Skip to main content

Nessie Quest

Image
By
Nessie Quest
By Melissa Savage
New York: Crown Books for Young Readers, 2020. Fiction.

Ru, or Ada Ru, or Adelaide Ru Fitzhugh if you want to use the long version, is pretty sure that she's finally convinced her parents to take a family vacation to Disney World. Imagine her displeasure when her parents decide to spend the entire summer in Scotland instead. Instead of wandering around EPCOT and the Magic Kingdom, Ada Ru has to wander the banks of Loch Ness eating Scottish delicacies like haggis and black pudding -- yuck! Luckily, she quickly befriends Dax, a cute Brooklynite with a passion for 1970s folk rock, and Hamish "Hammy" Bean, a local Nessie enthusiast who lures Dax and Ada Ru into a hunt for Loch Ness' most elusive resident. As the kids become invested in the famous Nessie Race - the hunt for proof of the sea monster's existence - Ada Ru finds a lot to love about Scotland after all.

As she did with Lemons (2017), Melissa Savage has written a humorous, adventurous, at times wacky, hunt for a cryptid - and has balanced it with some real-world, real-heavy issues. That she is able to write quirky, real-feeling kids going through different challenges, is a real testament to Savage's understanding of children and their relationships. I especially appreciated that though Hammy Bean is blind, it is never his defining characteristic, an intentional choice by the author. Because this book is set in Scotland and many characters use a Scots dialect, I would recommend listening to the audiobook for maximum enjoyment. Whether your young readers believe in Nessie or not, they'll love this book.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Kareem Between

By
  Kareem Between By Shifa Saltagi Safadi New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024. Fiction. 324 pages.  Kareem loves football and as he gets ready to start seventh grade he dreams of someday becoming the first Syrian American NFL player. Seventh grade is not off to a great start for Kareem, after football tryouts don't go as he had planned, his best friend moves away, and his mom returns to Syria to help bring his sick grandfather to the US for treatment. So when Austin, the quarterback and coach's son, offers to talk to his dad and get Kareem on the football team in the spring, if he will cheat and do his homework for him, Kareem agrees. Kareem really wants to fit in at school and he is desperate to find a friend, but deep down he knows that doing Austin's homework isn't the right thing to do. And to make things harder, Kareem's mom asks him to be a friend to Fadi, a Syrian Christian refugee. He knows he should stand up for Fadi and help him adjust to the new school,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: A World Without Summer

By
A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out Written by Nicholas Day Illustrated by Yas Imamura New York: Random House Studio, 2025. Informational. 294 pages. In 1815 on a small island in Indonesia, Mount Tambora erupted. The blast was the largest in human history, and one of the deadliest. Though it couldn't be understood at the time, the deadly blast half a world away would lead to catastrophic famine in Europe, prompt westward expansion in America, and inspire the novel Frankenstein  by Mary Shelley. The global climate disaster following the explosion also led to inventions like modern meteorology and the early invention of the bicycle. The people living at the time couldn't have seen how everything was connected, but this fast paced narrative assures that readers will. As he did in 2024's Sibert winner The Mona Lisa Vanishes, Nicholas Day does an impressive job of weaving together different historical events into one single, compell...
Post a Comment
Read more

If You Like...KPop Demon Hunters

By
KPop Demon Hunters has been one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. If you loved this movie as much as I did, you don't want the magic (or the music) to stop. Try reading these books that touch on some of the same topics and themes as the animated hit! Brick Dust and Bones By M. R. Fournet New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2023. Fiction. 247 pages. Orphaned Marius works in the family business--as their cemetery's ghost caretaker. However, Marius also moonlights as a monster hunter in order to earn the costly Mystic currency he needs to bring his mother back from the dead. As the window to bring his mother back begins to close, Marius's exploits get more and more dangerous, and he may have set his sights on a monster too big to handle on his own. Like Mira, Marius longs for familial connection, and his work as a monster hunter will satisfy the thrill of demon hunting for fans the movie. Where's Halmoni? By Julie J. Kim Seattle, WA: Little Bigfoot, 2017. Comics. W...
Post a Comment
Read more