WE DINE WITH CANNIBALS

Is it any wonder 11-year-old twins Oliver and Celia Navel hate explorers, given that all explorers ever do is nearly get them killed? Television is so much safer.

Celia and Oliver barely escaped Tibet with their lives (We Are Not Eaten by Yaks, 2011), and they failed to convince their mother (an explorer, of course) to give up her quest for the Lost Library of Alexandria and return home. Now, thanks to their father (another explorer), they’re indentured for the entirety of summer vacation to Sir Edmund Titheltorpe-Schmidt III (yeah, yet another explorer), who has them searching Machu Picchu for a clue to the Lost Library’s location. All in all, they’re looking forward to sixth grade (that’s saying something). When school goes disastrously wrong, the twins find themselves dragged off to the Amazon. At least they’re in the company of their idol Corey Brandt, star of Sunset High and Agent Zero, who’s hired the family as consultants for his hit show The Celebrity Adventurist. When Dad and Sir Edmund are kidnapped by cannibals, the twins must use their television-derived smarts to rescue them…or, at the very least, survive. London’s second in the Accidental Adventure series has more thrills and more mystery (and naturally more complaining and more laughs) than the first.

Fans will be glad of the promise of an adventure in Atlantis to come; Celia and Oliver know adventure is only thrilling when it happens to someone else.