Next week we’re starting our first topic of the year at school all about Explorers and Antarctica, so I was very excited to receive this book that will be perfect for our end of day story. It’s full of everything you’d want - action-packed, adventure, heartfelt and funny.

I was hooked by the action packed start to the book. Tension, suspense, jeopardy - my favourite kind of introduction and perfect for my Y6 class. Maisie and her dad are such different characters yet you warm to them both because of their differences. Maisie has always longed for adventure - always be careful what you wish for.
I do hope Maisie and her dad will have further adventures.

I read this with my daughter who loved it - it's a very sweet story with enough action, mystery, twists and turns to keep young readers gripped.

It's got a nice wit throughout in Maisie's internal monologue and there's a really nice message behind her relationship with her Dad and the worries and priorities of parenting.

I am a sucker for a gorgeous cover, and a kids book, and winter...so this sounded perfect for me, even if I am 20 years older than the suggested age range.

I love it being from the point-of-view of Maisie because, just like readers her age, she doesn't think her Dad is cool and can't possibly have done all these amazing things he's written about. Young children can't imagine that their parents were ever young and cool and fun.

I didn't realise just has magical it would be. I thought it would 'just' be a fun kids book where a kid goes on an adventure with her father. And it is that. But there's this magic that flows underneath everything that gives it extra detail..

I read it in about an hour. It's so fun and so easy to read. There's not much there for adults to get their teeth into, but for the age range it's perfect. There's magic, adventure, fun, and danger. I read it with a great big smile on my face.

I believe it's the first in a series which bodes well. There could be unlimited adventures Maisie and her Dad can go on. I could definitely see it being made into a TV short or something. I think the setting and the goings-on would suit the television screen very well.

I do love a good thriller, crime, or "intelligence" novel, but sometimes I just want a book about magic in the snow, and you just don't get that with adult books, generally. Which is why I am a huge advocate for adults reading kids books, because sometimes we need to be reminded of the magic that reading can bring.

Really enjoyed this book. Nice plot and adventure, with some good educational opportunities to learn about Antarctica.
Maisie thinks her dad is really boring, but when she accompanies him on a trip to Antarctica, and they crash-land on the ice, she starts to see unusual things about him…
Enjoyable book with a good mystery and adventure. Perfect for upper key stage 2 linking with learning about Antarctica.

A book packed full of daring and adventure.

I loved following Maisie in this story and discovering not only a bit more of the world with her, but seeing her navigate the challenges she faced and some of the insane things she had to overcome. Just the ordinary mundane things like crashing head first into the ices of Antarctica, trying to stay alive in a hostile world and uncover the secrets your dad is trying to hide from you. Just normal every day adventures.

Maisie is more accustomed to writing about exciting encounters in her books but when an opportunity crosses her path to accompany her dad to Antarctica (he’s writing a book about how to survive in Antarctica of course), little to do they know they’ll soon be living the topic of the story.

I just loved the writing in this and it was so entertainingly written. It was filled with humour and perfect for younger readers (and older ones who can get just as much fun from the story). I read it in pretty much one sitting because it was so easy to read and so enjoyable right from the start.

I couldn’t put it down and it really keeps your attention hooked with how fast paced and entertaining it is straight from the first chapter. Loved it!

Maisie Vs Antarctica
By Jack Jackman
Published by Nosy Crow Ltd

Meet Maisie: funny, daring, full of imagination and not afraid to speak the truth.
But Maisie lives with her BORING dad!!
Meet Dad: boring but brave, with a secret Maisie is yet to discover.
He love’s origami but only doing the small basic triangles.
He loves 1000 piece jigsaws but only of the blue sky.
But he does write cool “How to …. books,” like how to wrestle a crocodile and how to build a zip wire. Even though he’s never done any of these things!!

Jackman has written a brilliantly funny, adventure packed, debut page turner, full of twists and turns!!!

But when Maisie and her Dad take the adventure of a lifetime to Antarctica to research his next book, Maisie begins to spot some very unusual and unexplainable things about her Dad. Determined to find out the truth about;
crash landing in Antarctica,
surviving an encounter with a leopard seal and falling through giant snow crevasses!
Maisie questions herself and tries to get the answers from her dad.
What is going on?
How can I survive these mishaps?
Is he my real life super hero?

A fabulously funny and edge of your seat ride through the cold, icy region of Antarctica as Maisie uncovers piece by piece the secrets of her dad and what that means for her too.
An excellent debut story for readers 8+ and a definite class read!

Joanne Bardgett - teacher of littlies, lover of Children’s literature.
#Netgalley

Maisie, our main character, ends up on an adventure in Antarctica with her dad as he does research for his new book and my goodness there is a twist in this story that I did not expect! This book is packed full of adventure, a hilarious character called Guillermo and it also carefully touches on grief and how families manage this. I love that each chapter name is a 'How to...' and that the chapters are short, making them accessible for reluctant readers (or those that find reading a challenge). Maisie is a fun character who is determined, cheeky and imaginative making her very relatable. This book would be great for children in year 4 and above (8+) who enjoy adventure stories set in real settings. I am sure that Maisie will be having more adventures and I look forward to going on the next one with her.

The plot, with some small spoilers.

BANG! That's how we are thrown into Maisie's adventure, and for three stunning, breath-freezing pages, Maisie recounts her plight. How the Spanish-speaking pilot, Guillermo, is slumped over and her boring jigsaw-loving father, who has never piloted a plane, even though he has written a book on How to Crash Land a Plane, is fighting at the controls of a light aircraft as it plunges to certain death and disaster.

