REVIEW: The Spiderwick Chronicles written by Holly Black and Illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi

The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles by Holly Black and Tony DiTer­l­izzi (2003) is a five book box set of short sto­ries fea­tur­ing three ordi­nary kids who stum­ble into the hid­den world of faeries.

Let me just say upfront that I love faerie sto­ries and the darker the bet­ter. Mov­ing on. The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles are nowhere near the com­plex­ity of the Harry Pot­ter books but they are still good reads for adults.

The story opens with the Grace fam­ily mov­ing into their new home. They have left New York City to set­tle into the coun­try. While the nar­ra­tive is in third per­son, the story fol­lows Jared, a nine-year old kid whose par­ents have recently divorced. His sib­lings include his twin brother, Simon, who keeps a menagerie of pets around him and his older sis­ter Mal­lory, who is obsessed with fenc­ing. Since the divorce, Jared has had prob­lems at home and at school. How­ever, it isn’t too long after they’ve moved into their new home that life offers the Grace fam­ily some inter­est­ing distractions.

It isn’t too soon after the kids have set­tled into their great aunt’s Spi­der­wick estate that they imme­di­ately begin to hear unex­plained rustling in the walls at night.

They explore the home only to dis­cover a secret library and Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fan­tas­ti­cal World Around You. It is an illus­trated book about faeries. The book exposes their secrets along with men­tion­ing other super­nat­ural crea­tures that inhabit our world.

Shortly after they are intro­duced to the book, we see the kids bat­tle with gob­lins, fight with ogres, match wits with elves and solve rid­dles in order to escape back home. They even­tu­ally meet up with the biggest and bad­dest mon­ster of them all and he only wants one thing: the field guide.

The sto­ries are very quick reads and albeit, a bit pre­dictable. If you enjoyed Lord of the Rings then you would enjoy these sto­ries. I enjoyed The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles because the authors have a very vivid and cre­ative imagination.

Often­times there were scenes that were very sus­pense­ful and then there were scenes that had emo­tional under­tones, remind­ing the reader that despite all the fan­tas­ti­cal stuff that’s going on, this story is about a fam­ily in tran­si­tion. Holly Black does an out­stand­ing job of blend­ing the fan­tasy aspects of this story with that of mod­ern day real­ity. It’s one of the rea­sons why I am drawn to her work.

If you enjoy fan­tasy then The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles are worth a look. The sto­ries are nicely illus­trated by Tony DiTer­l­izzi who brings depth and emo­tion to these char­ac­ters. I espe­cially loved the illus­trated pics of the many dif­fer­ent fey from the realm of Faerie.

I know some “young reader” books have crossover appeal that can be eas­ily read by both chil­dren and adults. I’m afraid that The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles doesn’t seem to fit within that cat­e­gory to me but YMMV. My grade for this box set is a strong B. I’m sure many of you are already aware that the sto­ries have already been adapted to film and sequels have already been pub­lished since the release of this box set.

Note: The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles (Boxed Set): The Field Guide; The See­ing Stone; Lucinda’s Secret; The Iron­wood Tree; The Wrath of Mulgrath