The scrappy ship Atlas is the only home Berkeley and her best friend Garth have ever known. Ever since the Tide Rising flooded the world, ships like this carry little pockets of humanity, trying to survive on very limited resources. Berkeley and Garth work as scavengers, diving down into flooded cities, but when Berkeley ends one mission by pissing off a monstrous kraken, it ends up battering the poor Atlas badly. To make up for the economic loss, the two kids are about to be sent off to a work boat (basically a floating prison of hard labor) when the Britannica, a state of the art sub swings by. Her captain offers the two kids a place on the sub, and so they are off to new adventures, with no chance to say goodbye to their families, who are left to assume they are dead.
The Britannica is a monster hunter, prowling the seas in order to keep ships from being destroyed. Berkeley loves this new life of training and learning and speculating about sea monsters (there are tanks of young ones in the ship's lab) alongside the two other kids already on board. But it's dangerous--the sea monsters aren't the only predators, and when pirates take over the sub, and the four kids are the only free crew members, it's up to them to use all the sea monster skills and knowledge they've acquired to take back the ship! (note--as an adult reader and parent, I'm glad that after all the excitement Berkeley and Garth got to go on board Atlas again and see their families!)
There's lots of really good monster hunting and excitement (some if it rather icky, like when the Britannica actually gets swallowed by a sea monster), and a nice dose of monster study and speculation as well. Berkeley isn't interested in just killing individual monsters attacking ships; she wants to learn how to keep the attacks from happening in the first place. And she's a tinker-er, able to look at junk and see potential, a creativity that is key in the pirate struggle! The details of life in the sub are great, the kids are a good mix of different personalities and skills, and the flooded world with its monster filled oceans is a vivid backdrop for the story.
(My only quibble, as a scuba diver myself back in the day, was the wonderful visibility enjoyed by the scuba diving kids--it was harder to swallow than the sea monsters)
That being said, I can imagine this book being happily passed around a fifth grade classroom really easily!
disclaimer--review copy gratefully received from the publisher for Cybils Award consideration, and now on its way to my local public library to win Laura Martin new fans!
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