The Star Of Kazan - Softcover

Ibbotson, Eva

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1405050020 ISBN 13: 9781405050029

Publisher: Macmillan Pub Ltd, 2004

Synopsis

After twelve-year-old Annika, a foundling living in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany.

About this title

About the Author:

Eva Ibbotson writes for both adults and children. Her books for children, with their fantastic creatures, outrageous characters, dark humour and brilliant storytelling, have much in common with Roald Dahl's. JOURNEY TO THE RIVER SEA won the Smarties Prize Gold Award and was Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. She lives in Newcastle. Ruth Jones is best known for her role as Kelly in Fat Friends. She has also appeared in Midsommer Murders, Little Britain and Channel Four Films' East is East.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Gr. 4-8. Ibbotson's latest is a galloping historical novel set in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Abandoned as an infant, 12-year-old Annika lives in Vienna with the cook and housemaid who discovered her as well as their employers, a sibling trio of eccentric professors. Annika helps with the housework and grows up comfortably in the warm house on a beautiful square, surrounded by friends. Still, Annika dreams of reuniting with the unknown parents who abandoned her, and when an elegant, charismatic woman appears, birth certificate in hand, Annika embraces her as her long-lost mother and agrees to move to the family's remote northern castle. The grand estate isn't what she expected, though, and she fights waves of homesickness as troubling clues begin to emerge about her new family. Ibbotson leads her characters through a delightful, breathless adventure that skillfully enfolds deliciously cruel villains, crumbling aristocratic families, stolen jewels, and a cast of lovable, intrepid professors and children determined to rescue Annika from danger. Viennese-born Ibbotson layers her suspenseful story with exquisite details that contrast the city's cozy clamor with the bone-chilling northern landscape, beautifully echoing Annika's plight. Masterful entertainment in the tradition of Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962), this will please Harry Potter readers, too. Hawkes' lively black-and-white drawings extend the adventure and nostalgic flavor. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1405050020
• ISBN 13: 9781405050029
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 388