Mrs Smith

I would give this book 0 if I could. There is no sense to the plot, events start and lead nowhere. The author tries to create a story of fantasy and sci-fi but it is just so boring. The dialogue is odd too. And it gets really weird when the children start kissing the old women who become stars. I can’t work out if characters are aliens or supernatural brings because the descriptive writing is so sloppy. My daughter had to read this during the school holidays and hated it so much that I read it to her just so she could keep up in class. It was a chore for us both. I’ll be bringing it up at parent teacher talks why this crap puts kids off reading. It’s outdated, confusing, poorly plotted and just weird weird weird. It did force me to look up what a teaseract is though but how that enabled 3 kids and some witches/old women (stars and I think a Pegasus maybe?) to travel in time to other planets to save Meg and Charles dad is not really explained. They are travelling to other planets but then those planets are earth like with English speaking humans so really they travel to other dimensions. It all jumps around so it doesn’t make sense. So many of the details throughout the book are random and irrelevant. Please teachers……… do not destroy children’s’ love of reading with this book!

I loved this novella. Readable from mid to upper primary, and ages up to adults. Considering it was first published in 1996, the contemporary messages of conservation, and caring about human impact on the planet, it could have been written yesterday. My 8 year old read it at school, loved it. A lovely story to move away from fantasy fiction, farts and other rubbish written for young readers. Reading the other reviews and comments it was boring, depends what you’re in to and how widely you and your children read. This is a great Australian story and achievable for younger readers to get a grasp on something bigger than themselves and the world around them. Even inspired my family to spend our summer snorkelling with the local blue groper. Highly recommend it if you’re in to caring about the planet and appreciate the ocean and the life within it. To say it had no plot is totally incorrect. There is a very well defined plot, as is the character development.