This sto­ry describes an improb­a­ble but excit­ing adven­ture. It takes place in Israel in 1966 where four twelve year old Ortho­dox Israeli boys foil a das­tard­ly plot to destroy Tel Aviv. At the out­set, they find, restore and launch a boat that ini­tial­ly belonged to some of Israel’s first set­tlers. In doing so, they come in con­tact with an Arab fish­ing boat and an Arab sub­ma­rine crew from Egypt that are work­ing togeth­er to launch a bomb. The plot involves the way in which they thwart this plot and save the city. While the plot itself may be some­what intrigu­ing, and the book’s black and white draw­ings try for a whim­si­cal feel to enhance the sto­ry, there are some neg­a­tives. Most impor­tant­ly, the book is poor­ly trans­lat­ed from Hebrew to Eng­lish. For exam­ple, the con­ver­sa­tions are stilt­ed and sound noth­ing like the words that young boys would actu­al­ly say. (“You and your phi­los­o­phiz­ing!” Yanky com­plained. ​“I hope you are aware that you’re test­ing my patience, but nev­er fear. I was blessed with a large dose of patience.”) Addi­tion­al­ly, the char­ac­ter devel­op­ment is clear­ly lack­ing and many Hebrew phras­es are includ­ed but are not explained. Arabs are stereo­types: the name of their ter­ror­ist oper­a­tion is ​“Oper­a­tion Tel­lafif ​’s a Goner” due to their dif­fi­cul­ty in pro­nounc­ing the let­ter ​“v”. The pub­lished review copy also includ­ed inex­plic­a­ble chang­ing print size every few pages. Ages 10 – 13.