The Last Child of Hamelin (Spencer Hill, 2014) by Ray Ballantyne follows up on what happened after the Pied Piper took all the children.
It’s 60 years later and twelve-year-old Pieter, sometimes just has to escape from Hamelin. Escape from his abusive father, from the other boys who pick on him, and from where he’s forbidden to express the music that wells up inside of him. Up on the mountain he meets the old man Simon–the only child who didn’t follow the piper–and Pieter hears the music of the piper himself.
I love how much the author has made me care about Pieter. I think you’ll find yourself caring for him too in this intriguing fantasy.
I’ve met the author in person. You can visit Ray on his Facebook page.
Tag: mg fantasy
The Cabinet of Earths
The Cabinet of Earths (Harper 2012) by Anne Nesbet is a creepily good book. Here’s the first line: “It was his own grandmother who fed Henri-Pierre to the Cabinet of Earths, long ago when he was only four.” See what I mean about creepy? If you like fantasy, or spooky books, I think you’ll like this one.
Chapter two takes off by introducing us to Maya Davidson, a 12-year-old from California who with her family is currently in France. She’s interesting, smart and brave. Will she solve the mystery of the missing children and be able to protect her little brother from the danger facing him? Read it and find out.
Author Anne Nesbet’s website is appropriately subtitled “curious books for curious people.” There I found she has two other titles I need to check out!
A Box of Gargoyles is a sequel to The Cabinet of Earths. Yea, more Maya!
I also like this entry on Anne’s blog: Shadows and Wonders: Or, Write Your Novel Like an Eclipse. It talks about seeing differently. Her comments are not just for writing, but for life!
Castle Hangnail
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
If you like fun fantasy, you’ll like Castle Hangnail (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2015) by Ursula Vernon, who not only wrote the story, but did the illustrations.
The minions at Castle Hangnail are worried. If they don’t get a master soon, the castle will be decommissioned. The ravens say someone is on the way, but no one expects it to be the twelve-year-old girl who shows up. Can she really be a wicked witch? Molly, the “evil” twin, has to convince them she is.
I loved the humor in this book. How can one not enjoy lines like these that open the story? “It was a marvelously dark and dour twilight at the castle. Clouds the color of bruises lay across the hills.”
I also loved the characters from the nonhunchback guardian to the suit of armor and the minotaur cook to the doll made out of burlap, and, of course, Molly, the Wicked Witch, who is bad, er, good at being wicked.
Ursula Vernon is the author of the Dragonbreath books, too. Read more on her website: http://ursulavernon.com/.
The Castle Behind the Thorns
This time it’s not Sleeping Beauty in a castle hidden by thorns; instead it’s the son of the village blacksmith. Sand wakes up in the abandoned castle and has no idea how he got there. Worse yet, the thorns keep him from leaving. From the heights of the broken castle, he can see the village, but no one can hear him. How is he to survive?
The Castle Behind the Thorns (Katherine Tegen Books, 2014) by Merrie Haskell has magic in the story and in the telling of it.
This is the author’s third book. I want to check out the others. Read about them here on her website.
The Rithmatist
The Rithmatist (Dragonsteel Entertainment/Tor, 2013) by Brandon Sanderson was one of those lucky finds off the library shelf. It has an interesting premise and surprising plot twists. Aimed at the YA market, as the main character is 16, it’s definitely appropriate for upper middle grade readers who like Harry Potter.
Rithmatists–those who can make chalk drawings come to life to fight the wild chalklings in far off Nebrask–are set apart in school society. Poor scholarship student Joel desperately wishes he could become a Rithmatist even though he wasn’t chosen. When Rithmatist students start disappearing from Armedius Academy, Joel manages to get himself assigned as an assistant to the professor who is investigating the disappearances, but doesn’t realize how dangerous that will be.
Fascinating Illustrations of chalklings and the rithmatists defenses are done by Ben McSweeney.
This is the first book in a series. Go here to read an interview of Brandon about this book.
The author has written both children and adults series. Of those, I’ve read and enjoyed Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Scholastic, 2007)–the first of his middle grade series. Doesn’t the title just make you want to read it? See more on his website.
Of interest, too, is Sanderson’s 3 laws of magic and links to 14 University Lectures by Brandon Sanderson on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy on this page of writing advice.