Then a string of mishaps darkens Nim’s sunny skies: her father loses rudder and dish antenna in a storm a tourist ship that was involved in her mother’s death appears off the island’s reefs and, running down a volcanic slope, Nim takes a nasty spill that leaves her feverish, with an infected knee.
Not only does she have constant companions in Selkie, a sea lion, and a marine iguana named Fred, but Chica, a green turtle, has just arrived for an annual egg-laying-and, through the solar-powered laptop, she has even made a new e-mail friend in famed adventure novelist Alex Rover.
Though her mother is long dead and her scientist father Jack has just sailed off on a quick expedition to gather plankton, Nim is anything but lonely on her small island home. 10- 12)Ī child finds that being alone in a tiny tropical paradise has its ups and downs in this appealingly offbeat tale from the Australian author of Peeling the Onion (1999).
Too many promising themes go undeveloped here still, enjoyable light fiction. Is Sukie really ill, or just a habitual malingerer, and if so, why? More important, what causes Violetta's mother's turnaround? (The hints given are too vague for their crucial role in the conclusion.) Most effective are the girls' growing mutual understanding and Amy's gradual turn from irrational anger to acknowledgment of Doff's need to go to her own family. An excess of detail, realistic but not especially telling, slows Amy's narrative and though the characters are essentially believable, they aren't realized in any depth and, disconcertingly, the author poses some puzzles that she never resolves. In the weeks before Doff leaves, other transitions also trouble the sixth grader: Best friend Roger is preoccupied with boys' soccer off-and-on friend Sukie is too quirky to be dependable and bright, pretty new classmate Violetta is becoming Amy's first close female friend, despite oddities that at first set her apart-especially, an anxious, dependent mother who's on a hopeless quest for Violetta's long-departed dad. When Grandpa's housekeeper, Doff, must return to England to care for her aged mother, the change is almost impossible for Amy to accept her parents died when she was a baby, and affectionate, sensible Doff has always cared for her.
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