Book Review: "Nelly and the Quest for Captain Peabody" is a swash-buckling adventure of a little girl called Nelly. "The girl was called Nelly and the boat was called Nelly, just the same. It belonged to Captain Bones Peabody, of the Gentlemen's Exploratory Flotilla, who had gone off many years before with a group of gentlemen explorers to sail around the world and, as yet, had not returned. Nelly, the girl, was Captain Peabody's daughter."
So that is the premise, Nelly goes off on the seven seas with her pet turtle Columbus for adventures with "pirates, waterspouts, and so forth". There are some lovely descriptive scenes as Nelly goes on her voyage, like that of the quiet seas that her journey begins on, to the storms she later encounters, to the icebergs she comes across and so on. And she is a reflective character too, like when she is about to meet her doom when encountering a pirate ship she "thought how unfair it was that she was so young and had nobody at all to help her; that her parents had not cared for her better; that she had been forced to do all the cleaning as well as the household accounts". So as well as being independent she is a bit more grown up for a little girl which will appeal to girl readers themselves.
Along the way there are two-tone illustrations to add to the text. These also help to bring the book alive and two colours is better than black and white. My 8-year-old and 4-year-old daughters enjoyed this.
Published: 1 Oct 2015
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