The Doldrums

Author: Nicholas Gannon
Illustrator: Nicholas Gannon

© Date: 2015
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Pages: 340
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: Yes, some pages illustrations (a few full page color illustrations are included)
Publisher Recommended Age: 8-12 years
Bonus Activities at End of Book: No

Summary from Book: Archer B. Helmsley has grown up in a house full of oddities and treasures collected by his grandparents, the famous explorers. He knows every nook and cranny. He knows them all too well. After all, ever since his grandparents went missing on an iceberg, his mother barely lets him leave the house.

Archer B. Helmsley longs for adventure. Grand adventures, with parachutes and exotic sunsets and interesting characters. But how can he have an adventure when he can’t leave his house?

It helps that he has friends like Adélaïde L. Belmont, who must have had many adventures to end up with a wooden leg. (Perhaps from a run-in with a crocodile. Perhaps not.) And Oliver Glub. Oliver will worry about all the details (so Archer doesn’t have to).

Archer, Adélaïde, and Oliver make a plan. A plan to get out of the house, out of their town entirely. It’s a good plan.

Well, it’s not bad, anyway.

But nothing goes quite as they expect.

Note: This review is done from memory. I originally read this awhile ago.

Page Pig Thoughts: I quite enjoyed this series and was disappointed that there was not another one. Action, adventure, humor, and friendship are blended well into a page turning story. The characters were relatable and the mystery of what happened to Archer’s grandparents is revealed at a good pace through two books. The illustrations were beautiful and added to the story, particularly the full page color illustrations. Props also to the cover illustrations, they are rather genius. The more times that I look at them, the more pieces of the stories I see in the covers.

Archer kept dreaming of all of his adventures being far away from home, but had a knack for finding adventures right around home. I kinda loved that because haven’t we all dreamed of some big thing far away from home but discovered something amazing was waiting right on our doorstep?

I would enjoy reading these someday with Page Pup, but I’m not sure when that day will be since we have so many other books that we want to read.

Use caution with a younger or sensitive child that may not like the idea of animals being stuffed and on display in a house or museum.

Family Unit:

Archer lives with his mother and father.
Oliver lives with his mother, father, and younger sister.
Adélaïde lives with her father, her mother stayed behind in France.

Conflict/Social Issues:

Mrs. Murkley lives next to Archer, Adélaïde, and Oliver. She also teaches at their school. She is not kind and believes that children need to be put in their place. Archer inadvertently puts her in the hospital more than once for scares that give her troubled heart issues.
Archer desperately wants to go on adventures like his grandparents, his mother desperately wants him to be civilized and well behaved.

Positive Items:

Archer, Adélaïde, and Oliver are good friends that are supportive of one another, but can still give each other a good-natured bad time.
Archer, Adélaïde, and Oliver are able to work together to survive whatever comes their way, even tigers chasing them through a museum.

Items of Interest:

Archer and his parents live in his grandparents’ house that is full of things from their travels. Those things include lots of stuffed wild animals. All of the travel items are interesting enough that people come for tours of their home.
Archer’s mother observes that Archer has adventuring tendencies. She does not like them, maybe they do not create a good appearance, maybe they are not safe, not really sure. Either way, the more adventuring tendencies or possibilities and the less civil society behavior that Archer demonstrates, the more that his mother keeps him in the house. Archer winds up not being allowed to leave the house except for school.
Archer and Oliver get to one another’s house by climbing onto the roof and jumping the gap between them.
Oliver’s parents know that Archer has been escaping his own home and hanging out in theirs, but they are not bothered by it. Oliver’s mother even feeds Archer her delicious homemade pastries.
Adélaïde’s mother was not overly fond of her and even tells a waiter that if her daughter is so lovely, then he can take Adélaïde home with him.
Adélaïde was a ballet dancing prodigy. She had a tutor so that she could spend her time in lessons at Paris Ballet Theater. An unfortunate incident with a delivery truck hitting a lamp post leaves Adélaïde with a wooden leg and no more dancing.
Mr. Belmont, Adélaïde’s father, decides that they should leave Paris for a change of pace. He restarts his coffee shop in England. Adélaïde moves with him, but Mrs. Belmont has no interest in leaving Paris and does not move.
At her new school, Adélaïde says that a crocodile ate her leg. Archer is jealous of Adélaïde’s adventuring.
Archer’s father is a lawyer, much to his grandparents disapproval.
Archer forges his parents’ signatures so that he can go on a class field trip.
Archer, Adélaïde, and Oliver create a plan to escape to Antarctica to save Archer’s grandparents from the iceberg that they are stranded on.
The second book deals with what is acceptable to do with a powder that makes people act the opposite of who they really are. The effects do not last long, but the power to create a shift in someone is not to be taken lightly. The results of it make Archer, Adélaïde, and Oliver think further about the ethics of the powder.

Just Because:

Because this part at the beginning was amusing enough without context that I told Page Pup about it.

- [Into a radio] Archer: “Hello.”
- Other voice: “Bonjour.”
- Archer: “Brochure?”
- Other voice: “Oui, bonjour.”
- Archer: “Free brochure?”
- Other voice: “Oui! Bonjour.”
- Archer: “Thanks, but I’m not interested in a free brochure.”

Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):

- Book 2 – The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse