Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Cryptid Hunters
Fiction
For ages 12 and up
Hyperion, 2006 ISBN: 978-0786851621
Marty and his twin sister Grace have spent the last few years in a boarding school in Switzerland. Their parents often have to travel for work, and since Marty and Grace are such a handful, their parents decided that a boarding school was their only option.
One day the twins are called into the headmaster’s office – a commonplace occurrence – and they are told that their parents’ plane crashed in a rainforest in Brazil. Their parents’ bodies were not found at the crash site, and people are out looking for them. In the meantime, until there is definite news, Martyand his sister are going to be sent to live with their Uncle Wolfe on an island off the coast of Washington state. The whole situation is bizarre because the twins did not even know that they had an uncle.
When they get to Cryptos Island, Marty and Grace find out that their uncle is a cryptid hunter, which means that he looks for animals that other people think don’t even exist. The twins are not on the island long when Uncle Wolfe announces that he has to go to the Congo to look for, and hopefully find, an elusive cryptid. Time is of the essence because a man called Dr. Blackwood is also looking for the cryptid, and he will surely do something unspeakable to the animal if he finds it. Uncle Wolfe intends to send the children back to their boarding school for a while, but something happens that undermines his plans. Without warning, Marty and Grace are catapulted into the adventure of a lifetime.
Readers who like to read a good adventure tale that is full of surprises, will surely enjoy this action-packed story. Roland Smith keeps his readers guessing all the way through the book, and he leaves readers with an ending that indicates that more adventures are in the offing.
