The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi
When Emily and Navin’s dad dies in a terrible accident, their mom decides to start over by moving into her great grandfather’s empty home. Emily and Navin are not exactly happy about moving into their great great grandfather’s old house, which has been empty and in the family since his disappearance. Their small family quickly discover that the house needs a bit of elbow grease in addition to a monster infestation. When Emily and Navin’s mom is abducted by a strange monster in the basement, they find themselves on the adventure of a lifetime so they don’t lose her too.
While I was shocked to discover that the opening is rather dark, especially for a children’s book, the story quickly sucked me in and has me ready to start the next volume ASAP. The target audience is middle schoolers, but if they have lost a parent, the opening might be too tough for them since we see Emily losing her father in real time. That said, I think the rest of the story is perfect for the age group it was written for.
We follow Emily and her younger brother, Navin, as they get ready to start over in their great great grandfather’s old and empty home way out in the middle of nowhere. We start to see their sibling dynamic right away, which seems very authentic to me. Some of the bickering reminded me of the bickering between me and my brothers, especially since my older brother had a tendency of being the first to take things over when we were growing up. The bickering that occurred over the stone necklace that Emily finds in the house strongly reminded me of this.
As the story continues, we see that Emily and Navin are close and care about each other a lot. The world they’re sucked into through the basement is quite interesting with a variety of characters and a whole lore that I’m excited to see further explained. One of the things I loved the most is that Emily and Navin can applied skills they developed through their hobbies in this other world they’ve been sucked into. I’m super excited to start the second volume soon and see where the story takes us after this brilliant series opener.
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