Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Books of Elsewhere 1: The Shadows
Author: WEST JACQUELINE
Illustrator: BERNATENE POLY (ILL)
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 14/06/2011
Imprint: PUFFIN BOOKS
Price: $13.00
Publishing status: Active
Awards:
Cybils | Winner | Fantasy/Sci-Fi/ELM/Midgr | 2010 – 2010 ; Bluebonnet Awards | Nominee | Children’s | 2012 – 2012 ; Great Stone Face Book Award | Nominee | Grades 4-6 | 2011 – 2012 ;
Grand Canyon Reader Award | Nominee | Intermediate | 2013 – 2013 ;
Sunshine State Young Reader’s Award | Nominee | Grades 3-5 | 2013 – 2013 ;
Nene Award | Nominee | Children’s Fiction | 2013 – 2013 ; Louisiana Young Readers’ Choice Award | Nominee | Grades 3-5 | 2013 – 2013 ;
Young Hoosier Book Award | Nominee | Intermediate | 2014 – 2014
Annotation: Roald Dahl meets Neil Gaiman in this creepy but whimsical tale about an 11-year-old girl who moves into a Victorian mansion and discovers she can enter another world through the antique paintings left behind.
When eleven-year-old Olive moves into a crumbling Victorian mansion with her parents, she knows there’s something strange about the house – especially the odd antique paintings covering the walls. And when she puts on a pair of old spectacles, she discovers the strangest thing yet: She can travel inside the paintings, to a spooky world that’s full of dark shadows. Add to that three talking cats, who live in the house and seem to be keeping secrets of their own, and Olive soon finds herself confronting a dark and dangerous power that wants to get rid of her by any means necessary. It’s up to Olive to save the house from the dark shadows, before the lights go out for good.
School Library Journal (05/01/2010):
Gr 46Olive Dunwoody and her mathematically minded parents move into an old Victorian home complete with the deceased owner’s furnishings. Olive first notices that something is wrong when she can’t take the paintings off the wall. She sees things moving in them. Then, while rummaging through the drawers, she finds a pair of glasses and tries them on. Olive can now enter the paintings and talk to the people in them. She is warned by a talking cat named Horatio not to spend too much time in there or to lose the glasses. She meets Morton in a painting and learns that he was forced into it because of a conversation he overheard. Olive is determined to find out more about the house and its history. But who can she trust? Her neighbors, the talking cats, or the people in the paintings? The expressive black-and-white illustrations contribute to the overall spooky mood of the story. The plot moves quickly as Olive pieces together clues. Recommend this book to reluctant readers and fans of Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline” (HarperCollins, 2002).”Samantha Larsen Hastings, West Jordan Public Library, UT” Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Review – Children (05/15/2010):
Preoccupied parents, a solitary young girl, talking catssound familiar? Unfortunately for debut author West, not only has this been done before, it's been done better. Still, the premise is intriguing. Magical spectacles enable the wearer to enter the worlds captured in paintings created by an evil, long-dead wizard.”Captured” isn't just a figure of speech: At least one young boy has been turned into a painted replica of himself. Another painting, that of the wizard's (also dead) granddaughter, comes creepily to life. In general, though, the action is sluggish and the ominous atmosphere contrived. Characterization is skimpy at best. Olive's parents adore math. Olive doesn't. The cats are pompous, imaginative and martial, respectively. Ironically enough, it's not just the supernatural effects that fail to convince. Would parents, even those utterly obsessed with their own intelligence and interests, really leave their 11-year-old home alone overnight? The fact that they do precipitates Olive's final confrontation with the wicked wizard. Unfortunately readers probably won't care much about who wins nor about the possibility of volume two. (Fantasy. 10-12)(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
Publishers Weekly (05/31/2010):
Poet West’s debut novel is a quirky and clever beginning to the Books of Elsewhere series. The Dunwoodys, “a pair of more than slightly dippy mathematicians,” and their 11-year-old daughter, Olive, have just moved into an old Victorian house. Olive has learned to be independent, given her parents’ aloofness (“Her persistently lackluster grades in math had led her parents to believe that she was some kind of genetic aberration”). She explores the house’s eccentricities and discovers that, by donning a pair of spectacles, she can enter the house’s many unsettling paintings. Inside one, she encounters nine-year-old Morton, who brings to her attention the secrets that the house and its late owner are keeping. With the help of three talking house cats, Olive works to patch together clues to save the painting-dwellers from their dark fate. The house is as much a character as are Olive, Morton, and her family, and a wicked sense of humor tempers the book’s creepiness. A suspenseful plot and insight into childhood loneliness–handily amplified by Bernatene’s moody and dramatically lit b&w illustrations–will have readers anxiously awaiting the next book. Ages 911. (June) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.
Booklist (06/01/2010):
Grades 4-6 First-novelist West begins the Books of Elsewhere series with an old house and a curious girl. Eleven-year-old Olive had been living with her nerdy mathematician parents in a series of nondescript apartments, and the whole family is happy to move into a Victorian house, complete with furniture, thats for sale at a comfortable price. Once ensconced, Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody become as obsessed with their math as ever, leaving Olive to her own devices. The devices, as it turns out, are odd paintings and a pair of glasses that allow her to venture inside the art to Elsewhere. And though they may not qualify as devices, there are several talking cats wandering about as well. The plot, as well as the character of Olive, will seem familiar to readers of light fantasy, but West does put her own nice spin on things. Most fun are the talking catsHoratio, Leopold, and Harveywhose commentary keeps things fresh. By books end, Olive has made some inroads into the mysteries of her new home, but its a very large house.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks (09/01/2010):
The atmospheric old house is a new home for eleven-year-old Olive, and though she finds it fascinating, with its colorful contents that include a collection of arresting paintings, she also finds it creepy. Her instincts prove to be accurate: the vivid paintings are actually portals into other realms, accessible to her if she’s wearing the spectacles found in the house. Advised, albeit cryptically, by Horatio, a talking cat secretly still resident in the house, Olive dabbles in exploration of those realms, but she also unwittingly comes ever closer to enabling the evil trapped inside the house to break free. West creates a delightful concoction of quirky humor blended with a rumbling ominous undertone (“This house belongs to someone else,” Horatio warns Olive, “And that someone may not want you here”); venerable fantasy tropes such as talking cats, animated paintings, the sinister and secret old house, and conveniently distracted parents parade out in enduring and endearing form. The plot is so nicely wrapped up in this volume that readers will wonder where subsequent entries in the planned series might go even as they’re grateful for the rare satisfaction of single-title closure. Sneaking into a hitherto-unsuspected niche between Umansky’s Clover Twig and the Magical Cottage (BCCB 10/09) and Gaiman’s Coraline (BCCB 11/02), this will be a hit with young fantasists ready for a measured helping of menace. Occasional full-page black-and-white illustrations have a touch of Mary GrandPre to their charcoal-edged texture and slightly skewed perspectives, and that’s no bad thing either. DS
Series: The Books of Elsewhere
ISBN: 9780142418727
Weight: 200g
Dimension: 195mm X 128mm
Pages: 241