“Light Land” by H. L. McCutchen
I stumbled upon Light Land during a resent excursions to the library. Our local library has a wonderful children’s department where I can spend hours roaming the shelves. Afterwards I trek home with my bag stuffed with colorful, imaginative volumes.
Light Land is a delightful fantasy about two children growing up in rural Iowa. Both children are quite unique. Lottie is an imaginative, willful girl with a memory and talent for stories. Her best friend Lewis hasn’t spoken a word to anyone except her since age three. We meet the pair as they enter the first grade, but quickly jump to grade six. A new teacher comes to their school making them both quite nervous. On their first day Ms. d’Avignon gives the class an interesting assignment, an essay entitled “Everything I Know”. As Lottie begins thinking about what she will write she comes to the disturbing realization that she has forgotten all her stories. This causes her father to find her story box which he made for her just before she started school five years before.
As Lottie discovers, the story box is very special; it’s so much more than a mere wooden box made from her favorite tree . . . it’s a portal to a mysterious place where something quite sinister is happening. Now Louis has disappeared into this world where the evil Night King is causing people to no longer exist. Lottie must find him before his mother returns. To accomplish this, she is forced to trust the adults in her life: her father and a teacher who seems to hear what she’s thinking.
This book is one adventure after another from start to finish. I was drawn in my the plot and the young characters. Light Land is well worth reading.
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