children’s literature

Nevermoor | Jessica Townsend

34219873Nevermoor has been getting a lot of praise everywhere and I was really excited to read it. I got both the book and audiobook and I was prepared to dive into the newest great children’s book. I’m a huge collector and reader of children’s literature and I approached this book with an open mind, hoping to be transported and have all the good feelings that accompany the reading children’s books. The first 100 pages were great! We get introduced to Morrigan Crow who is from this family of “Crows.” Her father (Corvus) is the mayor, an influential politician, and kind of distanced from her as she is cursed. Everywhere she goes something bad happens. The world she is in “now” is not too developed or explained, we just get a sense that every once in a while a child is cursed and when they hit age 12 they die. Morrigan lives with the knowledge that she will die by 12. Knowing this, I kind of thought that maybe her family was distancing themselves from her so that they don’t get attached because they know she will die. The suspense of it all is quite different than other books and I respect that there was more showing than explaining, and kind of action-packed. On the eve of her 11th birthday Morrigan finds that this was actually the day she’s supposed to die, but gets approached by a man who purchases her at auction, named Jupiter North. He calls her Mog and saves her from her fate, takes her to Nevermoor, and enrolls her into a race/contest for children for her to earn the rights to stay in Nevermoor. Up until this point I can see many comparisons, as many have already mentioned, that Morrigan Crow is basically Harry Potter. She’s mistreated in her previous life, she’s a cursed/chosen one, and she enters a new magical realm with a guide/mentor. Once in Nevermoor the book turns into a hybrid of The Hunger Games, and The Goblet of Fire, where there are just countless contests where the children must “prove” themselves worthy of joining the Wundrous Society in Nevermoor. For Morrigan it’s even more important because she’s an ‘illegal’ and by winning she can get to stay in Nevermoor. I’m not going to say much more plot-wise. This is the general premise. It definitely has its strengths and its own spins. I enjoyed the diversity  in this work. From the names one can tell that some characters come from different backgrounds. The language is elevated and certainly respects children’s literacy skills, perhaps even presenting some challenges. I particularly enjoyed was finding out that Jupiter’s “powers” are seeing things as they are …truly. He is sort of a magical version of Sherlock Holmes where he can look at something, observe it and truly know everything about it, and most importantly see its potential. Jupiter says:

“It’s not a memory like yours or mine. It’s more like…how shall I put this? There are…events and moments in the past that attach themselves to people and things, and cling to them through time simply because they have nowhere else to go. Maybe they eventually fade or get torn away or just die. But somethings never die—the especially good memories or the especially bad ones can hang around forever.”

This concept was very creative and I really enjoyed it. However, I felt like on many levels it was extremely unfocused. It jumped from place to place, from character to character, from sequence to sequence, without allowing the reader to get acquainted with a place, or attached to a character. No concept, location, or character is fully developed and it made the story feel very wobbly. I felt like the author kept changing direction and pointing to something else every few sentences. It was as if the author tried to squeeze Harry Potter 1-5 in one book, told by Dr. Seuss, and then made a list of everything that sounded sort of cool and just threw them in fast without any time to process. The chandelier grows out in the shape of a ship like a tooth would, there’s a vampire-dwarf, or dwarf-vampire and there’s a difference, the concept of Morrigan being an ‘illegal,’ the random side characters thrown in, the umbrellas, the contest, what the actual Wundrous society is and what does it do, the children’s auction, before she’s about to die her step-mom mentioning she’s pregnant like in a soap opera. Everything happened so fast that it felt rushed, and nothing is fully developed. The characters hardly had any depth. The ‘bad’ girl was just ‘bad’ and annoying. One Goodreads reviewer said that Townsend must have put all these fun facts or fun ideas in a hat and just pulled them out at random, and that it resembles Hotel Transylvania…and that’s how I kind of felt reading this. There’s no foundation, the place doesn’t seem real or like it truly has a history. Jupiter North (despite the cool name) is a mash-up of Mary Poppins and Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder). He’s even described to look a lot like Gene Wilder in the Willy Wonka role. I felt the presence of the author the whole time and it was very transparent what she was trying to do, and what previously existing stories she was trying to mesh together.

Saying all that, and how transparent it was to me as a long-time reader, and superfan of children’s books…I don’t know if a child would be able to see through that, or if they would thoroughly enjoy it. I don’t believe children should be treated like they are not smart, or have short attention span, but if someone can’t see through every plot incident and every character and be able to point out exactly what it reminds you of, maybe this could be really enjoyable….that said, I can’t help but think of the C.S. Lewis line:


Again, this novel was a mix and it had some pros and… it had some cons. I’d recommend trying it out because a MAJORITY of people seem to enjoy it, so clearly there’s something to this book, even if I’m not capable of seeing it.

The Man Who Loved Libraries | Children’s Book | Review





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