100 cupboards

   Well.. I completed The Journey! So now I don't have the pressure to finish my next Quest.  Not that it's really pressure since all I am doing is reading my favorite type of books anyway! 

So, next I tackle  Quest the First, which is to read 5 books in any of the categories.  

I don't know if I will finish this Quest or not but I will give it a go!

 

100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Yearling; Reprint edition (December 23, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0375838821

 

Henry York's parents have been kidnapped biking in South America, and so he is sent off to live with his aunt, uncle, and three girl cousins on their farm in Kansas. Henry is not a farm child; he's never had soda, thrown a baseball (or owned a ballglove), and he's never used a knife, not even a pocket one.

The novel takes its time setting up the situation and slowly but surely revealing the mystery of the cupboards, all of which is charmingly fun. The mystery builds for close to a hundred pages before Henry really starts working with the cupboards, but there is never a boring moment. The writing takes you by the scruff of your neck and makes you read on. The suspense is really quite good as well, which will provide younger readers with a bit of a bedtime chill.

Henry has gone to live with his Aunt and  Uncle in Henry Kansas.   By the time I reached the first 45 pages of the book I knew I liked young Henry.. and I really liked Uncle Frank!

Excerpt from page 45:

Henry had continued chipping plaster and uncovering doors until he could count thirty-five in all, and he had no doubt there were more.  Most of them were wood, but of all different sizes, grains, and colors.  The shapes varied as well as the designs.  Some were plain, and some had surfaces so intricately carved that getting the plaster out of all the curves and crannies had been impossible.  Some had knobs, come small handles, some slides or things Henry had never seen.  There was one with nothing at all.  He had pushed and pulled and lightly thumped on every single one, but without effect.  And the, always, he had gone back to chipping plaster, making his newly sharpened knife dull and duller.  A large blister now crowned his thumb from pushing on the blade to keep it open, and the knuckles on both of his hands were missing skin.

Actually, my first thoughts on this book were:  "doors that lead to another land... been there done that".. Pullman used doors to other lands, and others have done the same thing.   But this book, thankfully, had a completely different feel to it.  I liked Pullmans books and I like this book too.  Way different from each other...

I like the characters Wilson has introduced us to.  Henry is our main protagonist.  A young boy who has come to stay with his Aunt and Uncle until his parents are found.  Henry quickly falls right into place at the house and makes friends with the unusually quiet Uncle Frank, and one of his female cousins Henrietta.

I'm sure most of this book is the set up for the entire trilogy (if that's what it's going to be?)  The Cupboard full of doors is an interesting way for a young boy and his cousin Henrietta to get into trouble with.... and they do that very nicely before the book ends!  So many doors... and so many ways to get into trouble... and into danger!

I don't want to give away anything.. but I will say it was a very enjoyable read. 

At first with its small stature and double spaced lines I thought this was something "younger" than I wanted it to be.  I was only partly right.  It is a story for YA... but I was totally captured by it!  

The book does come to a nice ending, so that one doesn't have to jump right into the next book... but since I have the next book....   I will begin reading right away!

Thus concludes the first book of Quest the First, for the Once Upon a Time Challenge