|
So your kids have finished reading Harry Potter. What do you do to keep them reading until the next book comes out? Try a couple of these offerings and see if they will enchant your child: The Westing Game, The House with a Clock in its Walls, The Phantom Tollbooth, and A Wrinkle in Time.
The Westing Game
The Westing Game begins when 16 soon-to-be heirs converge on a tower and rent apartments. Little do they know that they have all been brought there to participate in the “Westing Game.” They’re all characters with individual goals and distinct personalities. Throughout the course of the book, the layers are peeled away and we learn more about each of them. None of them are entirely what they seem or who they project.
Each of the 16 heirs are called to the Westing mansion after it is announced that the famous inventor, Samuel Westing is dead. The will reveals that his life was taken from him by one of the people in the room and whoever figures it out will inherit $200 million. He pairs them up, gives each pair $10,000 and a set of four clues.
Only the reader has all of the clues available, and certain solutions may present themselves right away. But those solutions may seem confusing at first and the book will take you on a wild romp to figure out the answers.
Ultimately, while this is a puzzle book, it is a book about the characters. What each person learns about himself or herself or the others around him or her, is more important than the puzzle the will presents.
The House with a Clock in its Walls
Billed as a ghost story, this children's novel has much to endear itself to its young readers. The 179-page novel has its share of suspense without inducing nightmares and has black and white drawings sprinkled throughout that encourage the imagination. It is a book that reads quickly and has a quick pace, but never talks down to its readers. Indeed, within the first few pages, Lewis is reciting a prayer and Bellairs gives both the Latin and English versions of it (this is pre-Vatican II, and good Catholic altar boys like Lewis said their prayers in Latin).
The characters in this book are a wonderful endearing combination and the dialog is skillfully written.
First, Lewis Barnavelt. Like many heroes, he is an orphan. It's 1948 and Lewis is on a train leaving Michigan and traveling to his Uncle Jonathan's home in New Zebedee. Lewis is a 10-year-old boy with a "moony fat face and shiny cheeks." Unlike the Harry Potter series where all fat children are nasty and cruel, Lewis is very likable. His roundness makes him unpopular with his classmates and the last to be chosen for any team game, but yet he is eager to both like others and to explore. He's painfully shy and constantly afraid of rejection--especially from the adults in his life.
Uncle Jonathan is Lewis' new guardian. He's got a long busy red beard, a pot belly, and dresses outrageously. He's also a wizard. Fortunately for Lewis, he’s also kindly, learned, and interested in all sorts of fascinating things. A better guardian could hardly be found.
Then there is the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Florence Zimmerman. A wizard like Uncle Jonathan (though she prefers maga or enchantrix), she has a Doctor Magicorum Artium (D.Mag.A) from the University of Gottingen in Germany. (Poor Uncle Jonathan has only an A.B. from Michigan Agricultural College--now Michigan State University--in Animal Husbandry.) She's a gray-haired lady who has an affinity for baggy purple dresses. Her face is wrinkled but her eyes on friendly.
There are all sorts of antagonists, and the first one we meet we like. Tarby is the most popular boy in school. He's "a daredevil, the kind of boy who rode his bicycle through bonfires and hung by his knees from the limbs of trees. All the girls liked him, and he was the big home-run hitter in the softball games." He befriends Lewis while Lewis is trying to practice softball.
The remaining characters are best met in the course of the novel, for they are the villains and ghosts that make this story one of suspense.
Lewis is a lonely boy, and not just because his parents are dead. He suffers in the way that only outcast children can. "All his life--all ten years of it--he had been listening to children who chanted: Fatty, fatty, two by four, Can't get through the kitchen door."
Tarby befriends him while his arm is broken and they soon become buddies as Tarby is able to see beyond the first appearances. They find they have things in common and start hanging out together. But Lewis still carries with him the insecurities that cause many children to stumble. He decides he needs to prove his friendship, to do something extra special for Tarby to show his worthiness.
While Uncle Jonathan is able to make good on Lewis' boastful promise to Tarby, Lewis soon learns that friendships can be fragile and that his "friend" will require more proofs and more sacrifices. The lessons that Tarby teaches Lewis become increasingly bitter.
While it is set in the 40s and has many anachronisms, it is still a delight for children today to read. The stakes are nothing less than the fate of the world. A clock is ticking within the walls of Uncle Jonathan's mansion. The two wizards have been unable to find it and they are uncertain what it portends. They tell Lewis that the house was once owned by an evil warlock, Isaac Izard and his wife Selenna.
Strange things begin happening and they increase when Lewis tries his own hand at magic in order to impress Tarby. The clock is a doomsday clock and it was built to hasten the Day of Judgement.
Throughout the novel, Lewis learns to trust and to discover within himself what true bravery is.
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Phantom Tollbooth is a delightful romp through a world that personifies every phrase, quirk, sound, and calculation. Milo, a bored young man, is given a pass through a tollbooth that shows up in his room. He enters the tollbooth, convinced he’ll just go a short ways, be bored, and turn around again. Instead, he makes discoveries that will forever change him.
Norton changes the way we look at our world by making us laugh with delight. Never again will you use the phrase "killing time" without hearing Milo’s companion and new friend Tock howling in the background. Rhyme and Reason will forever after be a pair of long-haired princesses, kept at bay by such demons as procrastination.
Milo visits such extraordinary cities as Dictionopolis. There he attends a feast where he must eat his words and he learns what each one tastes like. If only all dinner speeches were as juicy and sweet as the ones in this book. Later, he jumps to the Isle of Conclusions and finds it a difficult trek back from false assumptions. In Digitopolis, Milo samples subtraction soup and finds his lack of math knowledge to be painful. Milo tries to reconcile the monarchs of both lands, trying to get them to believe that numbers and words really can live in harmony.
The Phantom Tollbooth is filled with vivid imagery that will entertain your children for a lifetime. Even the most literal-minded child will enjoy this fantasy.
A Wrinkle in Time
For good reason has this book become a classic in children’s literature. It is a book that assumes children are intelligent, open-minded, and are dreamers. Written 40 years ago, it appeals to even the most reluctant young reader. Indeed, those who steer away from the Harry Potter series because of its secular overtones, will find A Wrinkle in Time much more to their liking as it has heavy Christian overtones and beliefs permeating its pages.
The books’ protagonists are Meg Murry, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe. They are launched into an adventure with three seeming witches to find Meg and Charles’ father. It turns out these “witches” are time-travelling spirits, though their true form is one of the delightful surprises of the book. They journey across the universe and must fight evil while exploring new worlds and new creatures.
A Wrinkle in Time is a book that teaches while it entertains. It seamlessly weaves concepts of mass, gravity, transmogrification, relativity, free will, good and evil into the plot. The characters must struggle with their own intelligence, emotional weaknesses, and judgements so that they can survive and their father can be rescued.
This book is also just the beginning of a series that would follow the Murry family throughout their eventful life.
Read on…
Once your children have sped their way through these books, consider introducing some of these classic tales:
James and the Giant Peach
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Bonicula/Bunnicula
The Hobbit
The Chronicles of Narnia
Pippi Longstocking
Where the Red Fern Grows
Charlotte’s Web
Girl of the Limberlost
| 
