To me the story here was a bit bland. I was reading it with my 6-year-old daughter. The plot plods along and the book doesn't end properly as it sets up for the next adventure in the series.
The plot - schoolboy Joe gets a present from his uncle Charlie who is an explorer. The present is the Amulet of Anubis which allows the user one wish. So far this is ok with a little bit of magic in the mix. Joe uses it to wish for a pet but gets an undead hamster instead. The hamster and Joe spend the next umpteen pages arguing with each other. Dumpling, the hamster, is undead because something on Earth is holding him back, but Joe refuses to help, hence the arguments. Or was this part just for padding out the novel?
Anyway the thing that was holding Dumpling back was that he belonged to a boy called Oliver but escaped from his cage and got vacuumed up by Oliver's mum, and she replaced him without telling Oliver. Somehow, despite the two hamsters being different colours, different sizes, looking different and behaving completely differently Oliver doesn't realise that the hamster is not Dumpling. Anyway Joe sorts it out.
The plot was straightforward. All the hamster did was eat and eat whilst all the schoolboys were indistinguishable from each other. The actual vacuuming moment was pretty neat because the story changed from novel style into comic style for two pages. And there were plenty of other pictures throughout, all in black and white though, which were my daughter's favourite parts. She liked the picture of the Jackal-shaped amulet that kept popping up through the book to split the text, plus the chapter headings that always featured Dumpling in them. The best picture is of course on the cover of the undead hamster himself, in a graveyard - the graveyard being irrelevant to the plot but making for a good cover to help sell this book.
I know this book is aimed at younger readers but that doesn't mean the plot can't be more exciting.
(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is available here.)
No comments:
Post a Comment