Rating: WORTHY!
Note that this is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
This was a fun trip - literally - although Thomas, heedless of the good advice he was given, probably didn't think so as he was swept from the placid waters of his boringly calm pond, down the creek and over a waterfall. Can he get back home? Don't you just hate book blurbs that ask questions with the obvious answer "Yes"?! Fortunately this one had no such dumb blurb because it wasn't a dumb story. Although I have to say that the 'turtles' here looked far more like tortoises to me! But who cares? Maybe tortoises are just turtles with a dry sense of humor....
Thomas's father disappeared a long time ago when he went down the dangerous end of the pond. Thomas of course cannot resist following his lead, and he has a slightly scary adventure tumbling downstream. Just when he thinks he might never get home, fortune, as they say, favors the brave. He gets a piece for good luck and doesn't have to...shell out for a bus ride back home!
The book worked equally well on a smart phone as it did on a tablet (both in a Kindle app which is frankly not the best way to look at picture books). But if you're caught without the tablet, you can get by with the phone, which is always nice, although the pictures aren't shown at their best on the smaller screen, and the phone doesn't allow enlargement of the pictures for a closer look, whereas the tablet does.
The story was amusing, and a bit scary, and engaging. The artwork was adorable. I'm not an artist. In fact I'm about as far from one as you can get without going all the way around the other side and backing into it by mistake, but this was at least reminiscent of watercolor and oddly maybe mixed with crayon, and it looked really great. I recommend this book for young children who like adventure - and who doesn't as long as you can be safe at home reading about it?!
