The Hidden Boy
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
You are the lucky winner of a Blue Moon Once-in-a-Lifetime Adventure. It’ll be the trip of a lifetime! The tour leaves from the Blue Moon office at 11 p.m. sharp. Groups of seven only. No pets.
When the Flints win the trip to Bell Hoot, they board Captain Bontoc’s Blue Moon Mobile with the expectation of a grand holiday. Then something terrible happens: Bea Flint’s little brother, Theo, disappears on the journey, and the peculiar Ledbetter clan of Bell Hoot, who call Theo the Hidden Boy, is more desperate than even Bea and her family to find him. Bea will have to trust herself and the weird and wise words of an old man called Arkadi in order to find Theo. In her search, she’ll discover that Bell Hoot is more than a vacation destination, a wish is no good unless you give it legs, and Mumbo Jumbo is much more than nonsense—it’s hidden potential that she can find within herself.
Jon Berkeley sends readers on the adventure of a lifetime with this first installment of a saga about a mysterious place called Bell Hoot, where strange and wonderful things happen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Berkeley's (the Wednesday Tales trilogy) first offering in the Bell Hoot Fables series is a whimsical fantasy adventure in the tradition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Pippi Longstocking. No one in Bea Flint's family claims to remember entering the raffle that has won them a Blue Moon Once-in-a-Lifetime Adventure Holiday, but they jump at the chance for a free trip. Despite skepticism about traveling on an amphibious busmarine that departs from a local car wash, they soon find themselves in the land of Bell Hoot. But Bea's seven-year-old brother, Theo, has disappeared during the journey, and as Bea, a girl who was more often to be found reading encyclopedias than anything else, searches for him, she finds herself growing into abilities she never dreamed of. Meanwhile, one of nine local clans, the Ledbetters, is just as determined to find Theo, to whom they have laid claim according to custom. Berkeley's prose and plotting gleam with humor and originality; this fast-paced tale should readily win over readers, who will be eager for a return visit to Bell Hoot. Ages 8 12.
