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As a little girl, I loved to explore, and I would have explored caves if there had been any within a mile of our house. Instead, my siblings and cousins and I decided to dig a cave—a lot of work, but a lot of fun, too. We even made a good-sized room. However, we never discovered anything like Dirkle Smat and his gang.
Dirkle Smat wakes up on a Saturday morning and stubs his toe. To make matters worse, they’re out of the Crinkly Flakes he loves so much for breakfast. Still, he has to meet with the members of the Explorers Club to plan their day. So, with his hurt toe wrapped up mummy-style and his kid brother following on his bike, Dirkle sets out for his next adventure.
Today, the club plans to explore the cave at the base of Mount Flatbottom. Armed with BL2s (Bean Lumley Second Generation helmets—a homemade version of an explorer’s helmet), sandwiches, and paper for mapping their journey, the young adventurers head into the bowels of Flatbottom. What they discover is a bit surprising.
I had to get past the implausibility of what the explorers find inside the cave. After all, Dirkle Smat Inside Mount Flatbottom is meant for children between the ages of five and ten who wouldn’t even question it. Once I could coax my mind back to childhood, though, I found this super-short book fascinating and entertaining. Any young child is sure to love it. Who can resist a creepy cave with something a little strange at the end of it? Probably not me when I was that age.
Sure, the plot has some holes in it; for instance, if something like that did exist inside a cave, someone would have found it long before those kids did. And it’s not really very safe for adults, to explore unknown caves without training—let alone a bunch of kids with homemade explorer helmets. But at least they did try to use caution and sense while moving through the cave.
Dirkle Smat Inside Mount Flatbottom is a tremendously cute read, and I’m sure that young readers won’t even notice the small flaws in the plot. Instead, they’ll get caught up in the adventures of Dirkle Smat and his Explorers Club, and they’ll beg for more.
