Children's Book Reviews

Page Two of Two

Haunted by Meg Cabot

HarperCollins, January, 2003
Trade paperback, 256 pages
ISBN: 006029471X
Ages 12 and up
Ordering information:
Amazon.com


Haunted
 by Meg Cabot Haunted is a book that will appeal to California Girls, wherever they may be. Susannah Simon has the best situation any sixteen year old girl could possibly have. She attends an elite private school in Carmel where she has many friends. She enjoys shopping and wearing designer outfits, about which she is very knowledgeable. But best of all, she has a handsome, mysterious roommate who happens to be a ghost! Only Susannah can see him, so she has an exciting situation that no one else knows about, except other people in her life who know about the spirit world and mediators. For Susannah herself is a mediator: a person who can see and speak with ghosts and who must help these troubled spirits move on into the next level of existence.

Trouble comes in the form of a very exciting student named Paul Slater. An eleventh grader with bewitching eyes, casually elegant clothes and a BMW convertible might make any sensible girl frightened. All that perfection in one human being is likely to be very dangerous and generally always is. Paul and Suze have met before in another mediator adventure and Suze finds his attentions very frightening. Anyhow, she is falling deeply in love with Jesse, the ghost. When Suze's stepbrother brings home a friend home from college, he brings another guest -- his dead brother. Suze must help him to come to terms with being dead.

This is the fifth adventure in the mediator series, the first four being written under Meg Cabot's pseudonym, Jenny Carroll. Suze is a likeable protagonist, and her concerns with the pressing issues of the preteen set (boys, clothes, school, parental discipline) will resonate with the target audience. This is a lighthearted and fun read that should garner an even bigger audience now that Ms. Cabot's real name is on the cover.

--Sarah Reaves White


The Impossible Journey by Gloria Whelan

HarperCollins, January, 2003
Hardcover, 256 pages
ISBN: 0066238110
Ages 5 and up
Ordering information:
Amazon.com


The Impossible Journey
 by Gloria Whelan The Impossible Journey is the odyssey of two children traveling across the endless miles between Leningrad and Siberia trying to find their parents. In the frightening years of Josef Stalin's rise to power within the Communist Party, families were torn apart when relatives under suspicion of having sympathies for a particular politician were either executed or were sent to Siberia to be locked away, forgotten in the great Soviet deep freeze.

Marya and Georgi are two children who live in a cold Leningrad apartment with their parents who had been the children of aristocrats. Now living in poverty, the parents and their children live in the ever present fear that they will have to suffer for their political beliefs. The mother tells her daughter tales of what it used to be like living in the Winter Palace and playing with the four daughters of the Tsar. One day Marya finds a locket hidden away in a dresser drawer. It is in the shape of a four leaf clover and inside each petal is the miniature portrait of a young girl. The locket makes her mother sad, and Marya's father explains that the Tsar's family had all been executed as enemies of the state. Unfortunately, Marya makes the mistake of revealing that her parents had once lived at the Winter Palace, and just to make matters worse takes the locket to school to prove her claim. Things rapidly get worse. Marya's parents are arrested and sent to prison in Siberia and Marya and her brother are forced to live with very unpleasant neighbors who immediately seize the family's possessions as pay for feeding their children. It is then that the two children begin to make plans to find their parents. When a letter comes from the mother saying that she has been sent to a town in Siberia called Dubinka, the children begin their journey. They must reach Siberia before winter comes. Equipped with the faith that innocence brings, they begin their impossible journey north. Along the way they meet many types of people -- mostly disagreeable ones -- and have many narrow escapes.

The Impossible Journey is a grim reminder of the terrible things that happened to all levels of society during the brutal reign of Josef Stalin. The children endure many hardships, but Marya, who tells the story, never loses hope for long. The meeting with the nomadic Samoyeds is full of surprising information about this little known culture and about the harsh climate that shapes their lives. Although the story begins in misery, it ends in warmth, reunion and hope.

--Sarah Reaves White


Quiver by Stephanie Spinner

Knopf, October, 2002
Hardcover, 176 pages
ISBN: 0375814892
Ages 9-12
Ordering information:
Amazon.com


Quiver
 by Stephanie Spinner Stephanie Spinner has gone to that timeless repository of great plots, the Greek myths, and with thorough scholarship created a tale that plunges us into that fascinating time, prehistoric Greece. The brutality of the age is immediately impressed on the reader in the first chapters which deal with the ferocity and inherent danger of a boar hunt. Through the vehicle of the boar hunt, Ms. Spinner acquaints the reader with the attitudes and general frame of reference of those early Greeks. The shock of the brutality of a hunt that uses only bronze age weapons immerses the reader in a culture that has worked out rational reasons for the vicissitudes of daily life and come to terms with them.

Atalanta suffered the fate of many of the unwanted babies of primitive cultures. She was abandoned in the forest to be devoured by whatever wild animal might care to have an easy meal. But the ancient Greeks firmly believed that the gods were involved in their everyday affairs and that the gods, for their own personal whims, cause things to happen to mortals. In the case of Atalanta, the belief was that Artemis, goddess of the hunt sent a she-bear to nurse the poor abandoned infant and protect her. Gratefully Atalanta decided to devote her life to Artemis.

Ms. Spinner artfully uses the device of inserting the conversations of the gods about what is going on in the world of mortals. The reader is then able to understand the peculiar attitude that the ancient Greeks had about life and one's fate. One can understand that the gods were rarely admirable, but always powerful and subject to the same petty motivations that regular mortals felt.

Atalanta's fame grows, but that brings more problems. When strangers on horseback arrive to take Atalanta back to the kingdom of the father who had ordered her to be abandoned, Atalanta has no choice but to obey. But when she discovers that the old king has no son and that he wants Atalanta to marry so she can produce an heir, Atalanta is dismayed. She has promised Artemis that she will never marry. Atalanta thinks that she has a solution. She will marry only the suitor who can beat her in a foot race, but any suitor who loses will be put to death. Atalanta wrongly believes that no suitors will show up, but she is greatly mistaken. Of course the gods intervene and Atalanta is tricked into losing a race due to some golden apples that her suitor, Hippomenes kept throwing in front of her. The well-known story draws to a close with a sudden shocking ending.

Ms. Spinner's skillful writing fills out the ancient myth and makes prehistoric Greece accessible to young readers. Using the device of the petty selfishness of the gods allows the author to make some believable comments on life and the seeming illogical happenings in people's lives. Quiver is an excellent retelling of a classic tale.

--Sarah Reaves White


Children's Book Reviews
Page One | Page Two

Return to Book Reviews Index







More from Writers Write


  • Clarkesworld Magazine Temporarily Closes Submissions After Surge in ChatGPT Generated Stories


  • Prince Harry Easily Tops Bestseller Lists With Spare


  • Stephen King Compares Elon Musk to Tom Sawyer


  • U.S. Postal Service Honors Shel Silverstein With Forever Stamp


  • Twitter Reveals Edit Button Under Development


  • Writing Contests
    upcoming contests
    Write Jobs
    find a job
    Writing Memes
    funny writing-related memes
    Stephen King Quotes
    quotes from the master
    Grammar Tips
    improve your writing
    Writing Prompts
    spark your creativity