The Spiderwick Chronicles Book 3 – Lucinda’s Secret | Book Review

Children’s books are one of the favourite genres for us here at Thinkerviews. We are always looking for books filled with adventure, enterprise and magic that makes childhood such a fascinating phase of life. We have reviewed a fair few series designed for young readers and shared our reviews on those here at Thinkerviews platforms.

• The Brightstorm Series by Vashti Hardy
• Friday Barnes Book Series by R.A. Spratt
• The Pandava series featuring Aru Shah by Roshani Chokshi

We added the Spiderwick Chronicles series to our reading list a while ago. Created by authors Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, these books have captured the readers with its tales of fairy land creatures inhabiting a derelict estate and the trio of children who go looking for them.

First published in 2003, the series has grown over time and been loved by readers old and young, inspiring a TV adaptation by the same name that’s hit the screens lately. We have shared our reviews on the previous books of the series here:

• The Spiderwick Chronicles Book 1 – The Field Guide
• The Spiderwick Chronicles Book 2 – The Seeing Stone

So let’s continue through the series with this review for the third book called Lucinda’s Secret.

Book Cover:

Let us take a look at the cover page of this book.

We found the lovely hard back copies of the series. The coverpage of this third book in this series shows one of the twins – Jared – holding a lovely faerie fruit, being tempted to eat it by a winged creature known as sprite. Being part of the continuation of cover pages, the readers will be easily able to identify the child as well as the magical elements of the story.

The fonts used on the coverpage will remind of classical wrought iron casting work and ancient tapestries. The authors’ names are shown in flying leaves….

Inside, this edition is filled with beautiful illustrations, almost on every page, making a very attractive read for young readers.

A classic cover page that would be more appealing to the fans of the series looking for a collector’s edition.

Storyline:

To recap the previous adventures, we met the Grace children – nine year old twin brothers Simon and Jared and their thirteen year old sister Mallory – as they began a new life at the Spiderwick estate. They discovered a guidebook about the invisible world around them called  Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You.

This handwritten, lovingly drawn book contains the knowledge about faeries. And the children found themselves to be target of some unwelcome attention but managed to escape goblins in the second book. Now they have a griffin called Byron, a not-so-happy brownie-cum-boggart housemate called Thimbletack and Jared still finds himself a centre of pranks all the time.

He is learning, however, and now wear his clothes inside out as one of the protection measures..!!

While Jared wants to hold on to the field guide, Mallory and Simon are not so sure. So, the children decide to ask the only person who may know about the invisible world – their great aunt Lucinda Spiderwick. The visit is full of surprises.

Aunt Lucinda tells them how her father Arthur Spiderwick went for a walk one day when she was a little girl and never came back. When the older Lucinda moved back to the Spiderwick estate, the faeries started badgering and harassing her, thinking she had the field guide. On one fateful day, she ate a faerie fruit and her life has never been the same again.

Her sprite caretakers offer the same fruit to the children and Jared almost eats it. They also discover during this visit that the field guide has been stolen from them. Who could have done that and left them a note saying:

Rash child who thinks he’s smart

Wondering about your book?

Maybe I’m tearing it apart

Or bring it where you won’t look

To re-discover the guide, they search Arthur Spiderwick’s library. And what should they find but maps of the estate and areas around it leading to places like the Troll Hunting Territory. And in search of the answers, the children go on yet another field trip.

They meet a strange creature, some mischief makers, a unicorn and almost get trapped into the jungle with the elves…Will they escape this time? and at what cost?

Views and Reviews:

This third book in the Spiderwick Chronicles captures another delightful adventure for the children who love to read about magical places hidden in our world. The book is written in simple language with illustrations to go with the text to make it easy for younger readers. Some of the illustrations are even captured as glossy, coloured pages at the ends of the book.

The author continues with simple descriptions of well-known magical things that young readers may be familiar with. For example, the faerie fruit that once eaten, will make the eater addicted to it:

It tasted better than any food I’d ever imagined. It tasted the way I  thought flowers might. It tasted like a song you can’t quite put a name to. After that, human food – normal food – was like sawdust and ashes. I couldn’t make myself eat it. I would have starved.

The authors also use riddles and simple word plays to keep the readers interested with sentences like below:

Clever is as clever does.

If grass can move, then a boy could find himself rooted in place.

As the books continue the thread of how the field guide is coveted by the magical creatures, in this book, the authors also give us a glimpse of the why. When the elves tell the children about how humanity has acted with cruelty at times and destroyed natural habitats for so many species, it has also impacted the faeries and places they can live in.

They are worried that if the humans know their weaknesses, it will only lead to further destruction:

Once, humans were ignorant. But now we would keep knowledge of our existence from you to protect ourselves. You poison the rivers, hunt the griffins from the skies and the serpents from the seas. Imagine what you could do if you knew all of our weaknesses.

It is also baffling to the faeries, how humanity can live away from wilderness that is home to them:

Anyone can live that long – all they have to do is keep from dying. But I understand that humans live much longer in captivity than they do in the wild.

The Grace children are as lovable as ever. They have their minor differences and squables as siblings do, but they are trying to adjust to this new world. Jared has learnt to draw to express some of his feelings, but he still feels out of place and sad at times:

He felt numb. The book was gone, Thimbletack hated him, and Arthur wasn’t the person he’d imagined. It was a cheat – all this magic. It seemed so great, but underneath, it was just as disappointing as everything else.

And the magical creature for this book will have to be The Phooka, so let’s leave you with the following description:

It had the body of a monkey with short, blackish brown speckled fur and a long tail that curled around the branch on which it sat. A thick ruff of fur surrounded its neck, but its face was rabbity, with long ears and whiskers.

As mentioned in the reviews for this series, these stories have also been turned into a delightful TV adaptation and are available to stream on: The Roku Channel.

Summary:

An enjoyable segment in the series of adventures featuring three adorable children as they learn about the magical world around their new home and the tricks to survive it…

ThinkerViews Rating:

Around 7.5 stars out of 10.

Quick Purchase Links:

• Buy - Lucinda's Secret by Tony DiTerlizzi, Holly Black - Paperback - Amazon IN
• Buy - Lucinda's Secret by Tony DiTerlizzi, Holly Black - Paperback - Amazon US

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