Book 8: The Kingdom Keepers
Book 8: The Kingdom Keepers
Writer: Ridley Pearson
Genre: Young Adult/Suspense/Fantasy
Number of pages: 180
Read This Year: 1743
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best]: B
Short description/summary of the book: from Amazon
Thirteen-year-old Finn and several of his friends become holograms at Florida's Disney World and then find themselves literally pulled into nighttime adventures in the theme park. Ridley Pearson's fantasy (Disney Editions, 2005) is fast paced and technologically savvy. Finn and his friends make repeated forays after hours into the very guts of such Disney icons as Tom Sawyer's Island, It's a Small World, Adventure Mountain, and other rides both tame and wild as they lay siege to Maleficent, an evil witch whose minions are at work to destroy the Disney mystique. The kids hang out at the park looking for signs and signals that will aid them in their nighttime quest for securing Disney power. Their parents are mildly suspicious, but Finn and his pals are fast talkers, willing to face their nighttime nemeses alone, rather than bringing in adult forces. Gary Littman reads with a variety of accents, some of which are less successful than others, and it's easy to differentiate among both kids and adults. Given how much Disney has seeped into the very core of Americana, most listeners will be able to understand the references and will know for whom Maleficent is a foil. While the details about why one would become a hologram for Disney are slighted, the sleuthing aspect of the tale has universal appeal.
My Thoughts: Finn Whitman was one of five teenagers chosen to become the newest attractions at Walt Disney World -- fully interactive holograms to guide visiters around the theme park. But when the children go to sleep, they find themselves "crossing over" into their hologram forms, trapped in the theme park after night, where dark forces are conspiring to take things over. The children learn that beings called the Overtakers are adopting the images of Disney's characters -- particularly their villains -- in a bid for power, leeching on the imaginations of Walt Disney and his Imagineers to become real. But Walt anticipated this day would come, and left clues behind. The only way to save Walt Disney World -- and maybe the entire world -- is to solve Walt's riddle in time.
Ridley Pearson has proven himself (with Dave Barry) to be a strong author of young reader's books in addition to his more well-known adult fiction. With this novel, he actually takes things one step further, setting a fairly satisfying suspense/mystery adventure in Disney World itself. The book (itself published by Disney, thus avoiding any pesky copyright issues) is a quick, fast-paced adventure, and something that fans of Disney and its theme parks will certainly enjoy.
Not to say there aren't any problems. Some of the characters, particularly the girls, are somewhat wooden. There are a few segments where the discussions of the park start to sound like a Disney commercial, but these parts are few and far between -- most of the information doled out is either necessary to the plot or interesting enough that you can forgive the occasional meandering. Pearson leaves the ending fairly wide open -- the Overtakers aren't definitely beaten and there are a dozen questions left unanswered, making it easy to imagine this book is a "pilot" of sorts for a series of young reader's books. As series go, I think this could be a good one. A little more "grounded" than Harry Potter, not as insane as A Series of Unfortunate Events, and with a built-in Disney fanbase, The Kingdom Keepers could well be a pretty entertaining series of novels.
In the Queue: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer & The 10th Circle by Jodi Picoult
Writer: Ridley Pearson
Genre: Young Adult/Suspense/Fantasy
Number of pages: 180
Read This Year: 1743
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best]: B
Short description/summary of the book: from Amazon
Thirteen-year-old Finn and several of his friends become holograms at Florida's Disney World and then find themselves literally pulled into nighttime adventures in the theme park. Ridley Pearson's fantasy (Disney Editions, 2005) is fast paced and technologically savvy. Finn and his friends make repeated forays after hours into the very guts of such Disney icons as Tom Sawyer's Island, It's a Small World, Adventure Mountain, and other rides both tame and wild as they lay siege to Maleficent, an evil witch whose minions are at work to destroy the Disney mystique. The kids hang out at the park looking for signs and signals that will aid them in their nighttime quest for securing Disney power. Their parents are mildly suspicious, but Finn and his pals are fast talkers, willing to face their nighttime nemeses alone, rather than bringing in adult forces. Gary Littman reads with a variety of accents, some of which are less successful than others, and it's easy to differentiate among both kids and adults. Given how much Disney has seeped into the very core of Americana, most listeners will be able to understand the references and will know for whom Maleficent is a foil. While the details about why one would become a hologram for Disney are slighted, the sleuthing aspect of the tale has universal appeal.
My Thoughts: Finn Whitman was one of five teenagers chosen to become the newest attractions at Walt Disney World -- fully interactive holograms to guide visiters around the theme park. But when the children go to sleep, they find themselves "crossing over" into their hologram forms, trapped in the theme park after night, where dark forces are conspiring to take things over. The children learn that beings called the Overtakers are adopting the images of Disney's characters -- particularly their villains -- in a bid for power, leeching on the imaginations of Walt Disney and his Imagineers to become real. But Walt anticipated this day would come, and left clues behind. The only way to save Walt Disney World -- and maybe the entire world -- is to solve Walt's riddle in time.
Ridley Pearson has proven himself (with Dave Barry) to be a strong author of young reader's books in addition to his more well-known adult fiction. With this novel, he actually takes things one step further, setting a fairly satisfying suspense/mystery adventure in Disney World itself. The book (itself published by Disney, thus avoiding any pesky copyright issues) is a quick, fast-paced adventure, and something that fans of Disney and its theme parks will certainly enjoy.
Not to say there aren't any problems. Some of the characters, particularly the girls, are somewhat wooden. There are a few segments where the discussions of the park start to sound like a Disney commercial, but these parts are few and far between -- most of the information doled out is either necessary to the plot or interesting enough that you can forgive the occasional meandering. Pearson leaves the ending fairly wide open -- the Overtakers aren't definitely beaten and there are a dozen questions left unanswered, making it easy to imagine this book is a "pilot" of sorts for a series of young reader's books. As series go, I think this could be a good one. A little more "grounded" than Harry Potter, not as insane as A Series of Unfortunate Events, and with a built-in Disney fanbase, The Kingdom Keepers could well be a pretty entertaining series of novels.
In the Queue: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer & The 10th Circle by Jodi Picoult