I ended up not including this in her lessons. Although it's a fine adventure story for free reading, it's not up to the quality level of 100 Cupboards, in my opinion. Tom Hammond is an eleven-year-old boy with a dead father and a mother who may be getting serious about one of the teachers at his school. Acting out in rebellion, Tom ends up in a dangerous situation and must find a way to survive and return home.
It's a boys' adventure story, a little too much of a boys' adventure story, if you ask me. Tom is right about everything. Bad people are ugly so you can tell who to trust. The mom, however, is clueless and doesn't recognize the danger signs of unattractive people; if only she let her young son make all her decisions, she'd be fine. This is a dangerous worldview to hand to a kid who is already getting to the age where he thinks he knows better than his elders about everything.
The setting is interesting; the action is exciting; Tom turns out to be impressively resourceful in a dire situation. But there is literally one female character (the mother) who gets damsel-in-distressed, has to be rescued by males, and then is married off to a character she's known for, like, a week maybe. Disappointing.
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