A Friendly Town That's Almost Always by the Ocean!

by Kir Fox

Overview

Welcome to Topsea, the strangest place you'll ever visit. In this town, the coves are bottomless and the pier has no end in sight. There's a high tide and a low tide . . . and a vanishing tide. Dogs are a myth, but mermaids are totally real. And seaweed is the main ingredient in every meal-watch out, it might just start chewing you back!

New kid Davy definitely thinks Topsea is strange. His mom keeps saying they'll get used to life in their new town-it's just the way things are on the coast! But after his first day at Topsea School, Davy finds himself wondering: Why is his locker all the way at the bottom of the school swimming pool? Why can't anyone remember his name? (It's Davy!) And why does everyone act like all of this is normal?!

Through newspaper articles, stories, surveys, notifications, and more, follow Davy and the rest of Ms. Grimalkin's fifth grade class through the weird world of Topsea. (Whatever you do, don't make eye contact with the rubber ducks.)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781368000802
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	01/08/2019
Series:	Secrets of Topsea , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	570L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Kir Fox (Kirsten Hubbard) and M. Shelley Coats (Michelle Schusterman) are great friends, longtime critique partners, and ardent consumers of the strange and unusual. Kirsten is the author of the middle-grade novels Watch the Sky and Race the Night (Disney-Hyperion), and the young adult novels Like Mandarin and Wanderlove (Delacorte Press/Random House Children's Books). She lives in Los Angeles.

Michelle is the author of the middle grade series I Heart Band and The Kat Sinclair Files (Grosset/Penguin), and the middle-grade novels Olive and the Backstage Ghost and Spell & Spindle (Random House Children's Books). She is also the coauthor of the YA novel The Pros of Cons (Scholastic). She lives in Dallas, Texas.

Editorial Reviews

05/07/2018
In the charming, quirky town of Topsea, dogs are considered to be mythical creatures but hogs make for adorable pets. Davy’s first day at school starts with finding that his locker is located underwater, at the bottom of the deep end of the pool, and the rest of his fifth-grade classmates are just as delightfully weird as their town. In the style of Louis Sachar’s Sideways Stories from Wayside School, this first title in the Secrets of Topsea series is replete with wittiness and absurdity, but a deeper look reveals universal themes of struggling to fit in, fearing new things, and coping with loss. Death and abandonment, in particular, are not treated lightly, but their inclusion, along with a diverse representation of families and social groups, make this story a gateway for children to see themselves and to feel seen, as well as a celebration of individuality and friendship. In the end, Davy discovers there’s no such thing as normal. A cartoon-style sketch at the beginning of each chapter hints at which character will claim the spotlight for the next few pages. Ages 8–12. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"This story [is] a gateway for children to see themselves and to feel seen, as well as a celebration of individuality and friendship." —Publishers Weekly

"[A] mix of chills and chuckles."—Kirkus

From the Publisher

2018-02-19
A fifth-grader struggles to fit in after he and his recently widowed mother move to a decidedly oddball new town.As if the seemingly infinite pier, the lighthouse in the middle of town, and the beach teeming with enigmatic cats aren't strange enough, Davy Jones discovers that his school locker has been relocated to the deep end of the swimming pool, his lunchtime fries are delivered by a "spudzooka," and no one seems to be able to get his name right. On the other hand, his classmates welcome him, and in next to no time he's breaking into an abandoned arcade to play pinball against a ghost, helping track down a pet pig gone missing on Gravity Maintenance Day, and like adventures that, often as not, take sinister swerves before edging back to the merely peculiar. Point-of-view duties pass freely from character to character, and chapters are punctuated with extracts from the Topsea School Gazette ("Today's Seaweed Level: Medium-high and feisty"), bulletins on such topics as the safe handling of rubber ducks, and background notes on, for instance, the five local seasons, giving the narrative a pleasantly loose-jointed feel. Davy presents as white, but several other central cast members are specifically described as dark- or light-skinned and are so depicted in the frequent line drawings; one has two moms.A deft mix of chills and chuckles, not quite as sideways as Wayside School but in the same district. (Fantasy. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews