Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven is bursting with adventure, imagination, and heroism. Kendra and her younger brother, Seth, are less than excited when their parents drop them at their distant grandparents’ house and head off on a seventeen day cruise. The kids are shown to an attic playroom stocked with magnificent toys and even a live hen, Goldilocks, to keep them busy. But they soon find out the real excitement is waiting outside, on the grounds of what they come to find out is a magical creature preserve. It doesn’t take long for Seth’s adventurousness and Kendra’s astuteness to uncover the truth about the preserve, but once they’ve been let in on the secret, they find there’s much more yet to be discovered. For instance, there’s the matter of their missing grandmother. Then, there's the fairies that take a vengeful dislike to Seth. The plot crescendos on the night of the summer solstice, when the creatures are free to do as they please and the caretaker and his meager staff are abducted. Kendra and Seth must summon their courage to venture out onto the grounds to save their grandfather and, in the end, the sanctity of the preserve itself.
Although long and a bit slow at times, Fablehaven is packed with magic, courage, and adventure. Mull uses the setting of an enchanted preserve to get readers thinking about important environmental issues, and the story of an unusual family crisis to inspire thoughts on wrong and right, courage and resourcefulness, and even religion and spirituality. The author has included a reader’s guide at the end of the book to encourage discussion about the material and the topics it broaches. The vocabulary readers will find in Fablehaven may present a challenge for the 9–12 group for which it is intended, with words like “verdant,” “espalier,” and “ubiquitous” gracing the pages, but as long as there’s a dictionary nearby, young readers will benefit from the new terminology. More awkward is stilted prose resulting from a lack of contractions. Mull’s predilection to spell out every “it is” and the like in the non-dialogue parts of the narrative slows readers down and sounds unnatural; a small stumbling block to overcome in return for Mull’s bountiful imagination.
Content:It might be wise to recommend adult guidance with this one, as there are some morbid topics and violent scenes. For instance, before the story begins, Kendra and Seth's other grandparents are killed after a gas leak incident.
Rating (0 - 10 scale): 7
Reviewer Age: 26
Reviewer City, State and Country: Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD USA
