Booklist (April 1, 2012 (Vol. 108, No. 15))
Grades 4-7. Stuart Horten, 10, is sure he is in for the dullest summer ever when he moves with his working-all-the-time mom and dork-supreme dad, who is excited to return to the town he grew up in. Stuart’s lack of enthusiasm is compounded by a set of nosy triplet girls next door, but things start looking up when he learns about how his great-uncle Tony—who was a magician of some renown and an inventor of fabulous contraptions—disappeared years ago. And then things get downright exciting when he discovers a handful of old coins that unlock a series of clues scattered about town that promise to reveal the location of Tony’s long-hidden workshop. Stuart is a likable, plucky little guy, the Charlie Bucket to great-uncle Tony’s Willy Wonka. While the mystery is tempered by the fact that solutions to the clues often come about more by happenstance than any cunning on Stuart’s part, the elements of magical realism that waft through the narrative keep things humming along nicely. This British import, longlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, leaves the door ajar for more adventures.
My fifth graders loved Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery, & a Very Strange Adventure by Lissa Evans. Although it speaks to all ability levels, my gifted and talented students loved it. I am not sure if it was the humor, the challenging words used by his cross-word-building father, or that they would, like Stuart, be just the sort of student to go looking for such clues. Using the map in the book, which is the map Stuart uses in the story, the students were able to track clue after clue helping them identify the location of the hidden workshop.Posted by Kellie Hale
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