Reviews

Gr 5-8-This book reads like the script for an educational video for a fifth-grade social studies class. When Sam's wayward father disappears on another unannounced business trip, Sam rummages through the basement of his used-book shop. There he finds a secret room and a stone in the shape of the sun. Putting a coin in the center of the stone transports him to a monastery in the Dark Ages, where he learns that he is on the island of Iona. Though Sam has a number of Indiana Jones-like adventures in ancient Egypt, World War I France, and Renaissance Belgium, none of them leads him any closer to his father or reveals the secrets of the stone. The only standout here is Lily, Sam's teenybopper cousin who translates Latin phrases by instant messaging and lets him take her cell phone to Belgium. The cliff-hanger ending indicates that a sequel is likely, but, given the fact that this one lacks interesting characters, unusual twists, and a sense of urgency, most readers won't care. Steer readers toward Garth Nix's "The Keys to the Kingdom" series (Scholastic).-Emily R. Brown, Providence Public Library, RI Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

This time-travel adventure by a French author reads like a book-long prelude to a much longer story, and it does, in fact, turn out to be a series opener. Fourteen-year-old Sam lives with his grandparents; since the death of his mother three years earlier, his incurably eccentric father, the owner of an antique bookstore, has gotten stranger and stranger. Prone to disappearing, he has been missing for 10 days, and Sam decides to investigate. While searching through the bookstore's basement, he finds a "totem or a voodoo object, the kind of thing you see in horror films, where a terrible curse will strike whomever discovers it" along with a "dirty coin" engraved with strange lines and symbols. Fitting the coin into the object, Sam wakes up in the era of the Vikings, just in time to save a monastery's illuminated manuscript from a raid. Subsequent adventures take him to WWI France, ancient Egypt, medieval Bruges-and give him just enough clues to point to his father's whereabouts, as a prisoner of Vlad the Impaler. Prevost sets up the various locations with lightning efficiency as Sam hurtles through one period after another; readers cannot afford to blink. This is a souped-up, older relative of the Magic Tree House books; kids who liked that brand of history and adventure but have outgrown the format will welcome the more sophisticated presentation here. Ages 9-12. (Sept.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.