Un Lun Dun published in U.S. by Del Rey in Jan 2008
Author: China Miéville
Purchased personally
It's Marvelous Middle Grade Monday again, and I'm proud to be part of this great tradition started by Shannon Whitney Messenger promoting middle grade books.
I was browsing through Mac's Backs, a wonderful independent bookstore near us, and I happened upon Un Lun Dun without ever having heard of it before. As I very much enjoyed The City and The City
, I bought the book to see if China Miéville could do as good a job with middle grade as he had with adult science fiction.Like some wonderful mix between The Phantom Tollbooth
, No Passengers Beyond This Point
and Neverwhere
, this book takes kids on a wonderful, somewhat scary but ultimately fantastic voyage through an abcity beneath London populated by fantastical creatures who have seeped down from London.Filled with wordplay and incredibly imaginative characters, this should be appealing to 5th to 7th graders, as well as many older teens and adults who are willing to give it a try. While the main characters are girls, this is a book that will appeal equally to boys and girls. I would strongly recommend it.
Five stars!
Purchase a copy on Amazon.com
...or on Amazon.co.uk
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday was started by Shannon Whitney Messenger. She, and others frequent MMGM posters are:
Shannon Whitney Messenger at Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe
Joanne Fritz at My Brain on Books
Shannon O'Donnell at Book Dreaming
Brooke Favero at somewhere in the middle
Myrna Foster at Night Writer
Sherrie Petersen at Write About Now
Kimberley Griffiths Little at Kimberley’s Wanderings
Barbara Watson at Novel and Nouveau
If you watch those blogs today, as well as Shannon's blog, you are likely to find other great middle grade book recommendations.
