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A review by mxhermit
Gertie Milk and the Keeper of Lost Things by Simon Van Booy
4.0
A tale of lost memories, time travelling cars, and lots of cake, Gertie Milk and the Keeper of Lost Things has all the adventure one could want in a middle grade fantasy in which the heroine must return lost artifacts to historical figures and attempt to recover her memory.
The story opens with 12-year-old Gertie waking up on an island with no clue as to her identity, other than (presumably) her name embroidered on her dress. Stumbling away from an incoming tide and up a cliff, Gertie meets Kolt, a Mad Hatter-esque character that introduces her to her destiny as a Keeper.
The strange things he introduces her to are whimsical and sound like just the thing a young child would like. Cakes of all kinds, jams, tea, and a convoluted house with towers and hundreds of bedrooms to house the Lost Things.
Beneath all this wonder is darkness, however, and more so than that of the enemies of Keepers, the Losers who want to destroy the Keepers and their work. There are questions that pop up in regards to Keepers, like who are they? Kolt, who has been a Keeper for at least 100 years, can't even remember his real name (Kolt is made up from the initials of Keeper of Lost Things). It's revealed that all Keepers lose their memories when they're "chosen" so that they can more easily accept their fate.
Chosen here means kidnapped because the B.D.B.U. (Big Dusty Book Upstairs) deems them necessary for the mission of protecting the knowledge of human kind. Children being dragged into this kind of work with no choice, losing everything that made them themselves, is a rather dark aspect of this book's mythos.
Gertie bears her journey well. She has many questions for Kolt, and even when he doesn't answer them directly she soldiers on. I honestly would have expected her to fight back a bit more.
The various historical figures that are introduced were interesting in their variety. There were mathematicians, philosophers, athletes, and more. Some I had to look up as they were name dropped rather than introduced as an essential part of the plot, which detracted somewhat from the story.
With an open ending that could lead to at least one more book, maybe more, Gertie Milk turned out to be a fun story with fantastical, crazy elements mixed with figures from the past that prove essential to the way our world is now in terms of knowledge. This book will, I think, entertain not only children old enough to read on their own, but parental figures and their charges, with a narrative that flows and action east enough to follow along when being read aloud.
Remember...it could always be worse.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
The story opens with 12-year-old Gertie waking up on an island with no clue as to her identity, other than (presumably) her name embroidered on her dress. Stumbling away from an incoming tide and up a cliff, Gertie meets Kolt, a Mad Hatter-esque character that introduces her to her destiny as a Keeper.
The strange things he introduces her to are whimsical and sound like just the thing a young child would like. Cakes of all kinds, jams, tea, and a convoluted house with towers and hundreds of bedrooms to house the Lost Things.
Beneath all this wonder is darkness, however, and more so than that of the enemies of Keepers, the Losers who want to destroy the Keepers and their work. There are questions that pop up in regards to Keepers, like who are they? Kolt, who has been a Keeper for at least 100 years, can't even remember his real name (Kolt is made up from the initials of Keeper of Lost Things). It's revealed that all Keepers lose their memories when they're "chosen" so that they can more easily accept their fate.
Chosen here means kidnapped because the B.D.B.U. (Big Dusty Book Upstairs) deems them necessary for the mission of protecting the knowledge of human kind. Children being dragged into this kind of work with no choice, losing everything that made them themselves, is a rather dark aspect of this book's mythos.
Gertie bears her journey well. She has many questions for Kolt, and even when he doesn't answer them directly she soldiers on. I honestly would have expected her to fight back a bit more.
The various historical figures that are introduced were interesting in their variety. There were mathematicians, philosophers, athletes, and more. Some I had to look up as they were name dropped rather than introduced as an essential part of the plot, which detracted somewhat from the story.
With an open ending that could lead to at least one more book, maybe more, Gertie Milk turned out to be a fun story with fantastical, crazy elements mixed with figures from the past that prove essential to the way our world is now in terms of knowledge. This book will, I think, entertain not only children old enough to read on their own, but parental figures and their charges, with a narrative that flows and action east enough to follow along when being read aloud.
Remember...it could always be worse.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.