Attack on the Tower of London

Description

126 pages
$6.99
ISBN 0-7710-5648-6
DDC jC813'.54

Year

2004

Contributor

Reviewed by Dave Jenkinson

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Review

The Screech Owls Pee Wee hockey team, led by Captain Travis Lindsay and
assistant captains Sarah Cuthbertson and Wayne “Nish” Nishikawa, are
on the road again. Murder at the Winter Games finds them in Park City,
Utah, the site of the ski events at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. The
team is there to participate in the Pee Wee Olympics, and, if the
Screech Owls reach the final medal round, they will get to play at the
famous E Centre in Salt Lake City, where the Canadian men’s and
women’s hockey teams both won Olympic gold. Nish again supplies the
comic relief, this time by involving the various teams in the Gross-Out
Olympics, which involve events such as the “Slurp,” a timed
challenge requiring participants to eat a bowl of Jell-O while wearing
pantyhose over their heads. As expected, the Screech Owls, in addition
to playing hockey, become involved and then assist in the solving of a
crime. The trio of Travis, Sarah, and Nish take the sleuthing lead when
the best player of the Hollywood Stars Pee Wee team, who also happens to
be the son of a wealthy rock star/actor, is kidnapped.

In Attack on the Tower of London, the Screech Owls prevent a group of
terrorists from murdering the Queen of England when she visits the Tower
of London on Guy Fawkes Day. What separates this book from others in the
series is that the Screech Owls are not playing ice hockey. As the
result of their winning a competition ostensibly sponsored by a British
sports equipment company, the Screech Owls receive an all-expenses paid
trip to London, England, to play an exhibition game of in-line hockey
against the Wembley Lions, Europe’s best 12– and 13-year-olds team.

By making Muck (the Screech Owls’ coach) a history buff, MacGregor
can also unobtrusively slip a few “teaching” facts into the books.
For example, in addition to reliving aspects of the 2002 Winter
Olympics, readers will learn that there are tunnels beneath Park City,
Utah, that were used by bootleggers, and they will come away from the
London-based work with much serendipitous knowledge about the Tower of
London. Both titles are light, fun fare particularly suited to young,
male reluctant readers. Recommended.

Citation

MacGregor, Roy., “Attack on the Tower of London,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed March 29, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/22556.