The Chessmen of Doom - Hardcover

John Bellairs

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803707509 ISBN 13: 9780803707504

Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1989

Synopsis

Johnny Dixon, Fergie and Professor Childermass comply with a strange will left by the Professor's brother, which requires them to spend the summer at a desolate estate where they encounter a madman bent on destroying the world.

About this title

About the Author:

John Anthony Bellairs (1938–1991) is an award-winning American author, perhaps best known for his fantasy novel The Face in the Frost. He is also the author of many gothic mystery novels for children and young adults, including The House with a Clock in its Walls (which received both the New York Times Outstanding Book of Award and the American Library Association Children's Books of International Interest Award), The Lamp from the Warlock’s Tomb (which won the Edgar Allen Poe Award), and The Specter from the Magician’s Museum (which won the New York Public Library "Best Books for the Teen Age" Award.
 

From School Library Journal:

Grade 4-6-- Professor Childermass and his young friends Johnny and Fergie are swept up in a madman's plot to rule the Earth in this latest addition to the series. Childermass stands to inherit his brother Peregrine's multimillion dollar estate, but only if he can stay on the estate all summer, plus interpret a cryptic rhyme. As usual, Bellairs salts the story with apparitions, vague warnings, deep forebodings, magic effects, tombs, corpses, and the like. The Bad Guy, Edmund Stallybrass, outwits Childermass and the boys at every turn, and finally locks them up in a burial vault and leaves them to die. Enter Crazy Annie, a local witch, who opens the vault, then in the climactic scene, confronts and kills Stallybrass in a wild play of spells and counterspells. Johnny, Fergie, and the professor don't have much to do here except rush about and explain to readers what's happening. The elements of plot and character are slapped together in an arbitrary, disjointed way that leaves plenty of unanswered questions and gaps in logic. A perfunctory outing from an author who has done much better in the past. --John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0803707509
• ISBN 13: 9780803707504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 155
• Illustrator: Edward Gorey