Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Feb 2006
144 pages
Genre: Novels
Publication Information
Ten-year-old twins Lacey and Casey Nicefolk live on a tiny herb farm in California, wishing they could see the world . . . but how, when times are so hard? That is where Sucoh Sucop comes in (you may notice his name is Hocus Pocus spelled backward). The mysterious man leaves the twins a magic box that can transform any toy into a life-sized reality. Soon Casey and Lacey, and their faithful hound Floopy, are soaring cross-country through the sky in the enchanted Vin Fiz, Casey's model of a Wright Brothers biplane. Yet the ride is not a smooth one. The twins encounter danger after danger, and must rescue a town held captive by gold-hungry bandits, not to mention a runaway train full of terrified passengers!
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"This genial, at times suspenseful, caper wraps up with a note about the real Vin Fiz, and Farnsworth's drawings dramatize the climactic scenes." - Publishers Weekly
"The writing is stilted and the story fails to come to life even though the situations have the potential to be exciting." - School Library Journal
"This outing isn't as awful as, for instance, James Clavell's Thrump-O-Moto (1986), but it reads like a knockoff. Try again, Cussler. Kids can be more discriminating than adults." - Kirkus Reviews
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Clive Cussler grew up in Alhambra, California. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, then enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War and served as an aircraft mechanic and flight engineer in the Military Air Transport Service. Upon discharge he became a copywriter and later creative director at two of the nation's leading ad agencies. He wrote and produced radio and television commercials in Hollywood that won numerous international honors including an award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
Cussler began writing novels in 1965 and published his first work featuring his continuous series hero, Dirk Pitt, in 1973. His first non-fiction, The Sea Hunters, was released in 1996. The Board of Governors of the Maritime College, State University of New York, considered The ...
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