CHARLIE BONE

Charlie Bone and the Beast by Jenny Nimmo

When Maguire got to a point in the Harry Potter series where I thought he should wait to read the next one (they get pretty intense and a bit scary as you move through the years at Hogwarts), Mallory suggested he read Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo. I was a bit suspicious of another series of thick books taking place in a magical school in England, so we read the first one together out loud. I was hooked. And so was Maguire. He’s now reading the sixth book in the series about a King whose descendants were all endowed with special gifts. Some of the King’s children used their gifts for good; some of them took their talents for prideful, greedy gain and evil. This is a theme that resonates. The series is a fight of good over evil, the characters vivid and believable. The plots tense enough to keep Maguire reading and reading, but without scary details that would give him (or me) nightmares.

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