really enjoyable, it's a joyous and thrilling adventure, with echoes of a certain Hans Christian Andersen story and sets itself up for a whole series of adventures in new contexts. I hope this gets picked up as a potential film, it has some wonderfully strong characters, features friendship and teamwork and has a lot of heart that would transfer superbly to a children's film.
One for ages 9-13.