What would happen if you suddenly found out that the world of faeries is very, very real?
Jared, Simon, and Mallory move into crazy Aunt Lucinda’s house with their mom. Dreading the enormous old Victorian house, each child finds a way to cope with their new environment: Simon collects more pets, Mallory vigorously practices her fencing, and Jared, poor Jared, gets himself into trouble.
Before long, real trouble starts up. It all begins when the three children find an odd nest behind the walls and, thinking it belongs to a demented squirrel, throw the contents away: lace, a doll’s head, snippets of words cut from newspapers, and stringed cockroaches. The next morning, Mallory wakes to find her hair tied to the headboard of her bed.
Was it the demented squirrel? The kids are uncertain, but their mom thinks that it’s Jared acting out because their dad had left them.
Things go from worse to terrible. The kitchen is trashed in the middle of the night and someone has frozen Simon’s tadpoles into ice cubes. Now, everyone thinks it’s Jared who’s committing the bizarre jokes.
It isn’t until Jared and his siblings take the treasure book Jared found seriously that they are able to figure out who the real prankster is.
Spiderwick: The Field Guide Book 1 by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black (Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-689-85936-8) is a fantastic book for children. Filled with riddles and mysteries, the story keeps you glued to the pages, wanting to learn more about the mysterious Arthur Spiderwick and the secret world of faeries.
