There are some quite attractive elements in the middle grade novel Shipwreck Island:  the Survivor-Robinson Crusoe feel, the adventure set-up, the mysteriousness, and characters that will appeal to both girl and boy readers.  This should be a great book!  Instead it is really just a great book jacket summary expanded to fill some pages.  It was so disappointing that the book never developed or moved beyond the jacket flap write-up.  With large print and plentiful white space, this novel feels almost like a novella and the ending didn’t qualify as a ending or a cliff-hanger.  Shipwreck Island truly feels like a larger work that was spliced off and it is hard as a reader not to feel rather indignant and ripped-off.  There is nothing wrong with the writing or the characters.  One can only hope that the next installment in this series will be more substantive and give a promising storyline the treatment it deserves.

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language:  None

Violence/Gore:  Characters come upon another character who has been killed in an accident, non-detailed; destruction of property by natural forces; a character is found unconscious under mysterious circumstances; animals/creatures are threatening to characters, but no harm is actually incurred.

Sex/Nudity:  None

Mature Subject Matter:

Death, divorce, remarriage.

Alcohol / Drug Use:

None