Nightbirds on Nantucket FROM THE PUBLISHER
Having had enough of life on board the ship that saved her from a watery grave, Dido Twite wants nothing more than to sail home to England. Instead, Captain Casket's ship lands in Nantucket, where Dido and the captain's daughter, Dutiful Penitence, are left in the care of Dutiful's sinister Aunt Tribulation. In Tribulation's farmhouse, life is unbearable. When mysterious men lurk about in the evening fog, the resourceful Dido rallies against their shenanigans with help from Dutiful, a cabinboy named Nate, and a pink whale.
FROM THE CRITICS
Children's Literature - Childrens Literature
Originally written in 1966, this is a book well worth revisiting. A Nantucket whaler finds the oddly named heroine, Dido Twite, adrift in the North Sea. For months she lays unconscious, carefully nursed by a cabin boy named Nate. When she emerges from her long sleep, she is revealed to be a plucky English daredevil capable of keeping up with Nate aboard ship, but assigned to the task of bringing the captain's motherless daughter, Penitence, out of her isolation. Pen's father is off on a glorious quest, the pursuit of an elusive pink whale. While he chases this phantom, Pen and Dido are sent back to Nantucket to live with her evil Aunt Tribulation who, it turns out, is a treacherous impostor plotting to blow up the island. Exciting, intricate, and beautifully literate, this is a book to be read aloud like Dickens--chapter by wonderful chapter--to an audience of avid listeners awaiting the next quirky character and the next tangle in the unwinding tale. 1999, Houghton Mifflin, Ages 8 to 14, $15.00 and $5.95. Reviewer: Lois Rubin Gross
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