The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 1, The Shadows
Author: Jaqueline West / Illustrator: Poly Bernatene
Puffin Books 2010
Softcover, 241 Page Chapter Book, Ages 8-12
The house is keeping secrets, and who can you trust? The talking cats? The neighbors? Certainly not the talking paintings!
When eleven-year-old Olive Dunwoody and her parents move into an old mansion complete with the previous owners belongings, she begins to notice some pretty creepy things. However, though she knows the place is very strange, it isn’t until she meets the three talking cats that she realizes there’s more afoot than meets the eye. It gets even stranger when she notices the characters in the paintings move about, and that she can’t take them off the wall.
While rummaging through an old drawer she finds a pair of glasses and soon discovers that these spectacles allow her to enter the paintings and talk to the characters in them. It’s here that she meets Morton and learns that he was forced into the painting because he knew too much and has been there a long time. One of the talking cats warns her not to lose those glasses or spend much time inside the paintings. But she now must unravel the mystery and save the house from The Shadows before the lights go out forever.
This is one of those books where the adult in me says “What a great book, how clever, what a mystery!” while the kid in me is screaming “AAAAA that’s really scary! What’s she going to do? Who do we trust? Where’s the next book?” Jacqueline West has a knack for unique description and witty dialog that brings laughter throughout the book as well as an atmosphere of deadly mystery with hidden rooms, creepy attics, crawly basement, paintings and cats that talk and absolutely no help at all from her absent-minded genius parents! I can’t wait to read the next book in the series.
The Books Of Elsewhere: Volume 1, The Shadows by Jacqueline West gets 5 starts from this reviewer.