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Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Book Review of Root Bound



Book Review of Root Bound
Sponsored by Enchanted Book Tours

Welcome to Books, Books, and More Books.  I am pleased to share this book with you.  Thank you for visiting and please come again.

Title: Root Bound (Emma and The Elementals #1)
Author: Tanya Karen Gough
Genre: YA Fantasy

Blurb : 
  
How far will you go to find your way home?

Emma and her father are always on the move, travelling from place to place as her father’s work demands. Their new home, however, is different. There’s a frightening woman who lives down the hall: she bears an uncanny resemblance to a witch. A mysterious light comes from her apartment, and a small boy seems to be trapped inside.

School in this town is no happy place either, with an odd principal and a gang of girls who make tormenting Emma their special project. And strangest of all is the fact that there seem to be brownies - basement brownies, in the air vent in her bedroom.

Haunted by visions of her mother, Emma travels through the brownie burrow to the valley of Hades to visit with the goddess Ceres, following a series of clues that lead her across the sea of memory to the centre of the world.

There, on an inhospitable rock floating in a sea of steaming lava, Emma must find a way to release her mother from the sea of memory and restore magic to both the brownie burrow and the human world above.

About the Author:

Tanya Karen Gough owned and published The Poor Yorick Shakespeare Catalogue from 1997-2007, earning a strong international customer base of world class academics and high school educators. Tanya was also a contributing editor for the Internet Shakespeare Editions at the University of Victoria (BC), audio advisor for the Sourcebooks Shakespeare textbook series, and theatre reviewer for Playshakespeare.com. Tanya grew up in New Hampshire and currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Contacts:


Excerpt:

The steps grew louder, until they were right outside the door. The brownies clung to Emma, shivering in fear.

“What do I do?” Emma whispered, the words sticking in her throat. The brownies looked around. Truss tugged at her shirt frantically and pointed.

“There!” she gasped. Emma followed her arm, which pointed toward the wall.

“There’s nothing there. Just a wall.”

“Not the wall. The vent,” Piers cried out, clutching her collar. “Down there, along the baseboards.”

“But I can’t fit in there,” Emma whispered urgently. “I’m too big!” Just then the doorknob rattled.

“GO!” the brownies screamed in unison as the knob turned and the door began to creak open.

Emma didn’t know what else to do, so she scooted out from under the bed and ran toward the air vent. The brownies clung to her, grabbing her ears, her nose and even the edges of the book, hanging on for dear life.

“Jump!” Mat screamed in her ear.
 
“I can’t.”

“There’s no time! Jump! Jump NOW!”

She was so afraid, she couldn’t even think straight.

“Jump NOW!” Piers shouted.

“Slip through! You can do it!” a voice echoed in her ears. She did not know if it was one of them shouting or herself.

“Slip through!”

“JUMP!”

“NOW!”

Emma took a deep breath and looked once more toward the bedroom door. It rattled and shook, and the doorknob started to turn. She turned back to the wall and looked at the tiny vent near the floorboards. Then she did something she never thought she would do.

She jumped.

Review:

            My favorite part of the book is when Emma wakes up because she is hearing three “people” talking.  Then she sees three sets of eyes looking at her from the vent in her bedroom ceiling.  Now I don’t know about you, but I would not be sitting their calmly wondering what or who was in my vent.  If I look up and see eyes looking out from my vent, there will be screaming, followed by a frantic drive to a motel, calls to an exterminator, and quite possibly a house for sell…just saying.  But Emma takes it all in stride.

            The best part is the eyes turn out to belong to brownies, house brownies, and they think she is a monster or a hero, or both.  Because you see, humans can’t see brownies.  It’s not possible, yet she can.  This leads Emma on an adventure through “under,” and the underworld, and so much more.  Yet, when Emma returns to her “normal” life, she is still afraid of the gorgeous girls… until she realizes that they are nothing compared to what she has already survived.

            This is a charming book filled with humorous characters with normal flaws that learn how to work together to fix that which is broken.  It is a great book for children, especially girls, in elementary school or middle grades.  It’s also got enough charm for adults who are reading along.

            I give this book 4 out of 5 clouds.


This product or book may have been distributed for review; this in no way affects my opinions or reviews.

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