100 Cupboards
(The 100 Cupboards trilogy, Book 1)
N.D. Wilson
Yearling
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Twelve-year-old Henry York lived a sheltered, smothered life in Boston under the eyes of his parents - or, more often, his nanny. Their overprotectiveness seems ironic, as they make their living traveling all over the world... which is how they found themselves kidnapped in Columbia, and why Henry is on his way to Aunt Dotty and Uncle Frank's farm in rural Kansas. Their three girls - nosy young Anastasia, bossy Penelope, and bold Henrietta - take for granted the sort of liberties Henry never knew existed. First, Henry's afraid, then he's excited. A town so small that seat belts are optional... an eccentric uncle who buys him his first pocket knife... playing his first-ever game of baseball... it's almost an adventure. When Henry finds mysterious little cupboard-sized doors behind the plaster of his new attic room, doors that lead to strange places far beyond Kansas, he learns that not all adventures are child's play - especially adventures where magic is involved.
REVIEW: This story starts fast, introducing eccentric characters who are rarely as flat or dense as they might seem at first blush. A farmhouse in a postage stamp of a Kansas town may seem an unlikely setting for a world-hopping magical adventure, but it serves as an excellent, if unexpected, locale. Henry and Henrietta, his chief sidekick, only scratch the surface of the cupboards' many worlds, but the little they see only made me more eager to explore further. If anything, the story started moving too fast towards the end, building up the steam that will catapult it through to the second book... and which, despite the very sorry state of my finances, I expect I'll have to obtain sooner rather than later. A fun story that reads fast, and if the ending leaves things a bit up in the air, well, I knew it was a multipart series when I bought it.
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