Review by Linzleve -- The Secret of Magic

[Linzleve]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Secret of Magic" by Natassa Louppou.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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The Secret of Magic: The forbidden box by Natassa Louppou is a wonderfully imaginative mixture of fantasy and history. A normal girl finds a forgotten magical briefcase on her birthday. The contents seem like normal everyday items, though perhaps peculiar in combination. What could a broken pocket watch, an orange peel, and a paintbrush possibly have in common? Travel through time and civilization with a magical rabbit and a brave little girl. A wonderful story of bravery and learning how to do the right thing in all situations.

I found this book to be incredibly imaginative and unique. While some of the places you are transported, such as the Titanic, were incredibly famous and will be familiar to most readers there were other settings for this story that were based in places that I had never heard of before. While these were new and unfamiliar surroundings, I found myself so intrigued by the storyline in the book that I subsequently researched the history behind the German Occupation in Rhodes.

While this book may not be appropriate for advanced readers, being short and not an overtly challenging read, I found the story line to be engaging and the overall message of bravery and righteousness to make it sufficiently compelling to continue through the entire book without becoming disenfranchised.

I give this young adult novel a 4 out of 4 stars. I found this book to be very well edited, however I found myself stumbling in a few places being from the USA. I had to Google whether “pyjamas” was a correct spelling, as we spell it “pajamas” over here. There were also a few strange sentence breaks in my book where the sentence would stop halfway through the page and drop to the following line. This could be easily be attributed to a formatting difference of my phone kindle app and has no bearing on the flow of the story.

As a child I was addicted to the Magic Tree House stories. They transported you to a new time or place with every book so you could experience the culture of a place. I believe that this is what gave me such an affinity for travel as I got older. This book was very reminiscent of that style, but possibly even better by submerging you into the culture of multiple places within the same story. This book will be amazing for older children with a penchant for exploration.

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The Secret of Magic
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