Abarat

Author: Clive Barker

Publisher: Joanna Cotler Books 2002
ISBN- 9780060280925
pages: 388

Classification: Young Adult Fiction
Genre: Fantasy
Media Type: Book

Grade level: 6th +

Reader's annotation: Candy Quackenbush runs away from school and Chickentown MN and into another world full of fantastical creatures and islands to mark each hour.

Summary: Candy is having a bad day in her small Minnesota town whose main industry is chickens. She walks away from school and just keeps on going, right out of town into the empty fields where she meets John Mischief, a man with seven extra heads - his brothers! And if that isn’t strange enough who is the creature coming after them? Candy follows John’s directions to get the ball back in the bowl at the top of the crumbling lighthouse which triggers the sea to fill up the fields and take them all away. Candy is rescued by a boat as she is carried away in the sea and brought to the first of the islands of Arabat. She discovers all sorts of creatures and strange beings and visits several of the islands, each one with its own time. She makes a friend, Malingo, and they fight off all sorts of things that are after them that have been sent by evil Christopher Carrion. But she belongs and feels like she has been there before, she isn’t shocked by what she sees. At the end of the book is an appendix which describes several of the islands of time with the 25th hour added in.

Evaluation: If you like fantastical worlds this story has things you could never imagine. Illustrated by the author, one is given additional help to visualize this amazing world. It is a great escape with something exciting escapes though not much more.

Series: Abarat - book 2: Days of Magic, Nights of War