ChickPea Reviews: Fish Kid and the Turtle Torpedo

Author and illustrator: Kylie Howarth
Publisher: Walker Books
Age Range: Lower Primary, Middle Primary
Themes: Ocean, climate change, Marine biology

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This week I am introducing ‘ChickPea Reviews’! Is it any surprise that the daughter of a teacher librarian is reviewing books? Ha!

In all seriousness, I love kidlit reviews – I mean, these titles have been created FOR them so why shouldn’t they tell us what they think? Kids are also the ears and eyes of what’s on trend in the school yard and this includes books. They will tell ALL their friends if they discover a new book series that gets their tick of approval.

This week ChickPea’s been reading the latest book in the Fish Kid book series – a series she discovered a while back and loved! Take it away ChickPea!

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Kylie Howarth has done a series of ‘Fish Kid‘ books but today I am reviewing ‘Fish Kid and the Turtle Torpedo‘.

These books are a fun-filled series about a kid who one day got magical fish powers from drinking a weird smoothie – If this kid goes nose to nose with a marine animal, he gets more and more powers. He already went nose to nose with an underwater lizard in book one, a manta ray in book two and now in book three … he gets an uber cool power!

In Turtle Torpedo, Fish Kid and Emely (his best friend) are travelling to the Maldives with their parents to study dead coral. One day Fish Kid sees that his best friend is sulking and he offers to take her on a ‘Fish Kid ride’. She perks up and says ‘yes’. A Fish Kid ride is where Bodhi (Fish Kid) uses one of his powers and goes super-duper fast with Emely on his back. Suddenly Emely tells Bodhi to stop. He stops and then they discover that someone has just thrown a plastic bottle in the ocean. They pick it up and keep on swimming.

A little while after Emely tells Bodhi to stop again, they find a brown lump floating in the water. After further inspection they find out the brown lump is a turtle and is trying to dive down but can’t.

The two take the turtle back to their parents who are marine biologists and they take it to a turtle sanctuary. They visit it every day and find out the turtle has too much air in him and is buoyant. Together Fish Kid and Emely name him Scute.

Fish Kid and Emely visit the turtle sanctuary every day and love playing with the turtles and teaching them to dive down and fetch crab, although they do have another special turtle in the sanctuary called Luna who has lost her front two flippers. One day Luna finally dives down but she never resurfaces. The people running the sanctuary tell Bodhi if turtles are stressed they only hold their breath for about 45 minutes, if they are resting it is one or maybe two hours.

Three hours pass and they still do not have Luna. Suddenly Bodhi goes nose to nose with a dolphin and gets new fish powers. What are they? Will they find Luna? Why is Scute not diving?

Find out in this cool ocean adventure that is funny, full of interesting fishy facts and lots of ocean adventure.

From the same series

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