[amazon cover 074329890X]By John Connolly
(Reviewed by Carla Hedstrom)

The
protagonist of the novel is a sad little boy named David who lives with
his parents in London during World War II. Life is good until his
mother dies of an illness, leaving him blaming himself for not being
good enough or doing the right kinds of things to keep her alive. David
retreats into his books, wishing that real life could be like the world
he reads about:

In that world, good was rewarded and
evil was punished. If you kept to the path and stayed out of the
forest, then you would be safe. If someone was sick, like the old king
in one of the tales, then his sons could be sent out into the world to
seek the remedy, the Water of Life, and if just one of them was brave
enough and true enough, then the king’s life could be saved. David had
been brave. His mother had been braver still. In the end, bravery had
not been enough. This was a world that did not reward it. The more
David thought about it, the more he did not want to be part of such a
world.

When David’s father falls in love,
remarries, and has a new baby, David finds himself in conflict with the
rest of the family. He can’t bring himself to care about his stepmother
and new brother, instead retreating into the room filled with books
left behind by a boy who had lived there long ago. As David reads these
fantastic tales, he imagines he sees the vines outside the house
growing into his room:

And then a figure moved
inside David’s room. He saw a shape pass by the glass, dressed in
forest green. . . . It wasn’t his father either. . . . The figure was
slightly hunched, as though it had become so used to sneaking about
that its body had contorted, the spine curving, the arms like twisted
branches, the fingers clutching, ready to snatch at whatever it saw.
Its nose was narrow and hooked, and it wore a crooked hat upon its head.

His
father investigates, but instead of a crooked man, he finds a magpie
flying in David’s room. David knows the crooked man had changed his
appearance and that he would meet the crooked man again.

One day
when David is investigating a ruined sunken garden behind his house, a
Nazi plane crashes into it. David awakens to find himself in a forest
where the flowers seem to have the faces of children and the trees
bleed red blood. He is found by a man called the Woodsman, who helps David escape from an attack by strange half-man/half-wolf creatures called Loups.
The rest of the tale is about David’s search, with the help of the
Woodsman, for his mother, whom he is sure lives in this strange
alternate, fairy tale world. He experiences fear, wonder, happiness,
and pain on this journey to find what he finally realizes is not his
mother but himself.

Connolly creates a world peopled by
creatures we have heard about before in the fairy tales of our
childhood—Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf, the Woodsman, Snow White
and her dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty—all with a twist to their stories. The
story appeals to those of us who know those stories by heart and to
those who can identify with David’s search for himself as he learns to
adapt to the changes in his life. This is indeed an excellent book for
both adults and teens. It would be a fun book to read with a young
adult—and I can definitely see it as a movie.