ISBN 0789480840 - I broke my own rule with this book and I regret it so much that I have to confess. I never, ever, read the reviews before I read the book if I intend to review it. Ever. There's a good reason for this. Over the years, I've stumbled across reviews by family and friends of authors and even by the authors themselves. The level of my disgust with that practice is high, it almost always affects me negatively and I hate for that to seep into my own review. So, finding a review or reviews by people who proudly inform me that they "know Janice"... it's a bothersome thing. Their opinion is rendered useless to me, even if they're geniuses, because you KNOW they're going to 5-star anything their friend wrote. Then I read the book, wondering why, looking for the reason, the author couldn't get their book reviewed the honest way. That happened to me with this book.
Lucy Dove would like nothing more than to retire "in a cottage of her own, on her own piece of shore". When the soothsayer of a rich and superstitious laird tells him one way he can have good fortune, he offers a sack of gold to anyone who will sew him a pair of trousers in the haunted graveyard of St Andrew's church on the night of the next full moon. Lucy sees this as an excellent opportunity to secure her own future and sets out on the night in question, fully prepared. Just as she begins to doubt the tales told in town, a smell arises and a creature appears. Keeping her wits, Lucy manages to finish her sewing and flee from the creature. The race is on the reach the laird's castle...
The book is not marked, anywhere, to indicate the target age group, a mistake a lot of books make. Thin and oversized, the book looks to be appropriate for the 4-8 age group, but the text is more appropriate for the 9-11 group. The text is almost flawless, truthfully, which caught me by surprise. The tale unfurls at the perfect pace, building a little tension and not giving away much in advance, which will keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat. The story would make a great Halloween read, although I think I'll add it, alongside The Sprightly Tailor (which this book greatly resembles and which can be found in ISBN 1406936146 Celtic Fairy Tales) to the St Patrick's Day reading!
The illustrations, by Leonid Gore, are... ugly. I don't mean "ugly" in a "scary, haunting" way, I just mean unattractive. In most books for older kids, this wouldn't matter because they're not the picture-book crowd. In the case, however, the illustrations almost literally take up every inch of every page, even where there's text (they only interfere with the text for one word, to my eye). I understand what Gore was trying to evoke, I just think it failed and that failure is why the book is getting 4 stars, rather than 5. Finally - if you care, and I do, lately - the book is printed and bound in the U.S., a small thing that I like to see.
- AnnaLovesBooks
Lucy Dove would like nothing more than to retire "in a cottage of her own, on her own piece of shore". When the soothsayer of a rich and superstitious laird tells him one way he can have good fortune, he offers a sack of gold to anyone who will sew him a pair of trousers in the haunted graveyard of St Andrew's church on the night of the next full moon. Lucy sees this as an excellent opportunity to secure her own future and sets out on the night in question, fully prepared. Just as she begins to doubt the tales told in town, a smell arises and a creature appears. Keeping her wits, Lucy manages to finish her sewing and flee from the creature. The race is on the reach the laird's castle...
The book is not marked, anywhere, to indicate the target age group, a mistake a lot of books make. Thin and oversized, the book looks to be appropriate for the 4-8 age group, but the text is more appropriate for the 9-11 group. The text is almost flawless, truthfully, which caught me by surprise. The tale unfurls at the perfect pace, building a little tension and not giving away much in advance, which will keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat. The story would make a great Halloween read, although I think I'll add it, alongside The Sprightly Tailor (which this book greatly resembles and which can be found in ISBN 1406936146 Celtic Fairy Tales) to the St Patrick's Day reading!
The illustrations, by Leonid Gore, are... ugly. I don't mean "ugly" in a "scary, haunting" way, I just mean unattractive. In most books for older kids, this wouldn't matter because they're not the picture-book crowd. In the case, however, the illustrations almost literally take up every inch of every page, even where there's text (they only interfere with the text for one word, to my eye). I understand what Gore was trying to evoke, I just think it failed and that failure is why the book is getting 4 stars, rather than 5. Finally - if you care, and I do, lately - the book is printed and bound in the U.S., a small thing that I like to see.
- AnnaLovesBooks
