Review: The Spiderwick Chronicles

The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
A Five Book Series

Books:
1) The Field Guide
2) The Seeing Stone
3) Lucinda's Secret
4) The Ironwood Tree
5) The Wrath of Mulgrath


The premise of these books is an interesting one. The authors DiTerlizzi and Black start with writing a letter to the readers explaining how they come upon this bizarre story. They explain in their letter that they received a letter addressed directly to them from the Grace children, nine-year-old twins Simon and Jared and their thirteen- year-old sister Mallory. In this letter the Grace children tell about a book they have found that explains about faeries and ask the authors to publish it so that others will learn about faeries. The authors then wrote back to the Grace children and had the Grace children show up on their door step to tell the amazingly "true" stories that are now written down and illustrated in these books. So goes the story.

Turns out the stories are not only about faeries but about goblins, hobgoblins, brownies, boggarts, tolls, and many many more creatures which turn out to be humorous, intriguing, dangerous, and frightening. The books are not very long and are basically like serial stories with the next installment in each book.

I have read the books and each took about an hour to read even with kids interrupting me. Each book is like a chapter installation in a series. The stories are well written and engaging. They appear to be targeted to young readers in about second and third grade range. As a matter of fact, I first heard of these books from Emily. Her second grade teacher read them to the class. Emily was very excited about the the different creatures in the story.

Though they are almost well targeted to young readers, readers of all ages may find them an interesting. The authors put a lot of work into the books and do compliment these books with some excellent artwork that brings the books to life. In doing so the these little books are hard covered and illustrated beautifully. With that said the price of each book reflects this too....at about Ten bucks a pop. I bought the first book since I found one at the Otowi book store. But since then I plan to be using the library to read the other ones. Actually Emily checked out Book Two from her school library for me. :)

Now there are some things in these books that give me caution especially for young readers:

• The stories are scary.
  
• The creatures can be dangerous and cruel.
  
• There is some uncalled for and unnecessary Language.
  
• The humor is sometimes irreverent and deprecating.
  
• Disobedience to parents.
  
• Lies and lies of omission.
  

The stories can be very scary. This was illustrated by Emily saying that she did not want to read or hear the stories close to bedtime. She admits they are scary.

The creatures can be dangerous and cruel. They eat various animals (other's pets included) regularly as part of their diet. The Grace children are even worried they will eat children. One creature, a brownie, who is starting to become a boggart (notorious for being mean) secretly and cruelly freezes one of the twin's tadpoles in ice cubes in an ice tray. He did this in an attempt to get the other twin in trouble with the rest of the family.

There is some language in the book that just is not necessary, and uncalled for, to the stories. The language adds no value to the stories. There is the use of the word "crappiers" to describe the new house they move into. Or a hobgoblin who throws insults around like Dumbilina, Candy Butt, Jingle Brains, and several others. This was done in a way to be humorous..which leads to...

Many of the creature's humor is irreverent and deprecating much like the smart allicky kids portrayed in many of the movies and on TV shows these days.

The children at times lie through omission if not directly to their mother. They do things that they have been told not to do directly by the mother or they know that their mother would not approve. Of course I know that it is hard to have an adventure or fantasy when young by obeying the rules and being respectful of your parents. But we have to ask ourselves if the ends justify the means too.

With this said the books are interesting and well done. With a good bit of parental guidance then I can honestly say that I do not mind Emily reading them.


Spiderwick The Movie

On another note, I finished the first book in Pullman's Dark Material a few week ago and have meant to write my thoughts about it and about the research I have done about Pullman but just have not had time to finish it and post it. Hopefully soon.