The Great Yellow Doom Bird

No one in drowsy East Palmetto Grove expects the arrival of one freckle-faced orphan to generate much excitement. There's a war going on, after all. But Patrick Nicholas Digby is no ordinary boy. And that rubber duck he clutches...well, the rubber duck isn't at ALL what it seems. In the spring of 1943, when the skies turn purple and the town is invaded by 18th century pirates one moment and government spy-chasers the next, Patrick finds himself swept up in the bizarre adventures of a bug-eyed ornithologist named Stultus. Stultus's quest: locate the mythological Great Yellow Doom Birds and restore them to their ancestral nesting grounds on far-off Mount Gundibar, before Stultus's barbaric rivals ensure every last Doom Bird has been roasted and eaten. Along the way the peculiar pair encounter a tiger-striped sea-monster who violently detests nets, roving Eskimos and muttering penguins, mobile (and antisocial) islands, swarms of near-sighted supersonic beetles, pirates with a special grudge against Stultus, erratic cyclone-like passages, and impatiently waiting to erupt upon their arrival, the fiery Mount Gundibar itself. Of all the wonders met in their race to rescue the legendary Doom Birds, however, Patrick's greatest discovery just might be the truth about whether he's really an orphan at all.