The Field Guide (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 1) by Holly Black Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Field Guide (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 1)
Book Review: An interesting beginning.
Summary: 3 Stars
Holly Black and Tony DeTerlizzi, The Field Guide (Simon and Schuster, 2003)
Black and DiTerlizzi hand us the first (of five) volumes ni a young adult fantasy series here. It's short (much shorter than, say, any volume of the Series of Unfortunate Events), readable, and gets things off to a good start.
The Graces-- twins Jared and Simon, older sister Mallory, and mother XX-- inherit an old, run-down mansion from a recently deceased uncle. As the kids' father has just left, mom takes this as a sign that a fresh start is to be had, and packs up the kids and all their belongings and heads down. The kids are not at all fond of their new habitat, but they soon find all sorts of mysteries to occupy their time, most of which involve mischief (all of which gets blamed on Jared). Things take a turn for the weirder, however, when Jared, exploring the attic, finds a book written by his Great-Uncle Spiderwick, a field guide to the world of faerie.
There's not terribly much here. With such a short book, there's barely time to lay out the characterization and get the plot rolling. The authors do it, though in a bare-bones kind of way. No matter, it's good enough reading to ensure most readers will go on to the other four books. Have them at the ready when you crack this one open, though. It goes fast. *** ½
Book Review: Book One: The Field Guide
Summary: 4 Stars
Book:
This is the first book of the Spiderwick Chronicles, so that generally means it's a introduction book to those that will follow it.
It begins with you learning about the Grace family and why they have moved, it seems that Jared, is a problem child.
Living in the new house they are soon attacked by a series of weird events that, of course, are blamed on Jared. Determined he isn't the one behind it he and his siblings get mixed up in a journey to discover what is around them.
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My opinion:
This book was fairly good, not much really happens in it but, you still need to read it to understand the rest of the series.
As you read on you long to know what kind of creatures could be walking about your feet...and so I definately recomend you read this book.
Book Review: The Field Guide
Summary: 4 Stars
My baby brother reads Spiderwick and from his giggles I know he likes it. The Spiderwick Chronicles is one story spread over five books. The books are very short, about 120 pages each with many illustrations, and it took me a little over an hour to read each book.
The Field Guide is the first book in The Spiderwick Chronicles. It introduces the Mallory, Jared and Simon, the three Grace children who move with their mom to their Aunt Lucinda's old Victorian house.
While exploring the house, the three kids discover a secret library in the house and a mysterious note. Later they find Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. The book explains secrets of the fantastic and three kids meet a brownie named Thimbletack who makes the fantastical real.
The Spiderwick Chronicles are all quick, good reads and recommended for little brothers. I also recommend The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches by Robert Stanek.
Book Review: A warm, fuzzy read.
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, I'd like to say that while I think the book was just the slightest bit too short and sparse, Holly Black has a gift when it comes to creating realistic families and settings that manage to make you feel all warm and fuzzy when you read about them.
The characters in the first Spiderwick book behave exactly as their real life counterparts would. The children fight, the mother gets annoyed when her kids goof off a bit too much, and the house is falling apart, exactly as an old, creaky manor should.
Despite this- or perhaps because of it- I found myself growing quite attached to the children as I read. I lost myself in the story, and I could really see the house and the events as the author wants us to, and the pictures, instead of contradicting my mental pictures, only added to them in a rather pleasant sort of way.
When the supernatural first begins to enter the story, Black eases it in instead of throwing it in your face, and because of this subtle touch the magical elements seem perfectly natural and believable. There were some points in the first half of the book when I found myself questioning whether the strange happenings really were supernatural, or simply the work of a mischevious youth, despite knowing full well from the book description that magical creatures would appear in the story at some point.
Overall, a very worthy read. As I said earlier, the book is just a bit shorter than I think it should be for the reader to really feel satisfied with this first installment, but that doesn't detract from the story, and I greatly enjoyed reading it.
Book Review: A splendid start.
Summary: 5 Stars
The Spiderwick seiries was fantastic but i have to say this book was one of it's best.It all begins where Mallory,Simon and Jared leave their old house and move into another house.Their only choice was to go the the Spiderwick estate.In the middle of the Spiderwick estate lay a house with many many secerts that haven't been opened.The house was big like a mansion except it looked like it was ambushed.The house looked like it was eleven rooms all in one.At the start Simon can't find Mallory so he told Jared that she's been missing.Jared and Simon go on a hunt to find her.They check lots of places but they couldn't find her suddenly Simon remembered to check the girl bath rooms.When Simon takes a step into the bath room he doesn't see her so he checks the toilets, and inside one of the chambers for toilets Simon see's Mallory's fencing medal.She must have left it on the floor and guess what she did.Simon and Jared get taken into a mysterious world of lots of secrets.They end up in a world with lots of elves and legendary creatures.And only then Simon and Jared realised they were being carried by pixies!I will leave it to you to read the rest of the book.but for now i will give a few coments on the book.I think this book was great and i am looking foward to read the other books in the seiries.I also like to give a credit to the illustrator for putting in lots of magical creatures in to your awesome sorounding.I hope the author could bring up another seiries like the Spiderwick seires.I commend this book for children with a wide mind