Starboard by Nicola Skinner

Starboard takes a young reality-TV star on an involuntary voyage of self-discovery.

Starboard by Nicola Skinner. Harper 2023 (US edition), 398 pages.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages 8-14

The Involuntary Captain

Kirsten Bramble is acting like a normal kid on the day of her class field trip to Bristol, where the SS Great Britain is permanently docked. But her mind is occupied with her own reality TV show. How that came about was mostly accidental: she posted a video of her widowed father online under some catchy hashtags intended to get him a date. Even though her dad didn’t claim, or even seem, to be lonely, he doted on his daughter enough to go along. Dad even went along through the newspaper people and the TV people and the long-term contracts and being sent on dates every week with different women, supposedly searching for True Love. Kirsten has been the driving force behind all this, and now that the show is coming to the end of its natural appeal, she’s desperate for another angle.

“Normal life” consists of school, where she’s fallen out with her best friend Olive, who failed the screen test for TV Best Friend. Real Life all seems a distraction from TV, but during the SS Great Britain tour an entirely new element enters Kirsten’s consciousness. The ship itself (that is, herself) begins speaking to her. And the map in the Captain’s quarters is offering commentary, too. Map has a quest in mind:

There are things that must be named. There are people who must be forgiven. There are truths to be revealed. All these things must be done on this journey.

Quest for Self-Discovery

Journey?? Yes; when the ship shakes herself loose from dock and sets out across the Atlantic, Kirsten seems to be the designated Captain, with former-best-friend Olive as Mate and costumed mannequins as crew and passengers. It’s not the kind of role Kirsten ever wanted for herself, but Great Britain has her own goals in mind and ship and Captain are eerily joined. The author is clearly smitten with the romance of sailing vessels and has great fun with descriptions of “the shippiness” of bowsprit and masts and yards and decks.

Humor makes the narrative and dialogue sparkle, though the quest is a bit ill-defined and the need for forgiveness doesn’t extend to Kirsten. (More sinned against than sinning, true, but who was responsible for posting the video in the first place?) It’s a different kind of fan-based fantasy, with the laudable theme of loving something greater than yourself. A ship, however beautiful, is inadequate as the object of that love, but the point is well taken.

Consideration:

• One misuse of God’s name.

Overall Rating: 3.75 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 4

Read more about our ratings here.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Reviews: The romance of transatlantic travel comes through in David Macaulay’s Crossing on Time. See also our roundup of sea-travel picture books, a review of an unusual recreation in The Brendan Voyage, and reflections on Two Years before the Mast.
• Review: A novel about another fantasy voyage got great reviews last year: The Last Mapmaker.

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