The Monsters Of Morley Manor: A Madcap Adventure (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
"The Monsters of Morley Manor", by Bruce Coville is an interesting book. I chose this book because of the fact we ran out of time in the library and i needed to choose a book. This story is about a boy, Anthony and his sister Sarah regular kids who happen to go to a yard sale. The boy stumbles across a small box and decides to buy it. When he gets home he realizes the box is very hard to open. When he finally gets it open he finds toys inside, which when he later gets water on one they come to life. The boy and his sister must now go on a adventure to save earth from aliens who are trying to take it over. My favorite quote was when Anthony was first talking about when the water was added to the toys. He said, "I picked up the figurine and stared at it. To my horror, its fingers began to move." I like this quote because it explains how shocked Anthony was when he realized these were not just regular figures. The author wrote this story as a first person point of view from the main protagonist, Anthony. I like the authors writing style a lot and think he is very entertaining. I loved the plot of this book and it was an outstandingly fun book to read. I would recommend this book to anyone just looking for a easy, entertaining story. I love these types of books personally and find them very enjoyable. Great book, 4 out of 5 stars!
The Monsters of Morley Manor is a little bit outside Coville's usual material. It starts off ghosty-horror when five monsters are brought to life, then progresses through fantasy, complete with magic rock and wizard guys, to sci-fi with world-hopping and aliens, then back to ghosty-horror. Needless to say, it's awesome.The protagonists are Anthony Walker and his younger sister Sarah. Anthony is about ten-ish and Sarah is a few years younger, but unlike many authors Coville resists the urge to oversimplify them. The book deals with some complicated issues, involving Anthony and Sarah's recently-deceased grandfather, the afterlife, betrayal, time travel's effect on relationships, and a few other things, but it's presented as just real things that have to be dealt with, and the kids deal.The book is suitable for anyone who can read a chapter book. The style is simple, but the plot is complicated enough to be interesting. The ending was sad, but perfectly executed, and the only thing wrong with the whole thing is that Bruce Coville never wrote a sequel.
What do You think about The Monsters Of Morley Manor: A Madcap Adventure (2003)?
My kids would surely rate this a 5, and the only reason I don't is that it's just not on the level of Harry Potter, even though it is an action-packed juvie fantasy that deals with death and the afterlife. But even though it's not Harry Potter, it's still really good, with all kinds of unpredictable fantasy elements. Interestingly, it's sort of a mixed genre in that it has fantasy/ghost elements and science fiction/alien elements. I didn't like that at first, but the author pulled it off creditably. A fun read for parents and grade-school kids.
—Kressel Housman
The Monsters of Morley Manor isn't as much of a scary book as an adventure book with monster characters in it. In the book, Anthony and his little sister Sarah buy a box filled with five miniature monster figures, a lizard man, a medusa, a wolfman, a vampiress, and a hunchback. When one of the figures gets wet it starts to come alive and thus begins an adventure involving aliens, giant talking frogs, and ghosts. Coville fits a lot into this book and while it works just fine it seems like it would have been possible for him to have a book just with the five monsters and without the alien story line. A good book for monster loving kids. Ages 9-12
—Monster
i think this book was kind of boring cause it really had nothing to do with horror .Alsoi thought this book was too easy for me.this book is about five monsters that were turn into stones .the setting was in Morley Manor ,it was the most weird and mysterious place in the town.One day the owner died and the town sold the whole house .But no one wanted to buy it so they they had a sale inside of the house.these two kids sarah and a boy bought this box that had five monsters ,they were staues .and the only way to unstone is by putting them in water
—Tyler
