HURRICANE LUCK

This has much to recommend it and with a little more might have been a very good book. There's the feel of the Florida keys in the background; there's the interest-provoking idea of going to school in a school boat instead of a school bus- and of the school providing a refuge for the families when the big blow strikes. There's the start of interest in shells and in deep sea fishing. And here is where the story fails to follow through. Peter and the other children are thrilled at the prospect of the shell boatman's visit to the school, bitterly disappointed when the storm waylays him and their collections cannot be used. But it seems that their interest is in what they can sell him- and there is nothing of the thrill of search and discovery. Even Peter's longed-for junonia comes too easily. When he sells it for a disappointingly small sum, that money helps him to win the tarpon catch award, but again it is the money at the end rather than the thrill of the catch that is important....Much better written than the run of the mill story- and for this reason we wish it could have been just a bit better.