Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Salem Main Library | TEEN Ormsbee, K. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | J Fic Ormsbee, K. 2018 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Silver Falls Library | YA ORMSBEE | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Haunted Mansion meets Stranger Things
★ "A smart, thrilling mystery" - Publishers Weekly , starred review
★ "Magical elements, evocative, intelligent writing, and ever-ratcheting suspense."- Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"The foreboding atmosphere perfectly matches the dark mystery and high stakes confronting the middle-schoolers." - Booklist
For as long as the Vickery twins can remember, Lee and his mother have served Memory, while Felix and his father assist Death. This is the Agreement. But one Halloween, Gretchen Whipple smashes her way into their lives. Her bargain is simple: If the twins help her solve the murder of local girl Essie Hasting, she'll help them break the Agreement. The more the three investigate, however, the more they realize that something's gone terribly wrong in their town. Death is on the loose, and if history repeats itself, Essie's might not be the last murder in Poplar Wood. Simultaneously heartwarming and delightfully spooky, The House in Poplar Wood is a story about a boy's desire to be free, a girl's desire to make a difference, and a family's desire to be together again.
Author Notes
K. E. Ormsbee hails from the Bluegrass State and lives in Austin, Texas. Halloween is her favorite day of the year, and she believes you're never too old to dress up. She is also the author of The Water and the Wild and The Doorway and the Deep .
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5 Up-In the atmospheric world of Ormsbee's latest, Death, Memory, and Passion are all very much living beings, with one person playing each role in every town. The Vickery twins have always known their place within this paradigm. On one side of their house, Felix Vickery aids his father in serving Death, trying to keep the red candle of life burning for those they can help, and storing away the candles that are extinguished in Death's trunks. Lee Vickery, meanwhile, lives in house's other half with his mother, spending his days after school in the service of Memory. After Passion's ill-advised decision to bring the Vickery parents together, resulting in the birth of the twins, an agreement was drafted as punishment to keep both parents separated, wherein one twin would reside with each of them in a different side of the house. While no one in the Vickery household is happy with this arrangement, attempting to get out of the agreement is punishable by Death himself. Enter Gretchen Whipple, daughter of the town's mayor and the second born in a family of summoners, who are charged with keeping Passion, Death, and Memory in check. Her proposition: if the siblings will help her solve the mystery of a school mate's death, she'll do her best to help them escape. Quirky, spooky, and thoroughly enjoyable, this will appeal fans of Trenton Lee Stewart and Colin Meloy, as well as readers generally looking for an absorbing fantastical mystery. VERDICT An excellent choice for middle grade shelves.-Joanna Sondheim, Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, New York City © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Boone Ridge, Tenn., 13-year-old twins Lee and Felix Vickery live at opposite ends of the same house. Per the Agreement, Lee lives with his mother and Memory in the warm west end, where he jars and labels memories ("sealed tight") before he leaves the house for school. Felix has it harder; he lives with his father in the frigid east end, serving Death and stirring healing broths ("brewed right"), but never leaving the house except for one day each year: on Halloween, Death takes a holiday, and Felix can finally venture beyond their home and adjacent wood. After Gretchen Whipple, sworn enemy of the Vickerys and daughter of the town's most powerful family, stumbles into the brothers at a Halloween bonfire, she strikes a deal with them: if they help her investigate a mysterious death, she'll help them break the Agreement. With expert pacing and detailed worldbuilding, the story unfurls into a smart, thrilling mystery, equal parts dark and gentle, that explores questions about freedom, power, and choosing one's master. Ages 8-12. Agent: Beth Phelan, Gallt & Zacker. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Ormsbee personifies Death and Memory and indentures a human family to them in this allegorical story set in present-day Tennessee. Once readers surrender to the premise, they'll be swept up in the attempts of twins Lee and Felix to escape their family's Agreement with help from strange new-girl Gretchen. Magical, mysterious, and somewhat macabre, their story escalates to a rousing conclusion. (c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Thirteen-year-old twins Felix and Lee live in the same house, but they are kept separate by the Agreement between the shades Death and Memory.In the west side of Poplar House, where Lee lives with his mother and Memory, there is laughter and fresh baked pie. In the east side, where Felix lives with his father and Death, there is nothing but sadness and cold. Lee is tasked with storing memories in jars tied with colored ribbons. Felix must brew tonics for the sick and dying and collect the life candles that have been snuffed out by Death. A failed attempt at breaking the Agreement has left the boys hopeless. However, when a mysterious death sends Gretchen, a willful neighbor girl, to their door demanding answers of Death, they decide to work with her hoping she may have the key to their release. While Lee's days are filled with the usual middle school angst, a first crush, and a dangerous bully, Felix's story is darker. Death is abusive and menacing. He demands perfection and is swift to dole out harsh punishment. Alternating chapters follow each of the twins and Gretchen. The suspenseful plot is unspooled slowly, but the magical elements, evocative, intelligent writing, and ever ratcheting suspense keep it interesting. Human characters seem to be default white. Love of family is the greatest magic even when faced with the power of Death. (Fantasy. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The house in Poplar Wood sits on the outskirts of town. It's here that two Shades reside and conduct their business Death from his side of the house, Memory from hers each with the help of a human apprentice. It is also home to Felix and Lee Vickery, twin boys, who are expected to take over their parents' apprenticeships one day. In town, Gretchen Whipple seethes at being barred from the family business of summoning (performing rites to keep the Shades in check), simply because she's not firstborn. When she overhears a conversation suggesting that a high-school girl's recent death wasn't an accident, as reported, she decides to find out what really happened, though it means teaming up with the enemy Vickery boys. Narration shifts among the three kids, drawing readers into their secretive worlds, and the foreboding atmosphere perfectly matches the dark mystery and high stakes confronting the middle-schoolers. In their search for truth, they are able to see beyond old family prejudices, while Ormsbee's invented mythology bestows complexity and richness to the story. --Julia Smith Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THERE'S UNDENIABLE ENTERTAINMENT in watching an all-powerful Superman dish out justice to the bad guys. But it can be even more satisfying to see the job done by a hero without laser vision or invincibility or even much in the way of muscles. This is why underdogs work so well in children's literature, where, to the target readership, everything from a school bully to a burdensome homework assignment can feel as overwhelming as a supervillain. IS THERE ANY MORE classic underdog than the Victorian orphan? By all rights, Nan Sparrow - the spunky yet snarky protagonist of Jonathan Auxier's sweep (Amulet, 368 pp., $18.99; ages 8 to 12) - shouldn't even be alive, let alone leading a chimney sweep uprising. As if growing up female in 19th-century London weren't hard enough on its own, Nan's job keeps her perpetually filthy, malnourished, deprived of affection and forced to squeeze into lung-blackening spaces tight enough to give a hamster claustrophobia. (In what is sure to be a blow to Mary Poppins fans, the author's afterword explains how real-life sweeps had it even worse than those in the book.) Yet Nan perseveres. Granted, she's got the help of a magical soot golem. If you've ever wondered what Frosty the Snowman would be like if he were made of cinders and had awesome fire powers, that's Charlie the golem: a gift bequeathed to Nan by the kindly sweep who raised her among England's rooftops. Nan believes Charlie is meant to be her protector, but the creature is himself a childlike naif who needs Nan as much as she needs him, especially in a society that refuses to see him as anything but a monster. Many of the most entertaining and touching scenes involve Nan schooling Charlie on everything from the alphabet to the weather. ("I broke the snow!" Charlie cries when the flakes melt against his hot cinder hands.) When juxtaposed with flashbacks of the old Sweep raising Nan, these bits add a layer of beautifully bittersweet parenthood allegory to a tale that is both uplifting and heartbreaking. When Charlie has an "Of Mice and Men" moment, accidentally crushing a baby bird, readers are torn between sympathy, frustration and fear for the future of this oddly beautiful little family. But as one character wisely says about caring for others, "If you're not afraid, you're not doing it right." DANIEL JOSÉ older also uses the 1800s orphan theme in DACTYL HILL SQUAD (Scholastic, 256 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), but he Ups the threat level significantly by placing his parentless protagonists square in the middle of the American Civil War. This is an alternate history, however, taking place in a world where dinosaurs escaped extinction. Triceratops pull wagons down cobblestone streets, iguanodons lift lamplighters to gas-powered lanterns, microdactyls deliver messages like toothier carrier pigeons, and, on a much less whimsical note, gun-toting