The Somebodies
Grade 5-8&ndash;This final book in the trilogy barrels along at breakneck pace. Young Fern is a royal Anybody, possessed of transformative powers. Her fellow Anybodies inhabit a city under Manhattan, but Fern lives aboveground with her aging grandmother, the Great Realdo, and her ineffectual Anybody father in a house made entirely of books and also inhabited by hobbits and Borrowers. Although Ferns grandmother defeated the evil Blue Queen in an earlier book, she is losing her powers and it is now up to Fern to save the Anybodies and the world from the resurgent queen and her henchmen, the Somebodies. There is quite a bit of catch-up involved to get readers up to speed here, and a liberal amount of Victorian-like cozy asides from author to reader. Narrow escapes, evil villains, and captured souls from books will keep kids turning pages through an imaginative kaleidoscope of transformations definitely reminiscent of our friends at Hogwarts. Ferns best friend, Howard, is a robotlike wimp who serves as an effective foil to the brave and take-charge Fern, and the Blue Queen is truly terrifying as she gobbles souls from books with the ultimate goal of stealing human ones. Puzzles, anagrams, and references to other childrens books will please young sleuths. Old-fashioned-looking black-and-white sketches contribute to the feel of a classic childrens book. Lessons about being true to oneself are preachy but fit the genre. Lemony Snickets fans will welcome this fantasy.&ndash;Quinby Frank, formerly at Green Hedges School, Vienna, VACopyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.