When you look at that list of similarities, it’s no wonder that I was constantly waiting to be dazzled as I was when I read Coraline.

The wonderful blog “Shelf Elf” was the one to convince me to add this juvenile fiction to my list with her caution in mind: West’s story had become all to easily mixed-up in the indelible ink of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.Īt the moment, I think the main reason this book is being compared to Coraline is because they both share many plot points: an odd child with indifferent, busy parents moves into a creaky old house, girl discovers she can access an alternate world inside the house, evil force is out to get her, she has to save the day, and talking cats. I had seen Jacqueline West’s The Books of Elsewhere : The Shadows everywhere when it was first released, but lost it in the ToBeRead pile until seeing the second book’s appearance. It’s up to her to save the house from the shadows, before the lights go out for good.įor fans of Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman comes a tale at turns haunting, moving, and darkly funny. As he and Olive form an uneasy alliance, Olive finds herself caught in a plan darker and more dangerous than she could have imagined, confronting a power that wants to be rid of her by any means necessary. Olive soon finds that Elsewhere has secrets to hide–and the most annoying of them is Morton, a small boy with a big temper. She can travel inside these paintings to Elsewhere, a world that’s strangely quiet. But when she finds a pair of old-fashioned glasses in a dusty drawer, she discovers the most peculiar thing yet. When eleven-year-old Olive moves into the crumbling old mansion on Linden Street, she’s right to think there’s something weird about the place, especially the walls covered in creepy antique paintings. The Books of Elsewhere : The Shadows (volume one) by Jacqueline Westĭial books for Young Readers (Penguin), 2010. First, I would like to say that I am going to go on what seems like a bit of a tangent about the jacket copy on books before telling you that I really did like the first two volumes of The Books of Elsewhere and that I am looking forward to the next volume.

The book of elsewhere