The Fearless Travelers' Guide to Wicked Places

January 1, 2017

Gr 5-8-Twelve-year-old Nell Perkins lives in the small town of Mist Falls with her mother, Rose, and her brothers, George and Speedy. A dark cloud filled with evil witches sucks Rose up, and Nell and her brothers team up with local resident Duke Badger and follow the cloud into the Dreamlands, the wondrous and horrific realm of all dreams. Badger, conveniently, is a Fearless Traveler. Armed with lightsaber umbrellas and guidebooks, he and his group informally monitor the Dreamlands. Nell and her group follow Rose's trail around the Dreamlands, facing challenges from frightening creatures. It turns out that Rose and other mothers have been changed into birds by the witches known as the Dark Daughters. If Nell wants her mother back, she will need to thwart the witches' plans and free Ravenhead, the king of all the birds. Picture this novel like a Victorian living room, stuffed with details, intricate rules of conduct, and plot twists. For most of the book, there is no respite from the barrage of detritus. Readers will have to concentrate carefully to comprehend the world that Begler has created. Nell's love for her mother acts as a powerful motivation and makes her likable. Her brothers are more static, and George's humor seems artificially rude. The author tries to set up meaningful moments, but often they appear contrived rather than the result of genuine character growth and discovery. VERDICT Begler's boundless imagination chokes under flawed execution.-Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT

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Starred review from January 1, 2017
An insecure young girl's quest for her missing mother leads her to Dreamlands, a parallel world of incredible dreams, dark nightmares, and dangerous deceptions.An "uncommon-looking twelve-year-old girl" with silver-blonde hair and amber eyes, Nell Perkins is able to see truths others ignore. After three local women mysteriously disappear, Nell insists they've been stolen by an ominous purple cloud. Then she witnesses the cloud sweeping her mother, Rose, away, leaving behind a small golden bird that Nell realizes is really Rose transformed. Determined to save Rose, Nell encounters Duke Badger, a Fearless Traveler, sworn to help those journeying to Dreamlands. Badger explains that Rose and the other missing women have been changed into birds by the Dark Daughters, "an ancient tribe of Nightmares." Only Ravenhead, an endangered Dreamer, can change Rose back to human form. With Badger as her remarkable guide, Nell embarks on a perilous quest to the Wicked Places, traversing surreal landscapes and confronting bizarre creatures, hoping against the odds to outmaneuver the Dark Daughters and save her mother. Throughout the relentlessly paced, endlessly twisting plot, remarkable Nell emerges a "fearless traveler" in her own right. Though race is referred to, the book's default is white. A wildly imaginative, richly textured, and complex fantasy. (map) (Fantasy. 9-12)

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Starred review from January 1, 2017
Grades 5-8 *Starred Review* There is a swirling, bruise-colored cloud floating over town that is snatching mothers, one by one, and Nell Perkins is the only one taking it seriously. When her own mother, Rose, is sucked up into the cloud before her eyes, Nell and her brothers seek out the local outcast, Badger, who explains that Rose was taken by the Dark Daughters, an ancient tribe of Nightmares who are turning mothers into birds and sacrificing them to the Plague Dreamer. Badger is a Fearless Traveler from the loyal order of Dream Warriors, and he agrees to lead Nell and her brothers into the Dreamlands to recover their mother. Can this small but fierce group defeat the Dark Daughters before they destroy the waking world? This magical book is as dark as a Tim Burton filma land of walking skeletons, rains of knife blades, encounters with slave-driving clowns, and morebut there is great power (and some successful humor) in creating a world so entirely original. Bursts of modernity startle and shake the otherwise fantastical tone of the piece, and the eponymous handbook plays less of a role than perhaps it shouldyet, still, this is a gripping, surreal, and utterly delightful adventure that pairs the unsettling, off-kilter wonkiness of Neil Gaiman and Roald Dahl with the zinging imagination of L. Frank Baum.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2018
When witches steal twelve-year-old Nell's mother and turn her into a bird, Nell and her brothers enlist the aid of "Fearless Traveler" Duke Badger. Duke takes the siblings to the parallel Dreamlands world to find their mother in the Wicked Places, where the group must thwart the nightmarish witches' plan. Begler offers a whimsical adventure full of magic and creatures that will leave readers begging for more.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)