Macall S. Robertson’s WISHING ROCKS: Find Your Anchor tells the story of Kedge, a ten-year-old boy who has a day with his father at the beach. At the level of the paragraph and the chapter, there is a lot to like about the book. It is well written, and the style is accessible and the author has a good feel for dialog and an eye for detail. However, the main drawback is the nature of the story itself. The plot is slight, and consists of a series of episodes between Kedge and his father. They watch the sunrise, collect shells, do some running, visit a sandbar or two, and look for a banded wishing rock. Along the way, Kedge’s father teaches him some Latin phrases, shares a few tidbits about crabs, shells, and rocks, and offers some sage life advice. The day ends, the sun sets, and that is that; the denouement in the final two chapters provides closure, and helps the reader to understand why the pair’s day unfolds as it does (though the twist is not difficult to guess at after the first few chapters).

In the meantime, however, the sense of intrigue and conflict that ordinarily propels a story is absent, and motivation is unclear. At first, the impression given is that Kedge’s father is the sort of man who, by dint of his energy, pulls everyone else along in his wake; Kedge is woken in the middle of the night and dragged out onto the beach, wondering exactly how much fun the coming day will be, and his thought processes seems to intimate that his father can be exacting, demanding, and relentless in his pursuit of visceral experiences. But this internal monologue plays the reader false: there is no conflict between father and son, and the emotional dynamic between them undergoes no changes. There is no B-plot, and with one exception, no other characters to drive the action.

The message behind WISHING ROCKS is clear enough, and a good one to impart: children, no less than adults, should always strive to seize the day and live life to the fullest. But the life lessons contained in its pages do not in themselves amount to a compelling story. A good understanding of conflict, suspense, and plot development will enable the telling of a story whose readability matches the earnestness of its central message.

Macall S. Robertson’s WISHING ROCKS: Find Your Anchor’s message is earnest and heartfelt, but its plot is slight.

~Craig Jones for IndieReader