Fergus Crane (review)

Fergus Crane is content with his nine-year-old life: his widowed mom is a great pastry cook, his neighbors are affable, and school aboard the docked Betty-Jeanne is acceptable, although he could do without all those inexplicable cave-tunneling drills that students are expected to master. Late-night visits from a message-carrying winged box shake things up considerably, particularly since the messages are from Uncle Theo, whom he's never met, warning him of great danger. A ride on a mechanical flying horse takes him to Uncle Theo's faraway business, The Fateful Voyage Trading Company, which is staffed by penguins. There Fergus learns that his father is alive, searching for fire diamonds; that his teachers on the Betty-Jeanne are really pirates who stranded his Dad on an earlier voyage; that his classmates have been abducted by said pirates to crawl into volcanic caves to mine fire diamonds; and that he, Fergus, must save Dad and The Day. Naturally, he does, and a happy ending is enjoyed by all. Cuteness nearly runs amok, and the hops from talking penguins to magical lunchboxes to a sizable cast that serves little purpose other than to justify extensive black-and-white vignettes are somewhat disjointed. Still, the adventures are light and amiable, and the chunky typeface and generous illustration might just lure young readers onto their first full-length fantasy outing.