Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Merlin Effect
	Author:	Barron, T. A.
	Date Published:	1994
	Genre:	Fantasy
	Grade Level:	6 - 9
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh

Booktalk:
Kate had spent the summer with her dad off the Mexican coast near the legendary ‘Whirlpool of Death.’ She was the chief cook and bottle washer for her dad a historian, Isabella a marine biologist, and Terry a graduate student in undersea geology. All were there for different reasons, and all had been so involved in their own individual efforts that they had largely ignored her. Her goal of finally spending some quality time with her father was pretty much a lost cause. Until the night she took her kayak out of the lagoon and almost got pulled in by the Whirlpool. If her dad hadn’t been nearby in the boat to rescue her… But, he was, and the near fatal misadventure led to his opening up about his purpose about the expedition. Long a proponent of the real existence of the mage Merlin in Camelot, her father, Jim, was hoping to prove the existence of the thirteenth treasure of Merlin; the horn of Merlin, which he believed had been taken by the Whirlpool some 500 years earlier when the ship the Resurrection had encountered it. But, the waters in the vicinity were notoriously dangerous, and the expedition had been only given one month to do their research by the local government. Now that month was almost over, and there had been no indication that there was evidence available to prove his claim. Then, Isabella uncovers a genetic anomaly in a fish that should have been extinct. Terry’s instruments pick up a momentary picture of the Resurrecion at the bottom of the whirlpool, which inexplicably shimmers and disappears as if someone has erased it. Faced by the unexplainable, Isabella offers to allow the use of her submersible to search below the whirlpool.