Dominic Bean and the Mammoth Melt

Dominic Bean used to be a good kid. But that was before his scientist parents left to work on a secret project in the Canadian Arctic and “dumped” Dom and his sister, Del, on their eccentric aunt and uncle’s smelly New Hampshire farm. Not only is Dom failing seventh grade, he hasn’t heard from his parents in weeks, is taunted by school bus bully Everett Belanger, and tormented by the stubborn sharp-horned Highland cow Harriet he is forced to take care of.

But the farm turns out to be full of surprises. A developer is trying to buy the Bean family land to build a plastic-domed Arctic-themed amusement park, Dom’s nemesis at school, Edith, turns out to have a way with Harriet, and reading his dad’s old journal leads Dom to an ancient and mysterious woolly mammoth tusk that his father and uncle once found in the farm’s bottomless bog. And when Dom learns that his jam-making aunt and whiskey-distilling uncle are in fact in cahoots with his parents on a top-secret project in the farm’s old milking parlor— he finds himself knee-deep in his family’s secret mission to keep the Arctic permafrost from melting and save the world from climate disaster.

With humor and a storyline laced with cutting-edge climate science, this Charlotte’s Web meets Ice Age mystery-adventure introduces young readers to the peril of our melting Arctic permafrost, the people trying to keep it from melting, and the notion that solutions, no matter how small, are born of the failures that precede them.

Age range: 9 to 12

Grade range: 4 to 7

Inspiration for Novel

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