[WPF] The Journey to Atlantis by Thea Stilton - 4 stars

[Theresa]

I only read this because I was curious about this author nominated by someone as a favorite for the PBT Favorite Author challenge. I found a series I can recommend to a friend with an 8 year old daughter who likes mystery and adventure stories. I was also charmed.

I would absolutely have adored this in my childhood so it gets 4 stores and I'm recommending it to my friends with preteen readers. it's full of beautiful colored illustrations, colorful type fonts of all kinds on a few words each page, and has a sophisticated by accessible vocabulary for pre-teens. It is not dumbed down at all, but will I think stretch a kid's reading vocabulary while having fun. It's also got a few recognizable and humorous moments to amuse the parent or older sibling who might be reading this to a kid; my favorite was the allusion to one of my favorite Sean Connery moments in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Thea's Sisters are 5 girls attending Mouseford Academy on Whale Island. They each have their own skill and talents and are the best of friends. They are all bright and adventurous and based on the number of books that seem to have been published, they get involved with all sorts of mysteries and adventures. Kind of reminded me of a younger Nancy Drew or even the Happy Hollister Family. In this particular special edition adventure, Pauline discovers a blue boy washed up on the shore. After saving him, they set out to help him find his home. Only there is a problem: his home is the lost city of Atlantis. There's also another problem: there's a villain after him.

Never fear, the villain is thwarted and the blue boy finds his way home with their help through a series of maps, puzzles, cryptograms, hidden clues, and riddles, and the help of Thea (an older friend who had once been at the Academy - there is a story somewhere I'm sure as to how this quintet became known as Thea's Sisters) and a secret research society, and travels to Argentina, Antartica, Portugal, Turkey (to my favorite site in Istanbul), and Ethiopia.

I probably should mention that Thea's Sisters and every character in the story except for Blue Boy is a mouse.