Guy and Tessa are from two different worlds. When Tessa was born, newspapers marked her birth. She was the last of the House of Pfaffenstein, and was raised in a grand castle as a princess. When Guy was born, it was by mere chance that he was found as he was left wrapped in a blanket near some d...
It's a 3.5. I'm starting to notice that the majority of the men in her novels tend to fall in love in a most shallow manner and spend the whole book repenting of that love because they found someone who is better suited for them, but are too genteel to break their engagement of their own volitio...
J’ai emprunté ce livre suite à une conversation sur les chiens avec mon chéri. En voyant ce toutou trop mignon sur la couverture, je n’ai pas pu résister ! Un chien pour toujours est une lecture rapide (trèèèès rapide vu que la police d’écriture est énooorme) et divertissante. Ce livre jeunesse c...
Hal wants a dog, but his doting parents, who normally give him everything they think he could possibly want, refuse. The mess would be outrageous, according to his mother. Hal's father comes up with a solution. He will rent a dog for the weekend. But what his parents do not realize, Hal and the d...
I don't have much luck with dog books as usually, they end with me in tears. This one, with a few poignant pauses from Ibbotson's writing, ends happily so my luck may be changing.Coming from an extremely wealthy family, all Hal wants is to own a dog. His folks, thinking it is just a fad that he'l...
Eva Ibbotson's books are always delightful, and her children's books are in particular a grand escape for an adult who feels a bit battered by the real world. Here we have a lonely little rich boy whose parents can't see why he's upset when the dog they've rented for one weekend just to give him...
Star parts: A long while ago I read The Secret of Platform 13 1/2 and it left me with this lovely warm fuzzy feeling inside. This was Ibbotson's last book before she died. This one isn't so warm and fuzzy, if anything all the characters are a little dark: the hag, the troll and the Princess! Yes,...
A horrible ogre lives on a far distant isle, hoping for peace and quiet, but he is plagued by humans on the run who want to be changed into animals to escape their troubles. When the misfit Princess Mirella arrives, running away from the dismal fate of an arranged marriage, she causes the ogre t...
The average Goodreads rating, at this time, for "The Abominables" is 3.75/5 stars. I think that's exactly right. I don't have much to say about it, except that it was cute but a little slow in some places. It's very clearly not American, as there's mention of whiskey and drinking and all sorts of...
These are third grade student reviews!MAEVEThis surprisingly twisty turny tale is about a fey, a magnificent wizard, a magical garden lady, and last, a floating eyeball (or an Ogre if you would be so kind.) They all live on an island in peace until someone no one knows steels the baby prince and ...
The book description and other reviews for this book were misleading. It wasn't at all charming, delightful or romantic. It was deeply depressing actually. Looks matter and nothing else. Women are entirely to blame for a bad marriage and men are virtuous and deceived by ugly wives.The icing on th...
*sob* this is the last Eva Ibbotson that I had on my shelf! I left it until last as it was the longest... oh dear, I've forgotten the name of the psychoanalyst now, but she would believe that my leaving this until last was intuitive, as I knew that it would be the best of the lot.Well, perhaps se...
As of right now this is my least favorite book by Eva Ibbotson. Its good but the clichés that were ok in the other two books, were obvious here and went in to contrived. But I should probably talk about the rest of the book firstSo this is the story of Ellen Carr, a young woman from England who c...
I wavered back and forth while reading this as to if I should give it three or four stars. So, 3 1/2, but I'll side with four and list my reasons and hesitations.Overall, I did like this book. For me, I really loved the beginning, and felt there was so much laid down in the first few chapters t...
Ehh...it was okay. As a former ballerina, I absolutely loved how ballet was incorporated into the story; it wasnt just used as a way to describe the characters, but it had its own place in the story. But past this general positive, my feelings about the book get a little more confused. This is th...
A new cover edition of Eva Ibbotson's wonderfully spooky young fiction title.
For example, the professors would come downstairs to the smell of burning. It might be the breakfast rolls singeing in the oven, or the soup boiling dry on the stove, but it was such an unusual thing to happen that they found it hard to believe their noses. Ellie had not burned anything since she...
It had not been necessary for Matteo to show his fury—they already felt as guilty and wretched as they could be for having disobeyed him and gone out by themselves. Now they waited for news of Kit—no one could do anything; they scarcely had the energy to talk among themselves. It was incredible h...
The old man in oilskins who steered it was grumpy and silent. Occasionally he looked at Ivo and shook his head. They had reached the last stage of the journey. They had followed the Norns’ instructions and everything had gone as it should. The ferry had taken them to the m...
A turtle lumbered on to a sandbar, huge blue butterflies drank in the shallows, and in the rain-washed trees a family of howler monkeys caught each other’s fleas, but the Colonel did not look up. He was completely absorbed in what he read. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘An interesting boy and an intere...
He had bought three factories and a cinema and turned out a family living in a house next to the cinema so that he could bulldoze it and build a Fast Food restaurant. There had been a court case and a fuss because the family had a disabled child and a sick mother, but Mr Sprott had won. He always...
‘The cow who eats stinging nettles... It tried to stand up at once and then it fell down and stood up again and started to drink but the mother kept licking it so hard that it fell over again. I saw it all from the top of the wall.’ Rollo had found a flat place on the top of the wall round the pa...
Her name was Mrs Winneypeg and she was one of the richest women in Wellbridge. She didn’t just have a white Rolls-Royce, she had a white BMW and a white Jaguar. She lived alone in a house with seven bedrooms and a private swimming pool and owned seven fur coats, three of them mink. &n...
Mostly when you climb a hill or scramble through the heather and come across a large rock it will be just what it seems: a large rock. But sometimes – just sometimes – you might come across a rock that is not exactly what it seems. Such a rock will look strange and sinis...