Horten's Incredible Illusions: Magic, Mystery & Another Very Strange Adventure (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
Horten’s Incredible Illusions picks up where Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms leaves off. The illusions Stuart found stored in the bandstand are moved to the museum for preservation and 10-year-old Stuart Horten is given a job curating his uncle’s magical contraptions. Stuart and April (the one of the April, May, June triplets who is serious about uncovering a mystery) are charged with naming and describing these illusions. They give them enticing names like “The Cabinet of Blood,” and “The Book of Peril,” but the magical devices each hold a secret – a secret that must be revealed in order to find Uncle Tony’s long-lost will. Once activated, the contraptions spirit Stuart and his friend April away to other realms, where their wits and their friendship are tested. “So maybe that’s how it works,” said April. “We find how the trick operates – the switch or the swivel or the lock or the handle or whatever – and that’s where the Magic Star goes.”She gave a bounce of excitement. “So let’s get going! This is the next one, isn’t it? The next adventure.”There’s more going on in this story than illusion and adventure – maybe illusions work by knowing what people will look for instead of seeing what is actually there. What is the difference between seeing and observation? How often to you slow down enough to notice how you might help those around you? When you finish reading Horten’s Incredible Illusions the magic will stick with you. You’ll be hoping for more. I will forever treasure reading this book and its sequel aloud with Ethan. He *adores* these books. He started out begrudgingly reading one paragraph every two pages, to taking over and reading pages at a time before he would remember he had read much farther than the required amount. Then we came up with a game where we would stop mid-word, and the other would try to take over as fluidly as possible. These books are great, clean, magical, childhood adventures. The protagonist is trying to solve the mystery of his magician ancestor and his magical props. He has to solve a series of problems and riddles, and learns to rely on his female neighbor, an identical triplet that he first finds extremely annoying at first, for help. Valuable life lessons are learned. The father uses words that even most adults will often not know!
What do You think about Horten's Incredible Illusions: Magic, Mystery & Another Very Strange Adventure (2012)?
I won this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. Hope to read it soon. Thanks.
—tina
I liked this one even more than the first. Fun, fun, fun!
—Mohamed
