Flight of the Silver Turtle [Hardcover]

John Fardell (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 3 and up

The take-charge kids from John Fardell’s The 7 Professors of the Far North face a summer packed with danger, excitement and suspense—flying airplanes, scuba diving, cracking codes and even taking a spin in the world’s first antigravity backpack as they plunge into this fast-paced, high- flying adventure.

Ben, Zara, Sam and Marcia begin their summer vacation by helping Professor Ampersand build the Silver Turtle, a high-tech airplane. This is thrilling enough, but things take an even wilder turn when a strange woman steals the airplane with the kids inside. She’s trying to evade members of Noctarma, an international criminal organization that thinks the airplane is carrying a secret antigravity device that could be the key to world domination. They’ve got the wrong Silver Turtle, but they’ve also captured Professor Ampersand—and the kids will have to pull out all the stops to find the real Silver Turtle device before Noctarma does.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-6–Having survived the machinations of an evil genius in The 7 Professors of the Far North (Putnam, 2005), the same kids and their professorial guardians are involved in a new adventure. This time, they have joined up with a novice airplane enthusiast, Amy McAirdrie. When Professors Sharpe and Ampersand and their wards Ben, Zara, Sam, and Marcia decide to help her with the plane's construction, they have no idea that their every move is being watched. A shadowy organization known as Noctarma is eyeing the airplane very closely. When a series of misunderstandings leads to the kids running, or rather flying, for their lives, they find themselves in a race to discover the secret of antigravity before the bad guys do. Escaping from Noctarma's clutches repeatedly, the plucky children must elude capture and figure out whom to trust before it's too late. The writing is consistently upbeat and energetic even if it bogs down a little during the airplane passages. Fans of Fardell's previous book will enjoy following the characters and their wacky high-speed adventures. New readers, on the other hand, will have a difficult time sorting out the large cast of characters and their backgrounds.–Elizabeth Bird, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The cast from The 7 Professors of the Far North (2005) returns in another rip-roaring story. Things start off quietly as four British children help eccentric Professor Ampersand and his friends work on an experimental aircraft called the Silver Turtle. Soon, though, kids Sam, Zara, Ben, and Marcia are propelled into an adventure involving an antigravity machine that was invented during World War II and then lost. The kids also encounter an evil cabal of powerful, shadowy figures who hope^B to find the plans for the machine. The plucky voyagers' journey takes them to the depths of Lake Geneva, the dungeons of a Swiss castle, and the galleries of the Royal Museum of Edinburgh in a novel that features daring escapes, secret codes, and more than one hail of bullets. Rounding out the story are the author's small but elegant black-and-white drawings, which appear on many pages. This sequel offers everything that fans of adventure stories could want. Todd Morning
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Juvenile; 1 edition (October 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399243828
• ISBN-13: 978-0399243820
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,142,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another good one!, October 13, 2006

By 

Max - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flight of the Silver Turtle (Hardcover)

Note: For what it's worth in regard to how you take my review, I should point out that this book is aimed at kids but I'm an adult (theoretically).

This follow-up to "The 7 Professors of the Far North" is every bit as good as the original. In some ways it's even better, since the main characters have already been introduced, allowing Fardell to get right to the story. The word to describe the book is "relentless." Once it gets going, it moves at lightning speed and could be a little too intense for readers under 12. There are real bad guys in this story-- folks who think nothing of shooting the young heroes (there's a bit more gunplay than I expected). Of course, there's danger in the Potter books too, but those are fantasy-oriented so it takes some of the fear away, whereas this book is much more realistic (guns instead of spells).

But overall it's a fun, fast read. It never gets dull, and it's as clever and imaginative as the first book. In addition, the kids are all very positive role models and always try to do the right thing. Furthermore, they don't, as in other stories (books, movies, TV, etc.) aimed at kids, treat adults like idiots or set out to disobey them. Likewise, the adults (well, the good guys) are presented as kind, helpful, intelligent, and supportive. John Fardell, the author, doesn't have to resort to the "adults are stupid so we're on our own" mentality in order to tell a good story.

Since this book is a sequel, it helps to have read first one, but it's worth it, and the combined length of these two books is less than one Potter book. If you're looking for a book, or series, that DOESN'T deal with wizards and dragons etc., which it seems everyone is writing lately because of Potter's success, this is definitely worth your time.

One last note: The "Reading Level" listed above says 9-12 but remember, those numbers represent a suggested range of the lowest age that this book is appropriate for in terms of both difficulty, and content; it's not saying that only people within that range will enjoy it. As mentioned in my review it's a bit intense, so parents (or kids) might want to decide whether it is appropriate reading material. I know some 9 year-olds who could handle it and some 12 year-olds who might be scared. But definitely don't consider 12 to be the top age where someone would enjoy the book. I'm waaaaayyy older than that and I loved it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exciting Children's Adventure Story, June 5, 2007

By 

L. M Young (Marietta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flight of the Silver Turtle (Hardcover)

I picked up Fardell's first story, 7 PROFESSORS OF THE FAR NORTH, at the International Spy Museum last year and have been awaiting obtaining the sequel. It is yet another roller-coaster adventure in the vein of those great old kids' series like Danny Dunn, with a touch of John Verney's Callendar family stories to boot. I found that I liked TURTLE not quite as much as PROFESSORS; the novel transportation feature the children use in the first book is just so memorable that the ones featured in the sequel pale slightly in comparison. Also, the villains of this novel seem more like conventional DOCTOR WHO type bad guys as opposed to the sinister machinations in the original, which reminded me of the menace in Pullman's THE GOLDEN COMPASS (NORTHERN LIGHTS). Still, TURTLE is a wonderful seat-of-your-pants read, with mysterious codes, adventures above and below, children who are smart but not smartass, and adults who are not stooges for the kids. I hope we see more of Sam, Ben, Zara, and the rest of the company in the future.

5.0 out of 5 stars Really good, January 11, 2009

By 

Terry - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flight of the Silver Turtle (Hardcover)

Great sequel to Seven professors! Every bit as good. It's unique, has action, and very creative. Anybody and everybody should read this book. It doesn't have to be read after seven professors, but it would be better. That is an awesome book too! Can't wait for scret of the black moon moth!!