Customer Reviews

Frankie!

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Griffins get short shrift in middle reader novels. Search Amazon .com with the word "dragons" in the "Subject:" box and "9-12 years" in the "Reader age:" drop-down. Over 250 results come back. Substitute the word "griffins" for "dragons" and you get a measly four.

When a griffin does make an appearance, it's often as a shrieking, livestock-stealing pest vanquished by a youthful protagonist with a dull rusty dagger while tending the family herd or, even more humiliating, as dragon food after being roasted in a blast of fiery breath. One would think the combination of eagle (keen of vision, master of the sky) with lion (nobility personified, master of the earth) would be an abundant well from which authors would draw inspiration. But, no. Dragons get all the glory and griffins usually get plucked.

"Frankie!" by Wilanne Schneider Belden is told in episodic chapters through the eyes of Bridgit O'Riley, eldest child in a family of Magicals. The birth and first four years in the life of younger brother Frankie provide Bridgit with fodder for a series of short stories that add up to a pleasantly riveting novel.

Frankie, named for his griffin Uncle Francis, is intelligent, kind to all living creatures (with a notable and necessary exception) and one of the neatest ways to travel by air. He possesses all of the powers common to griffins and a few shared by most of the rest of the O'Rileys. Clever plot twists abound and culminate in a "never-saw-THAT-coming" climax to a battle with the devastatingly (in more ways than one) beautiful Morgan le Fay who has plans for a strapping young griffin like Frankie.

On its own or as a break between those heavy-as-a-doorstop fantasy tomes, "Frankie!" soars.

I met Belden at a book convention in 1988 (I was 11), and I don't know why I picked this book of all the ones there, but I simply loved it, and cherish it as one of the best reads of my childhood. Just a delight.

Mrs.Belden was my 4th grade teacher at Bird Rock. I remember her reading us many great stories. I can recall being read one of her own books. I am not sure if it is this book or her first, but it was a great book. Her incorporation of literature in the class was very influential. Now that I am a third grade teacher, I am really looking forward to reading her story in my own class. Mrs.Belden where are you?