Search - Midnight for Charlie Bone (Children of the Red King, Bk 1)

I was originally concerned that this series was a Harry Potter knock off. I was wrong. Yes, there are similarities to Harry Potter, but this series has some great potenial. I can't wait to read the next one.

This book reminded me a lot of the Harry Potter series. Kid probably won't mind this at all, but as an adult, the lack of originality gets a little annoying at times. But perhaps it's part of that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" thing on the author's part...

The term "endowed" tends to also make me snicker on occasion. I think the author could've found a better word to describe the magic-like talent that some of the characters have.

Overall, it's a readable book if you don't notice that it has a lot of similarities to authors such as J.K. Rowling, Pierce Anthony and I'm sure many others I haven't read yet or notice right off the bat.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Same genre as the Harry Potter series. Good juvenile series.

A kid with the strange ability to hear the people in photographs is forced into a school by his nasty aunts, where he inherits the task of finding and dehypnotizing the lost niece of a local bookstore owner through the use of long-lost mechanical inventions. That pretty much is the premise of Midnight for Charlie Bone. In short, it's a big mess.

I'm sure youngsters with past Harry Potter experience coudl make the magical connections between shrub-headed kid Charlie Bone and the baby-turned-ten-year-old Emma Tolly, the aforementioned niece who was traded for the device that would awaken her soon-to-be-hypnotized state. Go ahead and say it: What?

Oh, it gets better: Bone's uncle, the only saving grace among the controlling relatives of his maybe-dead father, has the weird endowment of making lights unbearably bright (or breaking windows, an ability he suddenly pops up with near the end of the story), and for that reason, only comes out at night so he will only shatter street lights instead of a myriad of other lights on in the city. The rest of the time, he sits in his bedroom writing his book, until he decides to make himself useful by assisting in Bone's quest for the niece and the way to open the device he's been hiding in his best friend Benjamin's basement with guard duty help from Ben's dog, Runner Bean.

Will Charlie awaken Emma from her trance and return her to her rightful home? Or will his evil aunts conquer and keep the secret under wraps? At this point, who really cares?

Don't get me wrong: Jenny Nimmo isn't a bad writer. But the confused and fuzzy details in this particular story isn't a great way to start out a five-installment series and keep readers interested for the remaining adventures. Unlike J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, which mostly resolved its per-book troubles, Nimmo leaves too many things up in the air to secure any interest in further books.

If you want some adventure and excitement with nasty relatives, prefects, professors and all kinds of mischief, just go hunt for the Sorcerer's Stone again and send Charlie on his way.

What's hapening to Charlie Bone?
Charlie does't want to believe it when he discovers that he can hear the thoughts of people in photographs.But his horrible aunts are delighted-it means that he is one of the chosen and must attend the Bloor's Academ;y for gifted children.Once there,Charlie realizes that some of is classmated have eqully mysterious powers,and soon Charlie is involved in uncovering the mysterious past of one of them.
My daughter loved this book and read in (1) day she compared it to Harry
potter.Good way to spend a summer day.