Tag Archive | kidnapping

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs (book review) – monsters are real

Jun7

book cover of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs published by Quirk BooksUntil it’s grown, you don’t known if that weedy stuff is crabgrass or horrible, clawing grassburrs.

Likewise, Jacob didn’t realize that the monsters that Grandpa warned him about were real until it was too late, as he looks up from the dying man to see the horrifying creature…and the monster sees Jacob.

Author Ransom Riggs started collecting old photos some years ago, drawn to the captions often written on them. For the most peculiar images, he began inventing their backstories and what the oddest captions might have been.

In this thriller, Riggs’ imagination has gone far beyond those idea seeds planted by the old photos, as he brings the “peculiar children” to life, as well as the monsters that pursue them…and Jacob.
**kmm

Book info: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children / by Ransom Riggs. Quirk Books, 2011. [author’s blog] [publisher site] [book trailer]

My Book Talk: Jacob stopped believing in Grandpa’s monster stories years ago, but what else could kill someone so thoroughly? Fatally attacked, Grandpa gasps that Jacob “must go to the island” where he will be safe, as he sees the blackened creature of his nightmares disappear into the Florida woods.

Now 16 year old Jacob has the nightmares, the monster alternating with the old photos of “peculiar children” who were his grandpa’s friends at the Welsh orphanage which rescued him from the Holocaust – an invisible boy, the floating girl…real or faked? Clues found at Grandpa’s house convince him that he must find that island and the orphanage, or go insane!

Thankfully, his psychiatrist agrees, so Jacob and his dad head for Wales, and the mystery grows deeper.
If the orphanage was bombed-out in 1940, how did Grandpa get there later?
Why can Jacob hear voices in the old building when no one else can?
Who is following them on the tiny island?

As the past and present tangle and unravel, Jacob finds the old photos to be new truths as the monsters pursue children for their peculiar talents. A chilling debut novel for very mature readers which ponders how the balance point between good and evil loops through human history… (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Stolen: A Letter to My Captor, by Lucy Christopher (book review) – kidnapped & brought to the Outback

May25

book cover of Stolen by Lucy Christopher published by Chicken House
This book scares me on so many levels, and there’s not a vampire or ghost or werewolf or war anywhere in it. How could Gemma’s parents cope with her disappearance? I just can’t imagine their terror and desperation.

May 25 is National Missing Children’s Day – it’s heartbreaking that this recognition even has to exist. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has resources so you can learn how to keep yourself and the children you know safe.

I’ve visited the Outback, so I know how far away from everything and everyone Gemma finds herself, out in the Red Center of Australia…
**kmm

Book info: Stolen: A Letter to my Captor / by Lucy Christopher. Chicken House, 2010. 304 pages. [author’s website] [publisher website] [book trailer]

My Book Talk: He watched Gemma for years – at the park, in her room – then he stole her, drugged her coffee, and took her away from her parents at the Bangkok airport. Now she’s in a desert, miles and miles from any town, continents away from her London high school, alone with him. Ty says that he’ll keep her there with him…forever.

What makes a man plan so intently, stockpiling food and supplies to last a decade, building a house in the depths of the Outback? How can get on the very same plane as Gemma or get a fake passport for her or smuggle her through airport security?

Will she be with Ty forever? How long will he leave her body to herself? Will she ever see her parents again? Under a sky filled with more stars than the cities can ever see, on the flatness of an empty land, Gemma’s questions fill her journal, going on and on like the red sands of the desert, as far as she can see…   (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

The House of Dead Maids, by Clare B. Dunkle (book review) – prequel to Wuthering Heights

May21
book cover of House of Dead Maids by Clare B Dunkle published by Henry Holt

Sometimes you wonder what happened in a person’s past to make them turn out the way they did. What’s their backstory? But authors don’t often give us the behind-the-scenes glimpses that we desire.

Such is the case with Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights, whose creator Emily Bronte tells us so little of how he was orphaned or why his unseen childhood turned him into such a brutal man.

