I talked about the lovely time we had during the October half term, visiting Greenwich the Cutty Sark for a book reading event earlier. Well, the story is certainly worth sharing my thoughts on.
At Sea Without Tea, is a great adventure book for kids and allows them to learn while having fun reading. My 7 year old was completely immersed in the story and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
The author, Thomas Dillon McEvoy, cleverly blends factual historical events with fiction and uses rhyming sentences to maintain interest throughout the story from start to finish. The book is meant for ages 4-7 but it shouldn't stop you from reading it to younger children as you can really get into voicing the fun characters presented in the story. Our favourite character is Dinah, the Panda.
The story is about a young cook, James, who takes pride in cooking a lovely breakfast for the captain every morning, but one day while docked in London, he realises that they’ve run out of tea, a big part of the breakfast. The search turns into a travel adventure, taking readers to faraway places like Australia, South Africa and China, where James meets native animal friends who help him in his search for tea. To make the story even more entertaining, we played a little game using a globe so we could point out the named countries on it to help improve my son’s geographical knowledge and have fun while doing it!
Useful to Know: The book depicts the actual events of James Robson, who was indeed the ship's cook from 1885 to 1895, and the places the Cutty Sark had visited at the time. Through a fantastically written story and captivating illustrations, Thomas grabs the imagination of children as well as adults.
You can pick up a copy of At Sea Without Tea from the Royal Museum Greenwich store or other notable online book retailers including Amazon.