Noah’s Gold Written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Reviewed by Ivan, Age 10

This book is a funny adventure about six children who get stranded on an island in the middle of the sea (and as Dario always reminds them, all islands are in the middle of the sea).

I like how this book points out that a lot of things can go wrong on school trips even though the teachers say nothing will ever go wrong. It makes me quite glad not to have been on a school trip in a long time.

I think this book is good because the chapters are cleverly made by them actually being letters to Noah’s parents and vice versa. The chapters are also funny because they all start with the menu of what they are going to eat eg. ’teeny tiny smoked fish’. In fact all of the book is in letters or group chats, which I think is really clever and makes me wonder who the narrator is. Is it Eve because she is reading the letters or is it Noah? I haven’t read a book like this before.

My favourite character is Mr Merriman, their teacher, who always treats everything like a school trip and does not seem to be bothered that they are stranded on an island in the middle of the sea.

Altogether it is a really funny book. It made me laugh out loud and sometimes my family would ask me what I was laughing at and I’d have to read bits out to them. That’s how funny it is.

The book is illustrated by Steven Lenton and I liked the illustrations because they aren’t too detailed but you can still see what’s going on really well.

The only other book I have read about children on their own on an island is Swallows and Amazons. If you like island adventure books like that you will also like Noah’s Gold but Noah’s Gold is a bit funnier and sillier. My suspicion is that this book is based on Lord of the Flies, which I have not read but apparently it’s about some children who also get stranded on an island but is a bit more serious and scary.

If you like adventure books like Famous Five and Secret Seven you might like this one too. And actually if you like funny books like David Walliams you might also like it. I hope that there might be more books like this because I enjoyed it so much I read it in three days flat!

It’s the sort of book that makes you want to find out what happens next because it has a really good ending so I hope there will be more books in the series.