The story started when a girl named Margaret saw a sign to catch a bird smuggler. Margaret ran home and told her friends, Denise and Wil, about the sign. They were so exited to find the smuggler. They went to Malibu everyday to find out all about the bird smugglers and clues to find the smugglers. I liked the book because it had all different twists and turns in it. It had all kinds of animals in the book too. You never knew what was coming. You thought you had solved the mystery, but then it turned out you hadn't. It was fun to read about kids finding the smuggler instead of always adults. This book was like no other book I'd read. It was great. I'd give this book four out of five stars because you always wanted to keep reading.

The subtitle is appropriate to this latest in a long list of of young readers books about Easter Island. While not as bad as most, i.e. The Blind Guards of Easter Island, it is not up to the standard set by Peggy Mann's Easter Island, Land of Mysteries in 1976.

The photographs are nice and the format is well suited for the age group targeted (9-12). Ms.Pelta gets the gist of the history right, but its the details that she doesn't have a good handle on. In describing the kidnapping incident of the Nancy she talks of several Easter Island girls who were thrown overboard in the harbor, only to swim safely ashore. The facts are that 12 men and 10 women were kidnapped after a "bloody combat with the natives." Three days out from the island they were allowed on deck and promptly jumped overboard to escape, and of course were never heard from again.(Metreaux,1940)

This type of mistake is inexcusable, as this particular incident helped to establish a deep mistrust of outsiders that persists to the present day. There are other examples but my space is limited so I end with ... not terrible ,but certainly not great.