Robertus, Polly M. 2008. The Richest Doll in the World.The flap on this one called it an "exciting, spooky tale that will appeal to anyone who has ever loved a doll." I'm not so sure. The good news? It's short. And the print is large. The bad news? I didn't like many (if any) of the characters.
This is a holiday-based mystery for the 8 to 10 crowd. Emily is an orphan living with her grandmother, Grandma Rose. When the story opens, we see Emily whiningto her Grandma begging her to let her go with her to work. Emily wants to go with her because she's super-curious about her Grandma's 'crazy' employer, Mrs. Bigley. More to the point, she's super-curious about Mrs. Bigley's doll, Delilah. It's the only thing in the world that she could ever ever want for Christmas. But Grandma won't let her go. She wants to keep her job. And Mrs. Bigley is not mentally or emotionally stable enough for visitors. But Emily refuses to take no for an answer. And she follows her grandmother secretly. Super-spy she is not. Emily didn't really realize how cold and how dangerous and how foolhardy this whole plan was to begin with.
I don't really want to say too much more. It'd be a contest to see who was more annoying as a character--Mrs. Bigley or Emily. But needless to say I think someone has been praying for Grandma Rose to have patience--lots and lots of patience.
Spooky? Slightly. Exciting? Hardly. More spooky than exciting. It's definitely darker than most doll books. It'd be a question for the individual reader how much the book redeems itself in the end.
© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
4 comments:
I've read a slightly spooky doll book called Behind the Attic Wall. Are you familiar with it? By the way, I really like your new header images. Beautiful.
I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one who didn't enjoy this book. Actually, I couldn't finish it - I got half way thru and thought, "I have better things to read than this."
Now I'm kinda wanting to read it, just to see if I think its that bad too!
Hi. I'm the author of The Richest Doll in the World, and I just want to say that I hope your comments weren't due to the dreadful usage errors and apparent typos. I was unaware of this problem myself until yesterday, and now my editor at Holiday House, who is similarly baffled, angry, and heartsick, is trying to figure out what happened with the printing.
After all the copy-editing and proofreading and galley-correcting we both worked on, I assumed everything was fine and so did not feel any urgency about re-reading a book I'd moved on from. When I got some teasing comments from my family members, I assumed they were...teasing me. You cannot imagine how distressed I am at this situation!
Of course, you may just have disliked the story, and that's fine. Not everyone likes every book! I hope you found something more to your taste right away. But I do hope very much that your problems with the story weren't too much influenced by the mess the printers made.
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