Ray and the Torn and Tattered Treasure Map by N. Degen

Ray Taylor and the Torn and Tattered Treasure Map by N. Degen is an ambitious adventure with a lot of heart, though one that rewards a particular kind of reader - or listener.

Ray is a ten-year-old boy coping with the loss of his father and the daily grind of school bullies by losing himself in the world of a pirate novel he is reading. When an errand for his mother takes him to the enigmatic house of his neighbour, Mr. Fox, he is pulled through into the world of his book - joining the pirate crew of the Celestine as its seventh member.

The Celestine is captained by Archie, who is following a torn and tattered map in search of a mysterious wordless book once belonging to the infamous Captain Cook. Once found, the book reveals itself to Archie in riddles and ridicule, holding the secret to a hidden treasure that can only be unlocked after seven jewels are recovered from a series of unusual islands. This sets up the novel's episodic structure, with each island presenting its own peculiar society and rules.

The island adventures have a flavour that will feel familiar to readers who love Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan - worlds where the normal logic of things has been quietly inverted. A town where cats are outlawed. An island beset by giant attacking birds. A place where time endlessly repeats. The standout for me was San Liberi, where adults become students taught by child teachers, and young pharmacists dispense potions that make their patients worse rather than better. I can easily imagine a teacher reading this chapter aloud to their class, or a parent to their child at bedtime - the two of them dissolving into laughter together at the image of a roomful of grown adults throwing tantrums, picking fights with one another, and being managed by a teacher half their size. It is the kind of absurdist logic that children find instantly delightful, and that adults secretly enjoy just as much. Woven between the island episodes are high-seas set pieces - being swallowed by a whale, snatched from the sky by a monstrous bird - that keep the energy high and the pages turning, along with the riddles from Cook's book that serve as clues to the location of each jewel, adding a layer of puzzle-solving to the adventure.

It is worth being honest about the reading experience, though. This is a long book with a shifting point of view and vocabulary that sits closer to Alice in Wonderland or The Hobbit than to contemporary middle-grade fiction - dense, rich, and occasionally demanding. For the average ten-year-old reading independently, it may be a stretch. Where it truly comes into its own is as a read-aloud: a bedtime story, or the kind of novel a teacher might work through with a junior class on those Friday afternoons. Children who listen to the novel rather than navigate the prose alone will get far more from it - the lively dialogue lands better spoken, the humour of the island societies plays well to a room, and the adventure sequences have real momentum when read with energy.

For young readers ready for that challenge, or for parents and teachers looking for their next read-aloud, this is a whirlwind of imagination. Five stars.