Avis Dolphin

February 16, 2015
In time for the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania, Wishinsky (A History of Just About Everything) brings readers aboard the ship through the fictionalized story of Avis Dolphin, a real-life 12-year-old who survived its torpedoing. From the start, ominous signs are everywhere—the ship’s cat appears to have deserted, the lifeboat drills are a joke, and Avis’s new acquaintance, Professor Ian Holbourn (also a real person), continually worries over the ship’s safety and its crew’s preparedness. Offsetting the professor’s concerns is a story he tells Avis about the Scottish island of Foula; his tale of a shipwrecked girl’s magical, dangerous adventures on the island unfolds in haunting, near-wordless b&w comics sequences from Dawson (The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea). Though Avis meets several children on board, they receive little attention; Avis is more focused on the professor’s companionship and the romantic travails of the young nurses accompanying her. While Wishinsky incorporates a wealth of contextual information into the story, readers already aware of the Lusitania’s fate may grow impatient with the slow, portentous buildup to the disaster. Ages 9–12.

February 15, 2015
Readers who think that the Titanic was the only great ocean liner that ever sank will find this fictionalized eyewitness account of the torpedoed Lusitania's last voyage a revelation.If, that is, they can get through the narrative without foundering on the nearly continual foreshadowing that clogs its pages. Naming her title character and other cast members after actual passengers, Wishinsky trots 12-year-old Avis over several days through a purposeful ship's tour that takes her from bustling galley to common areas of all three classes. She is squired by Prof. Holbourn, a genial fellow traveler who regales her with a magical tale of a young castaway facing a giant and a "bogeyman." This nested story is related by Dawson in interspersed sections of wordless sequential panels. Along the way, Wishinsky shovels in ominous references to U-boats, an angry refusal by the ship's captain to hold lifeboat drills, the disappearance of the ship's cat and so many other hints of impending catastrophe that the torpedoes' eventual arrival comes as more of a relief than a shock. Dawson's high-contrast black-and-white scenes add a little suspense, but their plotline is at best marginally relevant to the main one, and they are so cramped and cropped that the action in them is hard to follow. The author closes with a note on the real Avis and Prof. Holbourn. Arty illustrations and a turgid, purpose-driven narrative waste this opportunity to highlight a major tragedy in its centennial year. Interested readers will get more from Diana Preston's Remember the Lusitania! (2003). (afterword) (Historical fiction. 9-11)

June 1, 2015

Gr 4-6-When 12-year-old Avis Dolphin alights onto the Lusitania, she asks herself, "Why can't someone write one [adventure story] about a girl? Girls like magic and adventure, too." Indeed, many a girl will identify with this inequity that Wishinsky seeks to address with this illustrated work, a genre-busting fantasy with graphic novel-type images, crossed with a work of historical fiction. The timely book follows the titular character's journey aboard the Lusitania on its ill-fated voyage, along with other historical passengers, such as her romantically obsessed guardians Hilda and Sarah, and the kindly Professor Holbourn, who befriends Avis. Avis is a lively heroine who is excited about every aspect of life on the "Lusy," and relays it all in breathless, excited monologues. Readers will be swept up in Avis's descriptions of the ship mechanics, gourmet food, and people-watching. Professor Holbourn's stories about the mythical past of his home in Scotland are represented in the book as mostly wordless graphic panels, which are lovely, but become repetitive. The biggest issue facing the book is tone-Wishinsky goes overboard with the foreshadowing, so that the clues to the Lusitania's fate are almost comical in their exuberance and overabundance, detracting from the mood and underestimating the intelligence of her audience. VERDICT An additional purchase.-Susannah Goldstein, Convent of the Sacred Heart, New York City

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