The Lightning Catcher

by Anne Cameron (Author) Victoria Jamieson (Illustrator)

The Lightning Catcher
Reading Level: 6th − 7th Grade
When 11-year-old Angus McFangus learns that he is a storm prophet, someone who can predict and control catastrophic weather, he must stop the villainous Scabious Dankhart from unleashing an unending storm and achieving world domination.
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Publishers Weekly

While a certain spunkiness pervades British author Cameron's debut novel (first in a planned four-book series), it's let down by an over-reliance on familiar middle-grade fantasy conventions. Eleven-year-old Angus lives with his eccentric inventor uncle (his parents are conspicuously away on covert assignment). In the middle of the night, a peculiar stranger arrives and insists that Angus must accompany him to the previously unknown Isle of Imbur. There, Angus begins his apprenticeship as a "lightning cub" at the Perilous Exploratorium for Violent Weather and Vicious Storms, where he learns the secrets of his lightning-catching powers and the threats that he and his fellow apprentices are there to stop. Readers may embrace the novel's genial goofiness--Cameron casts a ragtag team of characters with such monikers as Delphinia Dark-Angel, Scabious Dankhart, and Catcher Sparks. But while the author writes evocatively of unusual weather patterns, the story never veers off its predictable path, and the humor doesn't go far enough in punching holes in the source material it draws from. Ages 8-12. (May)

Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

School Library Journal

Gr 4-6--It's an amazingly familiar premise: a boy with absent parents and unusual abilities finds himself in a school that teaches arcane knowledge, where he makes friends and enemies, experiences all kinds of eerie and dangerous goings-on, discovers secrets he isn't supposed to know, and fights the most dangerous and evil villain in the world. Angus McFangus, 11, has been living with his Uncle Max while his parents supposedly do something for an unnamed government office. After he receives a strange letter from his mother, he is whisked off to the Perilous Exploratorium for Weather and Vicious Storms on the mysterious Isle of Imbur. There, he is told by Principal Dark-Angel that he must lie about his identity, and he meets Ron and Hermione-oops, I mean Dougal and Indigo. He's thrown into training to become one of the "lightning catchers," special agents who "protect mankind from the ravages of weather at its most cruel and extreme." Storms of newts, killer fogs, and wacky weather attacks of all sorts are the norm. The Isle of Imbur and all the weather-weirdness are interesting, but the rest feels tired and overdone.--Mara Alpert, Los Angeles Public Library

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Review quotes

Praise for THE LIGHTNING CATCHER: "Mixing serious science with full-on fantasy....With a motley collection of instructors, dangerous lightning dragons, a cinematic setting, and all manner of malevolent treachery, this fantastical adventure will find a wide audience."—Booklist
Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780062112767
Lexile Measure
1070
Guided Reading Level
Z
Publisher
Greenwillow Books
Publication date
May 07, 2013
Series
Lightning Catcher
BISAC categories
JUV039060 - Juvenile Fiction | Social Themes | Friendship
JUV019000 - Juvenile Fiction | Humorous Stories
JUV037000 - Juvenile Fiction | Fantasy & Magic
JUV001000 - Juvenile Fiction | Action & Adventure
JUV029020 - Juvenile Fiction | Nature & the Natural World | Weather
Library of Congress categories
Adventure and adventurers
Adventure stories
Weather

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