gangs of hooded men spread terror from the saddled backs of raptors and ankylosaurs. Older fascinatingly blends thunder-lizard thrills with lesser-known but important aspects of American history. He starts the action (and then never really stops it) with a real-life incident: the burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum during the Draft Riots of 1863, when mobs of white New Yorkers, angered by their conscription into the Union Army, turned violently against their black neighbors. Suddenly homeless, the children face perils including the Kidnapping Club, a Jurassified version of a real gang who abducted free black people to sell into slavery. Aided by a pair of African-American Shakespearean actors (whose theater has also been torched), the young friends seek safe haven in the minority community of Dactyl Hill. Readers will adore Magdalys Roca, who becomes the de facto leader of the orphans, thanks to her unique ability to telepathically communicate with the dinosaurs. Far from a natural hero, Magdalys displays a realistic mix of terror and gumption in the face of the monsters around her, reptilian and human. Where else will her adventures carry her? There's another installment of this mind-bendingly original series coming, sure to be eagerly awaited. K. E. ORMSBEE'S THE HOUSE IN POPLAR WOODS (Chronicle, 344 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12) gives us three underdogs for the price of one. And while none may be full-on orphans, they've all got serious family issues. First, we have the Vickery twins, Lee and Felix, whose parents were bamboozled into signing a Faustian contract that has forever separated them. Now Mr. and Mrs. Vickery serve as apprentices to Death and Memory, respectively (yes, the literal personifications of those concepts - and they are capital-C Creepy), and although they live under the same roof, they remain eternally invisible to each other. Same goes for the brothers. Each is assigned to one parent, and they only see each other outside the house. It's a rough way to grow up. Until our third underdog comes into their lives - the rule-flouting iconoclast Gretchen Whipple, the black sheep of her own family, which has been embroiled in a generations-long Hatfield-and-McCoy-esque feud with the Vickerys. Gretchen goads the twins into helping her solve a murder mystery in which the prime suspect is Death itself. The boys are skeptical ("What do you mean? Death kills everyone"), but eventually realize that if they can prove Death has broken the rules and taken people before their appointed times, they might be able to nullify the diabolical contract that divides their family. Atmospheric and gripping, the book offers a boldly original take on the Grim Reaper concept, but never sacrifices entertainment for metaphysics (even while raising some thought-provoking questions). Ormsbee does a masterly job of juggling perspectives, keeping all the children distinct and fascinating in their own ways, while never losing the page-whipping pace of her well-crafted plot. THE ASSASSINATION OF BRANGWAIN SPURGE (Candlewick, 544 pp., $24.99; ages 10 and up), by M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, presents us with two "heroes" who are as un-Superman as one could get. One - Werfel, the goblin archivist - is more akin to Kal-El's scientist dad on Krypton, who knew what was going on but got ignored by his people and, well, we know how that turned out. The counterpart to Werfel is the titular Spurge, a scholarly envoy from the elf kingdom sent to deliver a peace offering to their age-old foes in hopes of a truce between the nations. In reality, Spurge has agreed to be a spy for his people - a hapless, naive, socially awkward spy, but a spy nonetheless. When Werfel - a lovable dork who adheres to the goblin credo that "hospitality was holy" - attempts to introduce the elf to goblin culture, things don't go as planned. The story is not only presented from two distinct viewpoints, it uses two distinct methods. In a brilliant storytelling device, Werfel's side of the tale comes to us in prose, while Spurge's comes in pictures - the elf's own mental images, which he secretly transmits to his superiors via magic spell. It's an ingenious way of showing how fear and xenophobia can affect someone's impressions of the unfamiliar. A traditional goblin dance, for instance, takes on the aura of a violent ritual in Spurge's mind's eye, and a parade of children looks like a wild army. Even Werfel himself, who tells readers he is shorter than his elfish guest, appears as a hulking monster in the illustrations. Yelchin's art, evocative of kookily surreal medieval woodcuts, is perfectly suited to the task. The book, which is on this year's National Book Award long list, is at times both moving and hilarious. Spurge is not just an unlikely hero - it's hard to know if he's a hero at all. But that only makes the finale of this political satire all the more surprising. Even more than if Clark Kent had been sent to spy for the elves. CHRISTOPHER HEALY is the author of the Hero's Guide trilogy. The first book in his new series, "A Perilous Journey of Danger & Mayhem: A Dastardly Plot," has just been published.