Then, as things change from blue to white, Maisie then takes us back to how she finds herself in this plight. It is ultimately all down to a babysitter's son choosing to flood his home, building a moat for his Lego castle. It is the Christmas holidays, and her dad is off to do research on how to survive in the Antarctic. A quick in and out, staying a day between. His other books work along the lines of How to Build a Zip Wire, How to Wrestle a Crocodile and How to Defuse a Bomb. None of which he has ever done or had the time to do, what with looking after Maisie on his own after his wife died.

But, the upshot is that rather than not go, Maisie sees a chance to have a small adventure to make her Christmas holiday break for once sound fabulous rather than dull when she recounts it to class come term time. Little does she know what awaits, and that's excluding the plane crash.

When we rejoin after this little foray back in time, Maisie finds herself alive and on the ice. Guillermo is alive and wounded, but her father is OK. Of the plane, there is no sign, but her father says it is further along the ice.

It soon becomes clear that nobody will be coming for them as their flight is illegal. They shouldn't have been flying to Antarctica and had filed a flight plan to somewhere else. Additionally, Guillermo's battered plane doesn't have a working radio.

Pretty soon, after some help and chewing things over, Maisie and her dad set to making an igloo. A much better one than those semi-built igloos Maisie finds out on the ice. But where did they come from if nobody lives there? They drag the pilot under cover, and in doing so, Maisie notes that they leave trails in the snowy ice. Yet, there are no trails from when her father dragged the pilot to safety from the plane.

They have priorities, and having built a shelter and retrieved a stove from his rucksack, the next is food. Now, this is where some fun info about penguins comes in as father and daughter head off to find some fish. And where there are penguins, you'll find fish. But where you find penguins near the edge of an ice flow, you'll also find peril that will eat a small, overly-hasty girl, no matter the time of day.

The beast is as surprised by missing his target as Maisie is at still being alive and not in its jaws when the former and the latter face each other on the ice flow with a healthy distance between them. Has she just been teleported? It seems like she has, and maybe it isn't the first time, either. Could it be that they all survived the plane crash because none of them were on the plane when it did crash? Is her father an actual superhero with teleport skills?

It is a suggestion that her level-headed (dull) father says isn't possible. But as they say in the state of Denmark, something is very fishy indeed. And Maisie is determined to find out what it is.

When Guillermo is awake, he lends Maisie his much food-stained map. It is on this they discover Antarctica isn't as uninhabited as they thought. Right about a cigarette burn through the map is a British scientific research base. It's thirty kilometres away, too far to walk in a day, especially in cold weather and icy winds.

Which is when Maisie's dad heads off to use the plane's radio. But after he has gone out, Guillermo says he'll have a hard time fixing it as he left the radio in the aerodrome!

What happens next is, well, surprising. Chasing after her dad, Maisie ultimately finds him asleep on the ice, his head on a snow pillow. His clothes are in tatters, and he is injured. What has happened to him? And more's the point, when asked if he got the radio working, the one that wasn't there, he says it didn't work properly so he left a message instead! Could he be delusional, or has the mystery just dialled up a notch?

Which is where I stop the review. Suffice it to say, at less than halfway through this adventure, and having not revealed everything that has happened up to this point, I have most definitely left the best to last.


What did we think? SPOILERS

Talk about starting the book with a bang. This one literally threw us head-first into a nosedive plane crash in the Antarctic, and the adrenaline created fuelled us to the end. Such clever writing. We loved how so very neatly, after the shock of the first three pages, we rewound and brought ourselves up to speed in the preceding few days, not that speed was lacking anywhere.

I thought we had the plot and outcome pegged, but we were both totally wrong. To tell you exactly what is going on, the actual driver behind actions and incidents will ruin the book. Despite being considered by some a not-too-bright child with her head in fantasy land, Maisie is clued up and observant. Alas, this isn't matched with either being able to keep a secret or necessarily think things through.

But that's exactly what brings this book alive without being cliched. Coupled with some really cool facts about the Antarctic, first-hand experience with some of the inhabitants, and most delightful characters, such as their one-time pilot, we have an excellent, fast-paced adventure that would make Clive Cussler proud. In fact, I'd peg him as having written this had it been an anonymous work.

Small book cover image. The book cover is in matt pale blues, aqua/turquoise, with a near diamond pointed middle section that extends to points north and south and with flat sides east to west. Within and central is the books title, above is Maisie and her father in the antarctic and below is an ornate compass in red and orange. in the outer quadrants/corners, from top left clockwise appears a skidoo, a plummeting, orangey coloured plane with smoking engine, a brown seal looking left, and three penguins looking right. The authors name appears in gold within a pale creamy box between along the bottom. All of the above appear in a small scalloped white and gold band set in from the book edge.


So, to sum up....
"A barnstorming, rollercoaster adventure filled with wry humour, thrills, spills, peril and mystery. One hell of a ride, and I just couldn't stop till the end, and left wanting more."

Maisie Vs Antarctica is a read that grabs your attention from the onset and refuses to let go. This is certainly not a slowburn read - this is fast - into the action from the onset! This is a book that is sure to hook even the most reluctant of readers. Hugely entertaining and with an amazing plot twist. Absolutely loved every rip roaring minute of this read and cannot wait for more.
Huge thank you to the publishers- Nosy Crow- and NetGalley for an early read.

Such a spectacular adventure book for readers 9-12 and adults young at heart! Thrilled that this is the first in a series, which I will not miss because I am forever hooked. Take one fab MC, young Maisie, who ends up on a trip to Antarctica with her dad as he does research for his next book. Loved it!