The beginning of a Harry Potter–esque series for those who prefer gross-out horror to magical whimsy.
In Allen’s debut YA adventure, a brother and sister must survive the horrors of their mystical ancestral home and the haunted gardens that surround it.
Lily Blackwood and her brother, Silas, live a transient life as actors in their family’s low-budget stage show, an awkward steppingstone that Lily believes will one day lead her to fame and the adoration of crowds. Lily’s dreams crumble when her uncle Jonquil, a mysterious, rough-looking man draped in a wolf fur, kidnaps her and her brother and delivers them to their family’s original home—the otherworldly Nightfall Gardens—a preternatural land where creatures of myths and fairy tales are both real and deadly. It’s Lily’s birthright and curse to become the new matriarch of this estate, to guard and maintain it, and to keep the darkness of the gardens contained. While she is quarantined inside the house, timid Silas is sent into the gardens as the mystical groundskeeper’s new assistant. The knowledge he gains among the arboreal evil, when combined with his sister’s defiant ambition for a life beyond Nightfall’s gates, leaves the children poised to challenge the dark fate that has descended upon them. Allen’s novel starts swiftly, bringing Lily and Silas into the spectacle and danger of Nightfall as quickly as possible, then the pace slows to a pleasant amble to adequately highlight each gruesome experience. The novel thrives when depicting the bizarre and dangerous: cocoon-sleeping slug women; mummy butlers that are falling apart; vengeful corpse eaters; and even the heroes’ closest ally, a green-skinned tomboy. Still, with so much focus on frightening imagery, the novel doesn’t build much suspense, leaning more toward the gross than the scary. This is not necessarily a flaw. Many YA novels aren’t looking to utterly terrify their readers, and intriguing mysteries and foreshadowed threats for the Blackwood children in the second volume easily offset any flagging tension.
The beginning of a Harry Potter–esque series for those who prefer gross-out horror to magical whimsy.Pub Date: May 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615804453
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Flycatcher Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
In her first children's book, Parton (the country music star) turns one of her songs into a saccharine tale about a girl who is so poor that her mama has to sew her a patchwork coat when the weather turns cold. (Joseph and his coat of many colors are mentioned but never explained.) Despite the girl's love for her coat, she is teased in school, which she counters by trying to explain to her classmates ``that one is only poor/if they choose to be.'' The logic here is as flawed as the grammar, and Sutton's illustrations, while competent, show a well-dressed, happy rural family who look anything but poor. The text is both clumsy and irrelevent (it ends with ``Through life I've remained happy/and good luck is on my side./I have everything that anyone/could ever want from life.'') An apparently autobiographical song that has a hard time standing on its own as a compelling children's story. (Picture book. All ages)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-023413-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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