The puppets of Spelhorst A Norendy tale

Review by Booklist Review

What treasure box does DiCamillo have in store for young readers this time? One that contains five beautifully crafted puppets--a girl with violet eyes and a green cloak, a boy with a bow and arrows, a pompous king, a wise owl with real feathers, and a wolf with teeth that she delights in reminding everyone are "well and truly sharp"--oh, and a story or two. Upon the death of an old sea captain, Captain Spelhorst, his landlady sells his trunk of puppets--a curious thing for a childless old man to possess, to be sure--to the rag-and-bone man, who in turn sells it to a gentleman seeking a gift for his two nieces. The puppets have been charting their journey carefully, speculating what might be in store for them, knowing only that they are destined to be in a story together; the owner of the toy shop where they once lived told them so. Is it destiny, then, when the young new puppet owners decide to perform a play with their new toys? And, indeed, the play's the thing that pulls the seemingly disparate threads of the story into a marvelously constructed whole. DiCamillo's storytelling is as effortless as always, and Morstad's frequent pencil illustrations elevate it further. This first of the Norendy Tales chapter-book series is guaranteed to enchant young readers.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This collaboration by two masters of their craft--a Newbery Medalist and a Governor General's Literary Award finalist--will prove irresistible.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

A quintet of puppets--"the king and the wolf and the girl/ and the boy and the owl"--ponder their dreams and yearnings in this quietly entrancing novella told in three acts. Following the death of their owner, a regretful old sea captain called Spelhorst, the five puppets, said to be "in a story together," are bundled into their trunk, sold to a musical rag-and-bone man, and eventually given to sisters Martha and Emma. After one of the sisters arranges the puppets on the mantel and begins working to include them in a play, each puppet undergoes a brief adventure that speaks to their nature: a king longing to rule, a wolf preoccupied with her own sharp teeth, a watchful girl with violet eyes, a boy longing to "do a great deed," and a portentous owl with real feathers. Newbery Medalist DiCamillo applies spare prose and witty conversation in fleshing out the puppets' desires as well as exploring the power of stories to promote community and offer a path to fulfillment. Occasional pencil illustrations from Morstad (Time Is a Flower) elegantly portray the figures, whose skin reflects the white of the page. Ages 7--10. Author's agent: Holly McGhee, Pippin Properties. Illustrator's agent: Emily Van Beek, Folio Jr./Folio Literary. (Oct.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Horn Book Review

