You have a child who does not finish books. This one opens with an exploding whale.
That is not a figure of speech. Book eight moves Teddy Fitzroy out of the zoo altogether. An escaped kangaroo starts a fire that burns his house down, so he goes to Malibu with his girlfriend Summer and her mother, and while he is there a dead whale washes up on the beach. Before anyone can work out what killed it, it blows apart. Doc, the head vet from FunJungle, decides the death was no accident and pulls Teddy into it. Then somebody starts stealing sand off the beach by the ton, the paparazzi start printing rumours about Summer and a celebrity, and Teddy spends the book running two cases and one relationship at once.
The science it actually teaches
The animal science in Whale Done is thinner than in the zoo books, and the best science in it is not about the whale. Say that up front, because it is a finding rather than a complaint and it changes what you buy the book for.
The whale still earns its opening. A dead whale is a sealed container. The gut bacteria do not stop when the animal does, so they carry on producing gas, methane and hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, and the blubber and skin that kept the animal warm and watertight are now thick enough and tough enough to hold that gas in rather than let it vent. Pressure builds. Add a hot beach, or a person with a knife, and the thing bursts. That is a real mechanism, it is genuinely on the page, and it will teach a nine year old more about gas under pressure than any diagram will.
The investigation is decent too. How does anyone find out what killed a whale? By looking at physical evidence, the same as any other death. Broken bones and blunt injury point at a ship. Scars and cut lines point at rope and gear. Stomach contents say something about plastic, or about the last thing it ate. Tissue goes off for testing when a toxin is suspected. Nobody stands on the sand and guesses.
But the thread that surprised me is the sand.
Most children have never once asked where a beach comes from, and neither have most adults. A beach is not a place. It is a system, running all the time. Sand comes down rivers and off eroding cliffs, waves and currents shove it along the coast, and a beach exists only while what arrives roughly matches what leaves. Take sand away in truckloads and it does not quietly refill. The coast starts eating itself, and eventually somebody pays to haul sand back in.
The theft is not invented either. Sand is a commodity, because concrete is made from it, and stealing sand off beaches and riverbeds is a real crime in the real world. A middle grade mystery is a strange place to learn that, which is exactly why it sticks.
The child it lands with
This one sits at the top of the 4 to 7 band, not the bottom.
The reason is not the vocabulary. It is that a good share of this book is about being embarrassed in public, wondering whether your girlfriend still likes you, and watching adults behave badly for cameras. A nine year old who came for the animals will find a fair amount of relationship worry and celebrity satire in the way. A twelve year old will find that the most interesting part of it.
For a child who has been refusing to finish anything, though, the first chapter is as strong a hook as this shelf has.
One place to stop and talk
One question, and it is not about the whale.
Where does a beach come from? Not where is it. Where does the sand come from, and where does it go. Most adults cannot answer that either, which is what makes forty seconds on it worth more than a whole chapter of anything else in the book.
What to know going in
The gross humour peaks here. A rotting whale detonates on a public beach and the aftermath lands on people, and it is described with enthusiasm rather than skipped over. If your child loves that sort of thing, this is the best book in the series for them. If your child does not, start somewhere else on this shelf, because the opening is unavoidable.
The house fire is the second thing. Teddy's home burns down at the start, and children who shrug off monsters sometimes do not shrug off a house fire. It is worth one sentence of warning before you hand the book across.
Third, the romance. There is jealousy, there are tabloid rumours about Summer dating a celebrity, and Teddy genuinely questions whether the relationship is finished. It is handled gently and it is still a larger share of this book than of the earlier ones.
And it is book eight, so the cast arrives assuming you already know all of them.
Where to get it
The paperback is $8.99 at Whale Done, on the Stealth Science shelf.
One straight recommendation, because this book is not quite what its cover suggests. Buy it for the opening chapter and for the sand, in that order, and do not buy it expecting to be taught whales.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
Curious World of Calpurnia Tate: Wild Is Not a Pet
The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
Grade 4 to 7
Julie of the Wolves: The Science and the Caution
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
Grade 4 to 7
Browse every book we have written about by age, by kind of book and by subject: Find the right book for your child. Or see the whole Stealth Science shelf.
