A Completely Different Place | |||||||||||
Perry Nodelman | |||||||||||
Simon & Schuster, 192 pages | |||||||||||
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A review by Lela Olszewski
Johnny Nesbit is ready for some peace and quiet after the terrifying events
of the past winter (chronicled in Nodelman's
The Same Place But Different). Having successfully battled a variety
of evil creatures, called the Strangers, from
the land of Farie in order to rescue his baby sister, life has settled down.
The only thing bothering him is that children
are disappearing, and no one else seems to realize it. Waking from a
dream, he ponders the mystery.
Johnny realizes that he has shrunk to doll house size and is inside a bottle
held by one of the missing children, a girl
about his age named Cheryl Zennor. As he and Cheryl try to discover what
happened to him, Johnny comes to understand that
Cheryl has been enthralled by a wizard, "the Master", and doesn't want to
leave. She's happy cleaning house and waiting for
him to come home each day. The only way back home is to break the spells
that surround them, if they can.
A Completely Different Place successfully walks the line between
light and dark fantasy, managing to be both funny
and creepy at the same time. Nodelman is able to strike exactly the right
tone for Johnny's first person narration,
enabling the reader to understand Johnny's concern for the missing children
and his reluctance to let Cheryl see that concern.
Readers will also identify with Nodelman's portrayal of the awkward time
when girls have crushes on boys who aren't ready for
them.
Johnny's concern for his baby sister in The Same Place But Different
was much more immediate than his concern for
the missing children in this book. Similarly, his desire to rescue Cheryl
is tempered by his pre-teen antipathy for girls,
unlike the more straighforward motivation for rescuing his sister. As a
result, this book doesn't have the emotional power
of The Same Place But Different. But don't let that stop you from
reading it, or sharing it with a middle schooler
who likes fantasy. You'll both enjoy it.
Two other notes. First, don't miss the cover of the book. Steve
Cieslawski's illustration fits the book perfectly, and will make
you want to get the magnifying glass out so you can read the spells on the
bottles. And second, Nodelman adds an afterward
listing the traditional sources for the story, so readers can follow up if
they want to.
Lela Olszewski is an avid reader of science fiction, fantasy, mystery and romance, as well as an eclectic mix of other fiction and non-fiction. She is also a librarian with an interest in readers' advisory, and believes fully in Rosenberg's Law: Never apologize for your reading tastes. She has no cats. |
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