In Nicholas Gannon's warm and witty debut novel, The Doldrums, an isolated boy longs for adventure but discovers that friendship offers the most excitement of all.
Eleven-year-old Archer was born into the Helmsley family, best known for the grandparents he never met, Ralph and Rachel Helmsley, explorers extraordinaire who disappeared on an iceberg in Antarctica two years earlier. But Archer's mother fears her son has his daring grandparents' "tendencies, as she so often put it," and rarely permits him to step outside the house at 375 Willow Street. (Gannon's colored-pencil drawings, as smoothly layered and polished as watercolor paintings, endow the tall, skinny, four-story house, inspired by a New York City brownstone, with a fascinating character all its own.) Overprotected Archer feels like a prisoner, and can't shake the words of a party guest who claimed to know his grandparents: "Always remember you're a Helmsley, Archer. And being a Helmsley means something." He vows to stow away on a ship bound for Antarctica to rescue his grandparents, and he finds just the right two friends to help him... his newfound neighbors Oliver Glub (focused on the planning, which was iffy) and the seemingly fearless Parisian Adélaïde Belmont, with a wooden leg she might have lost to a crocodile.
What begins as an adventure story turns out to be, at its heart, a tale of true friendship. Each of the three breaks out of his or her own prison in unusual ways so that together the trio accomplishes far more than they could have on their own. --Jennifer M. Brown, former children's editor, Shelf Awareness