The Swiderwick Chronicles

I read this book for one of our series books and I really enjoyed it. It was riveting and held my attention, I kept wanting to read it. It was a sort of spooky-harry potter-esque book but it did not fall into the category of being cliche or predictable. On the other hand, it was pretty creative in it's story line. I think this is a book that children would really enjoy. 

One aspect that could be improved from this book is that there could be more character development. That would make the books longer, but I think it would make them more memorable. I think it is the character development in Harry Potter, plus the amazing subject matter, that makes it such a popular book- you fall in love with the characters you are reading about and want to know what happens to them. Spiderwick Chronicles could have more of that, but, like I said, it's a short read, which might be nice for younger age groups, so the extra length might change the audience make up.

Something worth commenting on about this book is that it included drawings with the text. In some places this was affective, like when the drawings depicted non-existent creatures like elves that might be hard to visualize, but in other places it was less affective. I think it was somewhat less affective when it depicted the character's themselves, since the images were similar to or less illustrious than what I imaged in my head, and so somewhat repetitive or detractive from the story.