The Castaways

The Castaways by Iain Lawerence is the last book in his Curse of the Jolly Stone Trilogy. In the book Tom Tin and his companions escape the steam boat and make it on a tall ship. Not knowing how to sail the ship, the boat sailed itself very far south where they find two castaways stuck on an iceberg. The two castaways then take control of the ship sailing it back north to a island in the west indies to where they try to sell Tom Tin and his friends as slaves. Luckily Tom is able to take back the ship and sail the slave owners family, his friends and himself back to England where he plans to bestowing the Jolly Stone curse on Mr. Goodfellow to get back at him for ruining his families life.

From the beginning of the book to the end you can tell how Tom has grown from a boy to a man. You can tell that he is maturing by the way he has had to take care of his best friend Midgely who was blinded in the first book by another character. By making decisions for their livelihood and from the problems he has had to face in his day to day adventures, he has become a man and he has over come most of his fears. Iain Lawerence has also done a lot of research to have described and wrote about all the different parts of a Victorian age tall ships and how the work.

"He looked in at me, and I looked out at him, and he didn't seem at all surprised to see me. 'Good day, Tom Tin,' said he." This passage on page 147 appealed to me because even though Mr. Goodfellow got Tom sent away on a convict ship to Australia and Tom was able to escape from his fate and end up back in London, he was not surprised almost as if Mr. Goodfellow new he would return. "He touched one knee to the wood and bowed his head. 'Your Majesty,' he muttered. 'It's not the King,' I snapped. 'It's only a funny man in a funny hat. Now get up, Midge.'" this passage on page 87 appealed to me because of the way Midgely acted when he thought that the King was on the ship even though they were on a random island in the West Indies and on a ship that was falling apart. " 'Tom, I don't want no pardon,' he said. 'I'm a proper nob now. If they send me to Australia I'll be a holy terror there. I think i was meant to be a nob, tom, like you was meant to be a sailor. Promise you'll stop my pardon if you can.' " this passage on page 183 appealed to me because of how Weedle wanted to stay on the convict ship because he was considered to be the boss of the convicts and he led them, even though he had a pardon to get out of hulk and to become a free person.