An aged sea captain dies, leaving a chest containing five puppets. After some trials and adventures, the puppets -- boy, girl, king, owl, and wolf -- end up in the grand home of a pair of sisters and fulfill their theatrical destiny by appearing in a play written by one of the girls. The frame story of this absorbing book of nested tales involves the sea captain and his history of unfulfilled love. Within that story is a chronicle of the puppets and the sisters, and within that narrative is the puppet play itself, which features a young man tragically cursed to a life of loneliness and despair. The story ends with a servant stealing the puppets and running away, presumably to fulfill her own destiny. Like many other stories featuring toys, from Hitty to The Mouse and His Child, there is a strain of melancholy here, with characters who long for autonomy but whose existence is dependent on the imaginations of others. This mood is perfectly captured in digitally rendered pencil drawings that add specificity (a Regency-esque setting in fictional Norendy), dignity, drama, and sheer beauty. First in "a projected trio of novellas linked by place and mood." Sarah EllisSeptember/October 2023 p.72 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Puppets yearn for greater things. In a toy store, a lonely old sea captain named Spelhorst spies a puppet who reminds him of a lost love. He tries to buy her but is told he must purchase the full set--a king, a wolf, an owl, and a boy--as these puppets "are in a story." The captain agrees, and that night, he mourns and writes a mysterious letter before dying in his sleep. Sold by the rag-and-bone man, the puppets eventually find their way to two sisters. While the older sister begins writing a play for the puppets, misadventures befall them; each engaging escapade is relevant to the story arc of the puppet in question. For instance, some of the wolf's teeth are yanked out by the younger sister, and after the maid tosses the puppet out, a fox absconds with her--the first devastates the wolf, as her teeth were her pride, yet traveling through the wild woods fulfills her deepest wish. Gentle tension builds as the puppets wonder if they will be reunited. After exploring their desires and identities, the recovered puppets put on the older sister's play, a story that, though she couldn't have known it, has beautiful symmetry with the puppets' adventures. Theatrical language prevents the parallels from becoming too heavy-handed. The vaguely Victorian characters present white in charming drawings that set the mood. A quiet, comforting fable of identity and belonging. (Fantasy. 7-10) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter One There was once an old sea captain who lived in a small room above a tailor shop. The captain's name was Spelhorst, and he had no wife, no children, no family. He was alone in the world and took his meals at a café down the street from the tailor shop. There, the old man would sit at a table and stare past everything and everyone as if he were on the prow of a ship, looking out to sea. One of the captain's eyes was clouded over with cataracts, but the other eye was a bright and astonishing blue. On good days, days when his knees did not ache and the weather was fine, Spelhorst walked around the city for hours at a time. On bad days, he stayed abed, staring at the ceiling, studying its cracks and water stains and spiderwebs. He listened to the door of the tailor shop as it opened and closed. He could hear the murmur of voices, the sound of people requesting things, demanding things. Sometimes he could hear the tailor shouting at his wife in Italian. Sometimes he could hear the tailor's wife weeping. The pigeons on the windowsill of Spelhorst's room looked in at the old man with bright, disdainful eyes. The birds arrived and departed and returned, and their wings sounded like someone shuffling a deck of cards. The sea captain paid the pigeons no mind. He did not even look in their direction. He kept his eyes on the ceiling. He tried to think of nothing at all. ** And then there came a day--a good day--when Spelhorst's knees did not ache and the weather was clear, and the old man walked and walked. He ended up very far from the tailor shop, in a part of the city that he did not know, in an alley that was dark and winding. He came upon a toy shop, and in the window of the shop, he saw displayed a king and a wolf and a girl and a boy and an owl. The puppets were hanging from fishing line. They were turning slowly in the gust of air made by the opening and closing of the shop door. Spelhorst stopped. He took his cap from his head and stared at the puppets. There he was: a man without family, a man without children or grandchildren, a man utterly devoid of whimsy or wonder, staring at a toy store window, bewitched entirely by puppets. But Spelhorst was not staring at all of the puppets. He was staring at one puppet only--the girl with the cloak and the shepherd's crook. The girl had the heart-shaped face and violet eyes of someone Spelhorst had loved long ago. Loved and lost. Loved and lost, loved and lost, the ever-repeating story of the world. "I must have her," Spelhorst said aloud to no one. He put his hat on his head, went into the store, and announced to the clerk that he wished to purchase one of the puppets on display in the window. "You cannot buy just one," said the clerk. "They belong together." "I want the girl puppet only," said Spelhorst. "The puppets must be purchased together or not at all," said the clerk, "for they are in a story." Spelhorst stared at the clerk. Story? What did a story matter to him? The door to the shop opened and closed. The puppets danced in the small wind, and the girl puppet twisted about suddenly so that she was facing the captain, looking at him. Spelhorst closed his eyes and then opened them again. He said, "Very well. All of them." He took the puppets with him back to the room above the tailor shop. He threw the king and the wolf and the owl and the boy into the trunk at the foot of his bed. But the girl puppet Spelhorst propped up on the table so that he might look into her violet eyes. He sat on the bed and stared at her. He said, "I am sorry. I am sorry, Annalise. I am sorry." He put his head in his hands, and then he got up from the bed and sat down at the table and took up a pen and paper. He wrote for a long time. When he was done, he folded the paper and put it in the trunk, and then the old man sat at the table and wept. Outside the room, perched on the windowsill, the pigeons looked in at the sea captain and made noises of despair and disapproval. It grew dark. Spelhorst did not light the lamp. He got into bed and cried himself to sleep as if he were a small child. Excerpted from The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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