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purplepenning 's review for:
The Lost Library
by Rebecca Stead, Wendy Mass
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
The kind of adventurous, thoughtful, mysterious, empathetic story that can turn readers of any age into great readers.
These young readers felt things about books, which is why I call them great readers. Being a great reader has nothing to do with reading great sophisticated books or reading great long books or even with reading a great many books. Being a great reader means feeling something about books.
The Lost Library is told in three perspectives: 1) Evan, who is an inquisitive boy entering the last summer before middle school; 2) Al, a ghostly librarian who has lost her place in the world; and 3) Mortimer, a large orange cat who is dedicated, kind, and lonely. They are connected, tenuously, by a little free library, and more deeply by the mysteries of the former town library, another inquisitive boy, and the improbabilities of mice.
The dear boy was, as I've said, a great reader. He read a good number of books and, more importantly, he took some of them straight into his heart.
Fun, sweet, mysterious, sad, triumphant, and just a touch fantastical — it's a near perfect middle grade read.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Grief, Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Mental illness, Death of parent