The Flight of the Silver Turtle

The Seven Professors of the Far North #2

by John Fardell

Ben, Zara, Sam, and Marcia begin their summer vacation by helping Professor Ampersand and a new friend build the Silver Turtle, a futuristic airplane, but on the day the first test flight is planned, a strange woman steals the airplane with the children inside.

Genres: Fiction, Adventure

212 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2006

About the author

John Fardell is a British cartoonist and author.

He is a regular contributor to the adult comic Viz, and has created and drawn two of the most popular and long-running strips, The Modern Parents[1] and The Critics, as well as the more recent (and rather less popular) additions of Ferdinand the Foodie and Desert Island Teacher. His work for Viz often tends to satirise various types of self-important or self-righteous middle class people. The Modern Parents, for example, portrays the way a mother and father insist on bringing up their young sons following a doctrine of what they term as 'ethical awareness', much to the detriment of their children.

Fardell is also the author and illustrator of three children's adventure novels — The Seven Professors of the Far North, published in 2004, The Flight of the Silver Turtle, published in 2006, and The Secret of the Black Moon Moth, published in 2009 — and a children's picture book, Manfred the Baddie, published 2008.

Fardell lives in Edinburgh with his wife and two children.

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent sequel! Like the first book, this one takes place in and around Edinburgh!

[Gloss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fast-paced and witty!

[Leni Sit · Rating 5 out of 5]

So cool show's how much kids can do great book about teamwork and friendship

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sequel to a book I read several years ago, "The 7 Professors in the Far North". What a fun book this sequel is! It's fast-paced and exciting. Sometimes it's difficult to keep the very eccentric professors (whose names about describe their personalities and interests) straight but it doesn't really matter. The children, who are the main characters, are easy to keep straight. The children are just teen and pre-teens. The book takes place in Scotland with trips to Switzerland.

Ben and Zara, the great nephew and niece of Professor Ampersand, their friend Sam, and Marcia, the adopted daughter of Professor Petunia Hartleigh-Boradbeam become interested in a conceptual airplane being built in a hangar near the shore by Miss Amy McAirdrie. Professor Ampersand has an electric motor that hasn't interested any of the car makers but Amy decides it's perfect for her new plane. Her hangar was the former workshop of a Czech Scientist who was developing an anti-gravity machine during World War II. Agents of a hostile secret police force called Noctarma have been searching for the anti-gravity machine since the War for their own ends. all they know about it is that it was called "The Silver Turtle Project". They have been watching the hangar. When the children name the plane "The Silver Turtle" from something they read, Noctarma is after them. What ensues is an exciting adventure with the adults being kidnapped and the children flying the plane and escaping the evil Noctarma. They are helped along the way by some other eccentric people. The whole book is one big fast-paced adventure, even if the technology is a little stretched.

[Charlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interest in an experimental aircraft being built by a young pilot in a historical hangar places the young charges of the professors in danger of a Nazi-based organization Noctarma. Marcia, Sam, Zara, and Ben innocently offer Professor Ampersand's latest invention to power the strange airplane being built by Amy McAirdrie. Agents of Noctarma have the hangar under surveillance because it was the workplace for another inventor, Maskil Stribnik, whose work on an anti-gravity device is eagerly sought by the nefarious secret organization. When the children find a note from Stribnik that refers to a silver turtle, they suggest the name to Amy for her amphibious aircraft. Unfortunately this further reference to Stribnik causes an attack on the hangar and the adults are taken prisoner. The children, who were waiting in the Silver Turtle, are saved when a strange woman jumps in and pilots the ship away. This is hardly the end of the story, however, when it becomes unclear who are friends and who are agents of Noctarma. The children must race to find the real Silver Turtle before it falls into hands of the vile group and get release for the adults taken prisoner.

The emphasis of this story is much more on the mystery and adventure of the search for the Silver Turtle than the fantastical elements of the story. Some readers may have a bit of trouble with the Scottish dialect, but that is minor. More difficult may be the references to history and geography and the length of the book, but the reader looking for adventure will be rewarded.

[Ben Kang · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the idea of the book was very interesting because there was a machine that can create anti-gravity. It was an enjoyable book because there were inventions that have not even been made in our present world yet.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun sequel. Could I child really fly a plane all by himself? No, but it makes for an exciting adventure.

[Susan Thornton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another fun adventure story to read with/to my son.

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fast paced fun and entertaining.

[The Brothers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Asher (9yo) read.