The House of Months and Years
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A girl must stop the Boogeyman living in her home from stealing her family’s warmest memories in this “eerie and enchanting story” (Publishers Weekly) from the author of Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times and The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden.
When her distant aunt and uncle die, Amelia Howling is forced to move into their home when they leave her parents in charge of their children. Her parents assure her that it will be like having a grand adventure with three new siblings, but Amelia is not convinced. Luckily, the house is large, filled with nooks and crannies perfect for hiding from her cousins.
But even with all the nooks and crannies, the rumbling and crumbling rooms are more sinister than they seem. The house was built years ago by a creature named Horatio, and he’s been waiting for the perfect human inhabitant: Amelia. Horatio has the power to travel through time and memories, and lures Amelia into his world. The memories of children, he told her, were the best, and Amelia agreed—her cousins were full of good memories. Until she noticed that once she and Horatio visited a memory, it was gone forever. And she had been stealing the good memories of her cousins and their parents without even noticing!
Horrified and scared, Amelia lets her cousins in on her secret, and asks them for help. Together, they must race through time to recover their minds and break the perfect clockwork of the evil Calendar House.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Amelia Howling, 10, resents her family's move into a curious old house in order to care for her recently orphaned cousins. Beyond feeling ignored and angry, Amelia can't shake the sensation that she's being watched, or that the house almost seems sentient. After Amelia learns that the house is an architectural oddity known as a calendar house with rooms, floors, windows, and other elements that correspond to months, days, seasons, etc. the mysterious presence manifests as Horatio, the house's builder. Horatio explains that the house can transport her through time, whisks Amelia away on adventures to medieval periods and pirate ships, then invites her to build her own calendar house and live forever, traveling through time. In a clever twist, the very magic that fuels Amelia's adventures is drawn from memory and emotion, tethering Amelia to her family and highlighting the importance of empathy amid difficult situations. Trevayne (The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden) creates an eerie and enchanting story in which an unhappy girl's discontentment nearly blinds her to the dangerous forces that surround her. Ages 8 12.