Stephen Hayes reviewed Lucinda's Secret (Spiderwick Chronicle) by Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles)
None
4 stars
A couple of days ago I participated in a webinar on Imagining Ecological Pasts and Futures: Folklore, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction in the Climate Crisis, in which one of the speakers, Gina Lyle, spoke on "Fantasy, Ecology and Children's Literature".
She didn't mention this book, but I happened to finish reading it immediately after the webinar, and it ended with a trope that seemed very applicable: children meet elves who are hostile to humans because of the damage that humans cause to the environment. The same trope may be found in [b:The Moon of Gomrath|694942|The Moon of Gomrath (Tales of Alderley, #2)|Alan Garner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1177344653l/694942.SY75.jpg|1219230] by [a:Alan Garner|47991|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1363273417p2/47991.jpg], where the elves of Sinadon come to Fundindelve, and show a similar hostility to human children for the same reason.
This is the third book of the Spiderwick Chronicles. I've read the first, but the second was not in …
A couple of days ago I participated in a webinar on Imagining Ecological Pasts and Futures: Folklore, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction in the Climate Crisis, in which one of the speakers, Gina Lyle, spoke on "Fantasy, Ecology and Children's Literature".
She didn't mention this book, but I happened to finish reading it immediately after the webinar, and it ended with a trope that seemed very applicable: children meet elves who are hostile to humans because of the damage that humans cause to the environment. The same trope may be found in [b:The Moon of Gomrath|694942|The Moon of Gomrath (Tales of Alderley, #2)|Alan Garner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1177344653l/694942.SY75.jpg|1219230] by [a:Alan Garner|47991|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1363273417p2/47991.jpg], where the elves of Sinadon come to Fundindelve, and show a similar hostility to human children for the same reason.
This is the third book of the Spiderwick Chronicles. I've read the first, but the second was not in the
library, so I'm having doubts about whether I'll be able to read and review the whole series.
The Grace family go to live in an old house belonging to a great aunt, and find it has some strange inhabitants. The main character seems to be Jared Grace, aged nine, his twin brother Simon, and their older sister Mallory, aged 13. They discover a book about faeries, which apparently belonged to their great uncle, who disappeared many years before. But the faeries, or some of them, want it, and seem determined to get hold of it, by fair means or foul.
Each volume in the series is fairly short, about 100 pages, of which nearly half are taken up with illustrations.
(incomplete review, more to follow)
