Harper and the Sea of Secrets

Harper

by Cerrie Burnell, Laura Ellen Anderson (Illustrator)

The Songs of the Sea festival is about to start, but disaster has struck! The royal musicians will be performing, but all their instruments have disappeared...Harper and her friends use her flying umbrella to come to the rescue, and that very night they start hearing beautiful music coming from Melody Bay. Will they have the courage to walk along the pitch-black smugglers' tunnels passing under the sea to find out who has stolen the instruments? A captivating adventure story all about friendship, creatures of the sea and magic. This is World Book Day UK book for 2016.

Genres: Fantasy, Childrens, Short Stories, Fiction, Middle Grade

76 pages, Paperback

Published March 3, 2016

About the author

Cerrie Burnell is one of the UK's best-known children's TV presenters and has in recent years made a name for herself as one of the most exciting new children's authors on the scene. Her picture book Snowflakes was performed at the Oxford Playhouse to great acclaim in 2016 and Harper, her fiction series, has been set to music by the Liverpool Philarmonic Orchestra.

Reviews

[Stacey | prettybooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adored Harper and the Scarlet Umbrella so was very excited to see this World Book Day story! In this short adventure, Harper travels to the City of Gulls (in the Scarlet Umbrella, of course!) to help send musical instruments to the Songs of the Sea festival. It was as charming and as a stunningly illustrated as ever. Harper is beautifully accompanied by her new best friends Liesel, Ferdie and Nate – and not forgetting the Smoke the Wolf and Midnight the Cat. Harper is definitely one of my favourite young children's series. It was an utter delight, as expected. I'm now ready for Harper and the Circus of Dreams!

I also reviewed this book over on Pretty Books.

[Dermo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very sweet little book, with the same luscious love of language and awesome alliteration as exhibited by the first book, and a simple, enjoyable plot for you g readers to follow, and slightly more character development.

[Jenika Ioffreda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book in a charity shop and I decided to give it a try. Glad I did because it's a lovely story, very nicely illustrated with a very-easy-to-like heroine, and a cool world building and secondary characters. I look forward to reading more books by this author.

[Beth Maisie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was very good and exciting too. It was very mysterious and magical as well!

[Rosalyn Davey · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's full of mistakes

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magical

[Thalia S. A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book! The plot was extremely fascinating, so it was a delight to read. Furthermore, the pictures were really nice, and I like the idea of a flying umbrella.

[Mehsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the first book in this series, so imagine my delight when I found out that not only would there be a second book, but that for World Book Day they would also make a small novella.

It took some effort to get this book, but I now have it in my hands, and I had to read it as soon as I could, which is today. This book was magical, lyrical, musical, fantastical and so much more.

I had to get used with the changing POVs, we switch through all the characters, and at times it was a bit annoying, as you were just reading from Nate's, only to switch to Liesel. But after a few pages I got used to it, and then I didn't have any problem with it. In fact I started to like it. Started to like that we saw this magical world through the eyes of not just one, but four characters.

We have another mystery in this one. Though mysteries would be better. We have the mystery of the missing instruments (Where did they go?), the secret of the sea, the secret behind all the music that is being played. It was great fun to read about our group of children finding out all about this place, figuring out all the secrets, and also helping people.

I still love the fact we have a magical umbrella. It is just so much fun, though it is quite magical to see how much one can hang on it/how many people can fly with it. It doesn't look big at all, but one can do so much with it. It is truly a magical umbrella. :D

Harper, and her skill of being able to play any instrument, was fun. I loved how she put that orchestra in their place. Go Girl!

The illustrations are once again just absolutely fabulous, and I was delighted each time they passed by (a lot). I especially loved the 2-page illustrations we got at times.

All in all, this is one book I would recommend. It is fun, it has music, it has great characters, lovely art, and much much more.

Review first posted at http://twirlingbookprincess.com/

[Aurumora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kurzeindruck (Englische Edition)

Es geht um eine sehr fantastische Gesichte über Harper, ihre Freunde, das Meer und die Musik. Es ist ein schön gewähltes Thema, aber es hat mir insgesamt weniger gefallen. Die Szenenwechsel waren zu prompt. Es entstand bei mir Verwirrung. Die Zeichnung (einfach Strichzeichnungen) haben beim Verstehen des Textes etwas geholfen. Coloiert würden die Zeichnungen sehr viel besser wirken, wie man es am Cover sieht. Teilweise merkte ich sehr stark, dass einige Handlungsstränge sehr konstruiert und gezwungen wirkten. Nach diesem Erlebnis würde ich Cerrie Burnell nicht weiter empfehlen.

[Frankie Rufolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know this book is for very small children, so it's best I read it before I go to college. For a book of it's kind it's just lovely. The language is simple with a bit of alliteration and nice similes to liven it up. The world and it's characters are just really pleasant and likeable (although I am being a bit biased here as the main character is a harpist - as the name would imply and I recently met a Sunday School classmate who I hadn't seen in about 10 years and she's turned out as a harpist with some decent banter.) There's a fair bit of imagination in the fantasy elements which the Lauren Child-esqe illustrations really bring out. It's just beautiful.

[Emma Radford · Rating 5 out of 5]

We loved Smoke and thought the story was magical.

[Solveig · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very two-dimensional characters in a predictable tale. Harper has a magical musical ability to play any instrument as well as a scarlet umbrella that she can sail the seas and skies in - it sounds like the premise of a fantastical tale but somehow comes off boring and lacking originality.