Clare B. Dunkle decided to tell Heathcliff’s backstory in this very creepy and very plausible prequel to Wuthering Heights – lots and lots of scary packed into a short book! (I don’t ever, ever want to travel to those moors…)
**kmm

Book info: The House of Dead Maids / by Clare B. Dunkle; illus. by Patrick Arrasmith. Henry Holt, 2010. 146 pgs. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer]

My Book Talk: Hired as a nursemaid for a little boy, Tabitha wonders what happened to the other girl from her orphanage who held the position before her. Seldom House is a huge, gloomy place on the English moorlands, with no windows facing south and a bleak inner courtyard where nothing grows.

The villagers stare and whisper, no one from Seldom House goes to church with her, and Tabby finds odd toys suddenly uncovered in her bedroom. Who is the other girl she hears running down the hall? Mrs. Winter says that no other girls live in the house.

Soon Tabby sees the ghosts she’s been hearing, all the dead maids of the house, and meets the little boy, who’s savage and wild, who has been promised that he will be Master of Seldom House, who can see the ghosts of all the dead masters. Overhearing a plan to murder them during a thunderstorm, as the land must have blood to be satisfied, she vows that they’ll both escape.

This chilling prequel to Wuthering Heights gives the dark background of the little orphan boy brought to Seldom House to ensure its luck, to take the place of its master, to learn of murder – the savage little boy who grew up to become Heathcliff… (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.u

The Haunting of Charles Dickens, by Lewis Buzbee (book review) – mystery in London, Dickens on the case

May18

book cover of The Haunting of Charles Dickens by Lewis Buzbee published by Feiwel and Friends Did you remember to celebrate Biographers Day on May 16th (our Guest Post Day)? In the hands of a skilled biographer, an average life becomes a nuanced tapestry worth noting, and an extraordinary life shows all its colors. But what of the fictionalized biography?

I remember being surprised as a child that the “Little House on the Prairie” books were in Fiction, because they were about real people who really did live in the Big Woods and on the Prairie, where you can visit a replica of Laura’s cabin today. By choice, Laura and daughter Rose used selected elements of the Ingalls’ and Wilders’ lives as they crafted the Little House books, as this NPR program notes, recreating conversations from decades earlier and omitting events for better story flow.

We have to trust that writers of fictionalized biographies will stick to the major facts of their subjects’ lives (like early baseball book Mudball, by Matt Tavares), or else tell us that we’ll be traveling off the path of real history and far into the woods of speculation (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, anyone?).

I think that Lewis Buzbee indeed warns us fairly that The Haunting of Charles Dickens uses just one bit of the writer’s life and runs through the alleys of London with it, as Dickens helps the Pickel family of printers solve a mystery. A fun book, with enough of the real Dickens in it that older readers will grasp how the wretched backstreet life that he witnesses becomes the heart of his books, but not so much literary insider talk that younger mystery fans will find it distracting.

On second thought, let’s just enjoy this book in honor of International Old Friends, New Friends Week, shall we?
**kmm

Book info: The Haunting of Charles Dickens / by Lewis Buzbee, illustrated by Greg Ruth. Fiewel & Friends (Macmillan), 2010. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer ]

Buzbee also wrote Steinbeck’s Ghost, another literary mystery for middle graders which received good reviews and would be a great read for Steinbeck fans of any age. Watch for his upcoming lit-mystery, Mark Twain and the Mysterious Stranger.

My Book Talk: Meg is frantic when her big brother Orion disappears from their family’s London printshop. Has he been captured by a press-gang to work on the new railway or sail away on a trading ship? Six months gone, with no word at all!

And he’d taken the last section of Great Expectations with him as well! Their good friend Charles Dickens had Meg gasping and laughing and worrying about Pip through the earlier parts of his book, but she never got to finish the story and she can’t stop worrying about Orion, even if he is 15 and old enough to take care of himself.

When she spots a strange green glow on a nearby rooftop, Meg asks Mr. Dickens to help her investigate. They find a spiritualist medium at work, using tricks to get money from sorrowful families who want to communicate with their dead loved ones. When actual ghosts come out to meet the pair on the rooftop later, they give clues about Orion’s disappearance.

Racing through the dim alleys, into London’s dangerous underworld of petty thieves and master criminals, Meg and Mr. Dickens follow Orion’s trail as they interpret signs and signals that point to a greater and more dangerous plot.

New antiques, tunnels to nowhere, a trip abroad without leaving London – can they find Orion before he disappears forever? Can Meg and Mr. Dickens stop the danger that threatens the whole city and still keep the famous writer’s name out of it? (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.