While bored at the desk one day this week, I
snatched Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery, & a Very Strange Adventure, Lissa Evans, from our new book
cart and was immediately sucked in. The book follows Stuart Horten—a boy obsessed
with his small stature—as he and his geeky parents pack up and move to his
fathers’ boyhood city. Stuart learns of his Great Uncle Tony’s last great act—his
own disappearance! and gets sucked into solving the clues that were left behind
over a generation before; along the way Stuart must deal with the annoying,
newspaper writing triplets next door, and the sneaky, suspicious magicians in
town—friend or foe?
I love when authors
introduce new language to kids (I LOVED that about the Lemony Snicket books—in those
the narrator would stop and explain what the word meant), in this story, Stuart’s
Dad is a crossword puzzle creator so he’s always using the most Herculean
(difficult—see what I just did there? Eh eh!) words.
While the book wasn’t
too difficult for me to work out, I think it would be a great book for kids and
also a really fun book to read aloud as a family, as there were definitely some
surprises that even caught me off guard.
Not gonna lie, I was a
little excited when I saw that the authoress has a sequel to Horten’s,
etc. coming out this fall. Huzzah!
Would I recommend it? YES. I LOVED it!
Ages: 8+
While bored at the desk one day this week, I
snatched Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery, & a Very Strange Adventure, Lissa Evans, from our new book
cart and was immediately sucked in. The book follows Stuart Horten—a boy obsessed
with his small stature—as he and his geeky parents pack up and move to his
fathers’ boyhood city. Stuart learns of his Great Uncle Tony’s last great act—his
own disappearance! and gets sucked into solving the clues that were left behind
over a generation before; along the way Stuart must deal with the annoying,
newspaper writing triplets next door, and the sneaky, suspicious magicians in
town—friend or foe? 
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