Stranded

Tony joins in a dangerous mission to roll several stranded whales back into the sea.

Grade 4-6-- An early morning walk on the beach near his Australian seaside home leads to Tony's sighting of a beached whale. Its frantic calls for help attract other whales--19 in all--and the town's citizens must think and work quickly in order to save as many of the huge mammals as possible. The book's ecological theme is intriguing, but both plot and characters fall flat due to lack of description and unrealistic speech. Several characters are not clearly identified. Although mention is made that beached whales are a dangerous lot, Tony is allowed to stay with the whale he found throughout the story; it even communicates with him. Especially disconcerting is Coleridge's vehicle of having grown men, in the midst of stressful crisis, rush to inform young Tony (one of many children helping) of each detail. This whole episode occurs in a day, yet the feeling of time stopping that prevails during a crisis is not conveyed. Coleridge's writing does not measure up to the finely crafted descriptions of man's coexistence with nature that appear in the novels by authors such as Gary Paulsen. --Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library,
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