Aug 012013
The Wish Stealers
Griffin Penshine is always making wishes. But when an eccentric old woman named Mariah gives Griffin a box of shiny pennies, it sets in motion a desperate quest. The old woman was a wish stealer, who stole each penny from a wishing fountain decades earlier. Somehow, Griffin has to redeem the lost wishes, or the opposite of her own wishes will come true–and it could literally be a matter of life or death. Griffin’s mission to right Mariah’s awful wrongs allows her to meet some extraordinary pe
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An enjoyable read for 9-11 year olds,
I work with elementary kids so I like to read newly published books to keep up with what’s likely to be in the classrooms next. This book is most likely to appeal to 9-11 year old girls.
Other reviews do a nice job of telling you what the story is about so I’ll take a different approach.
I like the aspect of the book that the author explores the choices that Griffin could make. The magic of the pennies give Griffin a power which she can choose to use for good or evil. At first Griffin does a good job of making decisions to help people. Later, she tires of being bullied by a girl who thinks too highly of herself. Griffin loses control and makes a wish to have something bad happen to her nemesis. Griffin realizes that she has made a bad choice and she stops using her power irresponsibly.
Overall, the book has a nice message. It is rather basic and not too in depth, but that is age appropriate.
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3.5 stars; nice girl, good idea, too many wishes.,
This is a very sweet book with a lovely concept, but it’s a little underdone in some places. The main character, Griffin Penshine, is well done; I particularly liked how she wavers between her desire to do what she knows is right, and the temptation to do something wrong when provoked — the villain of the piece, the pretty and popular (and vicious and obnoxious) Samantha would be well-deserving of Griffin’s anger. But the book shows very clearly how that desire to hurt someone back after she has hurt you is not the right thing; it was nice to see that put into motion, rather than staying in the usual cliches we hear from our parents about doing unto others, or not sinking to their level. All those things make sense, of course — but they aren’t terribly satisfying in the moment.
Griffin, however, is faced with a real challenge, much more serious than disappointing her parents: things are going badly, through no fault of her own, and she has the power to get back at the people that are doing her wrong. If she does so, however, she will lose much more than she gains: she will become like the cruel,spiteful old woman who victimized her in the first place. Griffin was made into a wish-stealer, without her knowledge, because she caught the attention of an old wish-stealer at the end of a long career of ruining people’s lives. The wish-stealer tricked Griffin, giving her a set of cursed wishing pennies. Now all of Griffin’s good wishes will go badly — but all of her evil wishes will come true. Enter Samantha and her pretty fashionista friends, sniping and giggling and eye-rolling, full of put-downs and mockery: like waving a red flag in front of a bull. So will Griffin give in to the temptation to turn Samantha into the slimy toad her personality resembles? Or will she take the high road, do the difficult thing, and get rid of her unfortunate curse by making up for the sins of the original wish-stealer?
I wish that the book had been able to spend more time exploring the idea of wish-stealing; it has a lovely message about wish-stealers in real life — they are the people who make others too afraid to follow their dreams, and they are some of the worst people there are, and that is absolutely true — but the magical aspects of the wishes in this book are very vague and unexplored. I feel like there were just too many wishes — eleven stolen wishes, and seven good wishes of her own — for Griffin to deal with in trying to fix her problem. It made it impossible for the book to really get into each wish’s story, which left me hanging some of the time. I also didn’t think a whole lot of the romantic interest character, though the romantic story itself (Nothing happens, of course — these kids are in sixth grade; they don’t even hold hands.) was very well-done and very sweet.
Overall, I liked it, and I would guess that a young girl would enjoy it much more than me, being the actual target audience and all.
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An engaging story for my 4th grader,
This book was read by my 4th grader in preparation for using it as a book report. I have noticed in the past that if she gets through the first 2 or 3 chapters, then the book is a winner for her and she will finish it. Some books in the past have not caught on with her and don’t get finished. From the beginning of the Wish Stealers, she was interested and eager to read the story. It went with her on car rides and I would frequently ask her to tell me what was going on in the story to see if it was making sense to her. From her telling me what it was about and telling me that she was enjoying the book, I think it is safe to say it is a good book. Sometimes books in her age range are too complicated with too many characters and story lines, but this one did not suffer from that problem.
She wavered between giving the book 4 or 5 stars, but stuck with 5. She says there are some sad parts, a creepy character, some people that were nice to Griffin, and some that weren’t. She says some parts of the story left you hanging and you just HAD to read the next chapter to see what would happen. The main character, Griffin, is a nice girl that tries to do the right thing. I much prefer my daughter reading these type of books, rather than books with mean or cliquish girls.
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