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Charlie Bone and the Invisible
Boy Jenny Nimmo Orchard Books © 2004 |
Charlie Bone is back to begin another semester at Bloor’s Academy for gifted children in London in his third book in a series of five. There is a new student, Belle, who lives with the Yewbeam aunts in Darkly Wynd Lane. There is also a new art teacher, Mr. Boldova. Charlie and his friends discover Mr. Boldova’s real identity for what it really is, the brother of the long lost Ollie Sparks. They soon find out that he is here to rescue Ollie who has been stuck in the attics of Bloor’s Academy for years and is somehow invisible. Charlie and his friends decide to help, but old Ezekiel Bloor learns of their plans and tries to prevent them from finding Ollie. While that goes on, Charlie’s Uncle Paton is trying to stop “someone dangerous” from coming, but is too late. He comes back injured, almost dead, and remains in his upstairs room for much of the rest of the novel. All of these subplots come together in an awesome climax that keeps the reader reading until the end.
This book is very well written. There is a lot of action which is always important for moving a story’s plot along. Most middle school students and older students with a taste for fantasy would enjoy this book. This book also has many good traits that a book in a series must have. Like its predecessors, it gives you a little bit more information about the grand scheme which will play out by the end of the series, but not too much. For people who may have read the past books, the characters remain mostly the same, some cocky, some funny, and some courageous. In my past reviews about the Charlie Bone series, I criticized those books in many ways, but there were more good things than bad in the first two books of the Children of the Red King series, and most of the mistakes have been corrected. If you like fantasy, make sure you read this book and its predecessors.
~ Stelios Theophanous, grade 9, Boardman High School