Puzzle Island ANNOTATION
The reader is asked to find hidden animals in the pictures and identify a mysterious creature believed to be extinct.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
'Dear Friend, I am in urgent need of your help. Travel to Puzzle island at once and help me to save the rarest creature in the whole world from extinction! This book is my diary. Do not let it out of your sight. If it should fall into the wrong hands, it could be disastrous. Inside, you will find secret instructions. To succeed, you will have to solve an incredible puzzle with over a hundred clues. My congratulations in advance, especially if you succeed without cheating or assistance! Do not delay! Without your help, this remarkable creature could vanish forever! Yours puzzling, Ambrost Fogarty'
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
``Dear Friend,'' entreats this book's cover, ``I am in urgent need of your help. Travel to Puzzle Island . . . and help me to save the rarest creature in the world from extinction.'' Thus begins an intricate, engrossing puzzle certain to happily bedevil reader-detectives. Each of 11 elaborately detailed illustrations depicts a different part of the island, and squirreled away in each are the figures of four different creatures (space between certain branches of one tree, for example, is shaped like an upside-down cow). Adshead frames each picture with four alphabets; letters from each are missing, and these can be unscrambled to disclose the names of the hidden animals. Once these amiable tasks have been accomplished, however, the hunt for the ``rare creature'' is far from over. There are more messages to be assembled, concealed words, secret codes, rhyming clues. The text is wordy, the age range here misleading--could a five-year-old rearrange ``abdhimnry'' to spell ``mynah bird''?--but would-be Sherlocks and amateur cryptanalysts with good verbal skills could not wish for anything more. Ages 5-12. (Mar.)
Children's Literature - Deborah Zink Roffino
For individuals or group detective work, this creative puzzle/book challenges youngsters to read a diary, decipher the clues, make inferences, identify and help rescue an endangered species. Lush tropical paintings give this paperback the tone of a picture book. But don't be too quick to jump to conclusions: traces of evidence are hidden with great skill in the detailed jungle scenes. Amateur sleuths will compete to solve this mystery.
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