WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS
I picked this up and read it, thinking about passing it along to my niece. Pllease know this is the view of a 40 something mom, not the target audience.
Written in 2013 I'm not sure it passes the politically correct test in 2021 so I'm not sharing it right away. Is the Asian character's speech too stereotypical? Is it okay to hand off a book about children being stolen away from their families and kept in cages? You will know whether your child can go with this sort of dark Victorian England vibe (there are also lots of bad smells) or if it will bring on bad dreams. There is a robot monster in the mud that snatches kids. That said, the heroine and her tribe of "freaks" form their own kind of family and do rescue the children. I wanted more explicit closure about Sheba's past. I enjoyed the author's note at the end with facts about Victorian London.
I picked this up and read it, thinking about passing it along to my niece. Pllease know this is the view of a 40 something mom, not the target audience.
Written in 2013 I'm not sure it passes the politically correct test in 2021 so I'm not sharing it right away. Is the Asian character's speech too stereotypical? Is it okay to hand off a book about children being stolen away from their families and kept in cages? You will know whether your child can go with this sort of dark Victorian England vibe (there are also lots of bad smells) or if it will bring on bad dreams. There is a robot monster in the mud that snatches kids. That said, the heroine and her tribe of "freaks" form their own kind of family and do rescue the children. I wanted more explicit closure about Sheba's past. I enjoyed the author's note at the end with facts about Victorian London.
