This thickly plotted fantasy knits together familiar strands—a parallel world, adventure in a calamitous kingdom and an evil queen’s machinations. Jane, a lonely girl in a family of rambunctious brothers, befriends Staffa, a strange new classmate who’s only passing through. Staffa’s both prim and bold yet seems stifled by her overbearing mother, “Lady” Matilda. Jane’s intrigued by the mysterious, ornately painted box that Staffa and Matilda treat with infinite care. When Jane’s parents approve her school’s-end holiday to Staffa’s home, the narrative burgeons to include the transmogrification of Jane and her hosts, a magically diminutive kingdom where farmed bees loom big as cattle and slug meat is a staple and the unfolding of Queen Matilda’s sinister plans for Jane. Rebels led by her own son battle to overthrow the queen, and Jane both abets the campaign and subsequently right-sizes, regaining home. Certain elements—like the correspondence between the box and the kingdom of Eckwald—are rather confusingly explained, but the spry mix of action, friendship and good-besting-evil has undeniable appeal. (Fantasy. 8-11)
Pub Date: July 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-36961-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
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