by George Hagen; illustrated by Scott Bakal
Random House Children's / Schwartz & Wade
October 2014
I loved this book: Quick to engage the reader, a plausible and compelling adventure, and a somehow comforting and safe environment in which young Gabriel can encounter all sorts of bad guys and dangerous situations and still come out the victor.
What's different about this book
It's wholesome. Elegantly so. I find it hard to describe, but this is the most secure background I've read for a story that included bad magic and life-threatening adversaries. Somehow the warm family settings confirm what the reader quickly realizes: the author has Gabriel's best at heart. (Even the one not-good home setting of the story is resolved in a positive and healing way.) I mean, how often do you read stories where twelve-year-old kids walk the streets of Brooklyn at night, and the only sense of peril is from the magical challenge they are heading to? I loved it -- and I loved the absence of real-life social ills and threats that are too often present in similar "adventures."
What I'll do now that I've read the book
My libraries will be buying this book, and I'll have so much fun book-talking this to readers who should be quickly won over to a book that is adventurous and challenging -- and full of riddles middle-graders can understand and enjoy! Well done, Mr. Hagen. Reading this was a pleasure.
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