{"id":3229,"date":"2005-04-28T05:41:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-28T05:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=3229"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:24:59","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:24:59","slug":"just-story-to-frighten-children-hollow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=3229","title":{"rendered":"Just A Story to Frighten Children: The Hollow Kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Young Adult Library Services Association’s (YALSA) list of Best Books for Young Adults 2005<\/a> includes an absolutely FABULOUS book by Clare B. Dunkle<\/strong> called The Hollow Kingdom<\/a>. From the very first page, I was hooked, as a sort of benignly malignant force kidnapped a very frightened and very desperate girl. Unlike most henchmen, the hooded villain didn’t sneer. Much. He was almost genteel. And, unlike the kidnappings in most novels, there was no rescue. The nameless girl just…vanished.<\/p>\n

Young girls have been disappearing in Hallow Hill for thousands of years, and sisters Kate and Emily, their parents lost to them, have been landed at the old house and are forced to live with spinster aunts and a miserly bachelor guardian. But something quite odd is going on, between getting lost in sight of home, “helpful” gypsies appearing in the dark, and Something watching them from the woods. When Kate learns the name of her fear, no one believes her, at first. Her guardian summons the psychiatrist. But there really are goblins under Hallow Hill. They’re merciless. They’re patient. And they’ve got plans for Kate.<\/p>\n

From its mildly spooky beginning to its end, this is a thoroughly enjoyable tale, and I am especially smug that I read it before I knew it was a Junior Literary Guild pick, or a YALSA favorite! It truly deserves its kudos, however, as a quirky, humorous story of self-reliance, compromise and determination against daunting odds. The multifaceted characters are immediately engaging — even the ‘bad guys’ are given a highly polished patina (that one of my favorite characters is a metal snake gives you an idea of just how skilled Dunkle is!), and the ‘good guys’ don’t win all in the way you might expect. The detailed and sumptuously intricate world gives a tiny nod to a less Disney-fied castle of Beauty & The Beast, but it’s only a shadow of that simple story plus a whole lot more.<\/p>\n

And the best news yet? It’s another trilogy! What a great treat for the reader! Close Kin<\/a> is the next in the series, followed by In the Coils of the Snake <\/a>, which is due to be released October of 2005.<\/p>\n

This series was my favorite find so far this month. Check it out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Young Adult Library Services Association’s (YALSA) list of Best Books for Young Adults 2005 includes an absolutely FABULOUS book by Clare B. Dunkle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-3229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3307,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3229\/revisions\/3307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}