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When eleven-year-old AJ’s mom gets called into her flight attendant job and picks him up from school, little does the young protagonist know that during his weekend stay with Grandpa, things are about to get fishy. Through imaginative, quirky, immersive storytelling on a grand scale, Mazzucato transports AJ and his eccentric friend Livvy to a terrifically tantalizing adventure on the high seas with Grandpa, captain of the Ponce de Leon, and fellow shipmates—all in a quest to capture a humongous fish, elusive and mythic, which is awesomely revered and curiously referred to as Old Gussie.
Action rules the day in this delightful fantasy adventure for older children and young adult readers. The narrative is chock full of brutal sea-storms, chases across desert terrain, a prison break involving hundreds of inmates “dressed like babies with frilly bonnets and lacy bibs,” an unrelenting sea queen, and a shady pirate. Wild romps occur throughout the Island of Caprice. Meanwhile, bearded men donning wizard hats, an old fortune-teller, the “overblown windbag” Count Quagmire, handlebar-mustached Marlin, Icarus, the “giant, pedal-powered mechanical” flying machine, and other quirky characters populate the scene.
Mazzucato unquestionably excels at storytelling, creating an entirely new world of fun and crazy characters, imaginative places, and zany inventions. The action never ceases or even slows down throughout these roughly 300 pages of literary delight. At times, the author’s prose reads quite like lyrical poetry. Epic in nature, this swashbuckling tale of a young boy and his young friend sailing the seas with Grandpa, encountering all kinds of colorful, larger-than-life characters, seems reminiscent of a summer blockbuster feature film, where one can easily imagine children of all ages flocking to the movies with parents and grandparents happily along for the ride. Ultimately, this is an exhilarating and fun read.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review.