The Mysterious Circus (Hall Family Chronicles) [Hardcover]

Jane Langton (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up | Series: Hall Family Chronicles

Life in the Halls' house in Concord is many things, but it is never boring. Even something as simple as having a family friend come for a visit can lead to the unexpected, the enchanted, the mysterious -- in this case, the most amazing, most mysterious circus ever.

From Uncle Krishna's garbled phone message to the fantastic ending, the latest Hall Family Chronicle has all of the earmarks of a Jane Langton novel: fantasy, humor, and magic!

Join Eleanor, Eddie, Georgie, their new friend Andy, and his twelve very large friends -- more about them later -- in Jane Langton's The Mysterious Circus.

--This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-6–This installment in the series jumps right in where The Time Bike (HarperCollins, 2000) left off, and readers unfamiliar with the characters and ongoing plot devices will be confused. Eleanor, Edward, and their little sister, Georgie, are visited in Concord, MA, by their cousin Andy from India. He brings with him a magic seed, which soon produces elephants, and a circus is born. At the same time, a new selectwoman has been instrumental in getting the town council to vote yes to building a Thoreau Theme Park. The circus completely preoccupies the children as the park proposal does the adults. Of course the two events collide and bring about the fall of the selectwoman, and the town is saved. The plot is a tad thin and the characters are never well defined, but fans of the previous books will probably enjoy this novel.–Saleena L. Davidson, South Brunswick Public Library, Monmouth Junction, NJ
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 3-5. Langton, who has lately produced mostly mysteries for adults, offers the seventh installment in her fanciful and venerable Hall Family Chronicles, which debuted with The Diamond in the Window (1962) and went on to win a Newbery Honor for The Fledgling (1980). The setting is still the quaint, present-day community around Walden Pond, and the three Hall siblings continue to expect periodic gifts from their faraway uncle Krishna. This time he sends tiny, carved elephants that miraculously balloon into full-size pachyderms. They are delivered by Krishna's nephew, a juggler, unicyclist, and mystic who recruits neighborhood children to perform under an enchanted big top. Langton's favored transcendentalist themes emerge in a subplot about razing a meadow for a Henry David Thoreau theme park--a travesty that may not rankle Langton's amusement park-loving target audience as much as intended. Although best for readers familiar with the series, this will win its admirers for a narrative that accepts magic as a matter of course, and for the thrilling circus premise. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st ed edition (May 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060094869
• ISBN-13: 978-0060094867
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,774,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've written an awful lot of books. There are eleven for middle-aged children, mostly fantasies. The ones that have hung around the longest are "The Diamond in the Window" and "The Fledgling." The seventh in the series called "The Hall Family Chronicles" came out last spring, "The Mysterious Circus," and I've just finished writing an eighth, "The Dragon Tree."

All eighteen mysteries for adults have the same protagonists, Homer and Mary Kelly. Mary is the sensible one, but I confess I like Homer's rhapsodic flights of fancy. Most of their adventures happen in Massachusetts, but I've also sent them to farflung places I wanted to visit myself, like Florence, Oxford and Venice. Most of the novels are illustrated with my own drawings, but "The Escher Twist" has ten prints by the mysterious Dutch artist M. C. Escher, and the two historical mysteries are illustrated with nineteenth-century photographs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mysterious Circus, March 11, 2008

By 

Dawn Funck "whatsit" (Eastpointe, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Mysterious Circus (Hall Family Chronicles) (Hardcover)

The Mysterious Circus (Hall Family Chronicles)
This is a great book for all ages. If you begin with 'The Diamond in the Window" as I did as a teen, you will have a great introduction to the Hall Family. If you haven't read it, you will have no problems in getting to know them in this book as new developments in their personalities come forward.
Jane Langton has a great talent for interweaving Transcendental logic through her books while spinning magic into the small lives of the Hall children while keeping notice of their normal childhood faults. In this, the reader is introduced to a simple and accepting attitude toward themselves as well as others.
I especially recommend this book for children from age 10 and up. It would be nice for such an influence to be introduced to them through their own personal revelation while reading it. The 'Diamond in the Window' influenced me as a young teen and now that I'm a grandmother and reading the rest of the Hall Family Chronicles that I missed before, I've realized that I still adhere to the humanitarian viewpoints introduced to me earlier in my life from reading books such as these.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mysterious Circus, September 23, 2005

By 

K. R. Norton (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Mysterious Circus (Hall Family Chronicles) (Hardcover)

This book is yet another in Jane Langton's wonderful, imaginative and quirkily funny series about the Hall family. The children (the main focus of the book) are realistic & believable. Same with the adults. The plot centers around the creation of a circus using a combination of magic and the skills of a group of ordinary children who become extra - ordinary through their own efforts and self-realization. All this happens during an attempt to 'Disney-fy' a local park by a peculiar and sinister-but amusing villainess. Very enjoyable read.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new adventure revolving around Eleanor, Eddie and Georgie and their new friend Andy, August 12, 2005

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mysterious Circus (Hall Family Chronicles) (Hardcover)

Fans of the prior Diamond In The Window and other stories will find a new adventure revolving around Eleanor, Eddie and Georgie and their new friend Andy. And Uncle Krishna is back, too, adding his magic to the appearance of a mysterious circus with strange people and events. Langton is at her best in exploring the peculiar forms of magic Eleanor and her sibling are particularly vulnerable to, and The Mysterious Circus doesn't disappoint.