Ten-year-old Nathaniel Fludd is the reluctant hero of Flight of the Phoenix (2009), the madcap debut of the American author R. L. LaFevers’s Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist series and a Junior Library Guild selection. The year is 1928, the setting England, and Nate’s wayward parents have just been reported lost at sea. Nate is sent that very day to his Aunt Phil’s house in Batting-at-the-Flies, but not for long . . . The morning after he arrives at the renowned beastologist’s doorstep, she whisks him away to the Arabian desert to witness a phoenix lay an egg! Kelly Murphy’s cartoonish black-and-white pen-and-ink illustrations add charm and humor to an already delightful adventure sure to please fans of mythology, maps, camels, and gremlins. Includes a glossary of terms from “cartographer” to “Tidy Sum.”

Don’t miss the next books in the Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist series: The Basilisk’s Lair (Book 2), The Wyverns’ Treasure (Book 3), and The Unicorn’s Tale (Book 4)!