Nacky Patcher & the Curse of the Dry-Land Boats

by Jeffrey Kluger

Overview

What Nacky Patcher and Teedie Flinn discover in the owl light and blackberry water of Yole Lake causes them to suspect they are losing their wits. Polished wood as far as the eye can see—an entire ship comes unbuttoned! Yet they see something else, too, something far more important: a way out from the curse that has burdened the poor folks of Yole for generations. But first, they will need the villagers to do something they haven’t done in a long time: work as a team.

Jeffrey Kluger, co-author of the blockbuster book-turned-film Apollo 13, delivers one of the finest, quirkiest, and most emotionally satisfying reads of the year. As they rise to the challenge of something greater than themselves, this cast of characters will capture readers’ hearts and imaginations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101177600
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	06/21/2007
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,038,588
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	10 Years

About the Author

Jeffrey Kluger is a senior editor and writer at Time. Coauthor of the bestseller Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, which is the basis for the movie Apollo 13, he is also the author of Moon Hunters: NASA's Remarkable Expeditions to the Ends of the Solar System. Kluger lives in New York City with his wife and daughters.

Editorial Reviews

The novel pulses with a passion for the way things work, especially nautical things, that would do David Macaulay and Patrick O'Brian proud. Kluger obviously believes there are 10- and 12-year-olds out there who are wired the same way and isn't afraid to hit them with plugs and trunnels, keelsons and garboards, steamboxes and the intricacies of sails and riggings. Miraculously, there's not a boring sentence in the book. It could have kids all over America building boats in their backyards.
—The Washington Post

Elizabeth Ward

Kluger's first novel for young readers is a fully imagined fantasy with a twist of magic. The village of Yole, once a bustling seaport, is now an arid village, following the "Great Drying" when locals drained the sea, (wrongly) suspecting that fertile land lay beneath it. Now, a greedy landowner rules over a handful of hardscrabble villagers, though Nacky Patcher, an unsuccessful thief, believes that the ballad of the Dry-Land Boats (which he's heard since he was in the cradle) holds the key to the village's redemption. When Nacky and his young sidekick, orphan Teedie Flinn, come upon the wreckage of a ship in the dried-up sea, Nacky believes it is one of these legendary boats. To reverse the curse that has befallen Yole ("This here is a ghost boat turned real.... There's a way to break the charm what's holdin' this town, and we just spotted it"), Nacky insists the villagers help him reconstruct the ship-all "forty thousand and one" pieces of it. The tension mounts as Nacky and his crew work against impossible odds and deadlines to finish the ship. There are memorable characters aplenty and Nacky's swashbuckling adventure should be of special interest to those interested in shipbuilding and the seafaring life. Readers will want to follow the story with a careful eye so as not to miss any clues of the dry-land boats prophecy. Ages 10-up. (June)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Gr 7-9
A dark charm has held the village of Yole for generations, keeping the folks poor and oppressed by Mally Balloo, the master who owns the town and delights in home-pitchings that evict the villagers. When readers first meet Nacky, he is a thief, a cheat, and a swindler, headed yet again to the penitents' tower. His punishment takes him aboard a ship that wrecks, leaving him with a wooden leg and a pet pig. He returns to Yole and, along with the orphan and alleged fire setter Teedie Flinn, sees an amazing sight in the lake: the wreckage of a teakwood clipper ship. The coast is a half-day's journey away. Could this be one of the dry-land boats in the children's songs-songs that predict the breaking of the dark charm? Nacky is sure that reconstructing the exactly 40,000 pieces of wood into a ship and hauling it to the sea will break the curse. But, for this to happen, all the townspeople must work together and agree to follow the lead of two ne'er-do-wells, Nacky and Teedie, and that seems highly unlikely. The theme of redemption winds through the story. The setting has a medieval feel, with hints of Ireland. This is a very long, complicated novel with lots of characters, subplots, and details. There is much invented vocabulary as well as technical terms and information related to shipbuilding. This quirky tale will appeal mainly to readers who like a challenge.
—Connie Tyrrell BurnsCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

A one-footed ex-thief and a homeless orphan with a ruined hand figure prominently in this ambitious tale of a town that unites to rebuild a clipper ship. Some say that Yole lies under a curse, sitting as it does on the infertile bed of a berry-blue sea that was drained generations ago by land speculators. In any case, it's never amounted to much-until ne'er-do-well Nacky and young Teedie Flinn find 40,000 pieces of teak floating in the local (berry-blue) lake, and persuade the impoverished townsfolk to undertake the seemingly pointless task of fitting them all together. There are obstacles aplenty to overcome-notably the schemes of rapacious landlord Mally Baloo-but overcome they are, and though things don't work out quite as planned, by the end Nacky's in love, injustices have been corrected and Yole has become a workers' paradise. There isn't much here to hook young readers; more a prose stylist than a storyteller, Kluger salts his narrative with fanciful names and words. The pace ambles, he pays more attention to the adult characters and he blithely disregards internal logic to trot in convenient solutions to every problem. A noble effort, but may struggle to find an audience. (Fantasy. 12-15)

Kirkus Reviews