Customer Reviews

Pay the Piper: A Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tale

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Fourteen-year-old Calcephony "Callie" McCallan is a school reporter school in Northampton, Massachusetts. She is excited by her job because this assignment enables her to go back stage while the popular rock 'n' roll band, Brass Rat performs. The only setback is that her parents make her bring her brother Nick with her. After listening to a recording by the group, Callie wonders why her classmates ate making such a fuss over this band. That is she wonders until she meets the dynamic lead singer Peter Gringras. His flute playing mesmerizes all who listen including Callie.

However, on Halloween night as the Brass Rat performs, all the children including her kid brother Nick vanish. Callie thinks she knows why the children have been "abducted" and plans to rescue them as she plans to follow the magic flute into the land of faerie to make the piper pay, but she will soon learn how "faerie justice" works.

The middle school crowd will enjoy this fine version of the Pied Piper starring a wonderful young heroine who risks her life to save her sibling and the other children from the unknown. As the audience learns the truth, feelings towards Peter the Pied Piper will change although he still committed the abductions. Young readers will enjoy the first rock and roll fairy tale while looking forward to future fantasies from this solid mother-son collaboration.

Harriet Klausner

Pay the Piper, by Jane Yolden, tells of girl, Callie, who discovers that an exciting new rock band, called the Brass Rat, is from another dimension and is kidnapping children as the result of a curse. Callie ends up following the bands leader, Grigras, into the other dimension and is able to break the curse put on him and his associates. The writing style was impressive and linked the genres of realistic fiction and fantasy very well. However, there is a lack of excitement in the story and that can cause a reader to lose interest in the book quickly. This is not a book for readers who are looking for a thrill.

The Pied Piper goes rock `n' roll with PAY THE PIPER. Interesting and modern twist on the classic tale Peter the Pied Piper of Hamelin. A clever retelling with rock bands, and Faerie lore as the famous piper is portrayed as the middle son of the Sidhe Faerie King, who has been cursed and banished to live among humans for a treason committed against his brother.

I found PAY THE PIPER to be an easy and entertaining enough read as far as the concept went; but the story was hindered by its overly juvenile dialog between the young human teens and lack of character depth. Yes Callie and her friends are 14, but the conversations between them were just too over the top to feel genuine, sounding more of the age of 9 than that of high school kids. Even the parents came off with a bad sitcom feel. Unfortunately, only that of the Piper Gringras and his loyal friend Alabas came across true. All in all I'd say PAY THE PIPER is an ok read that is obviously intended for younger readers, but I have no regrets to giving this one a look...especially since I picked it up in the bargain bin.

I only got about 30 or 40 pages in. This was terrible. Honestly, it was *terrible*. The characters are cardboard and unbelievable, and my God, the dialogue! I have never in my life heard children that speak like this! I was actually sitting there flailing around angrily at how stiff and inexplicably unbelievable the dialogue was, yelling "HAVE YOU EVEN EVER SPOKEN TO A TEENAGER." Plus, a whole high school all excited about a folk rock band with a medieval schtick coming to town? I don't know, maybe there are places where that would happen, and I've just never encountered it, but I found it hard to believe. (Let's not even get into how embarrassing I found that first rock show scene. I gave up soon after that.)

I was surprised by how awful this was, considering I've read a couple of Yolen's works before and thought them pretty decent.

This book attempts to combine fact with fiction to explain the story of the Pied Piper. It epically fails. It is easily seen that the book is geared towards younger readers by how it explains vocabulary every few pages. The story plays out too quickly and seems unrealistic, even for fantasy. There is not nearly as much background information as was needed. I only bought this book to learn more about the legend of the Pied Piper and how the authors would view him. His and the main character Calcephony's background stories are too weak to be part of a good story. They were both static characters, even after the climax. The Pied Piper was seen as mean and selfish, with no real depth other than being old and of Faerie. I do not recommend this story. However, if you do not mind a weak plot with subtle but annoying foreshadowing, go ahead and read it.

Pay the Piper Book Review

Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple


When I first picked up this fairy tale book, I was unsure about how good it would be. I thought it was going to be a really corny story where a band was made up of crazy mythical characters. Now, having read the book, I would say that I'd give it four stars out of five.

The book is about a fourteen-year old girl named Calcephony McCallan (everyone just calls her Callie though). She is a rather unimaginative reporter for her school. Since she lives in a small town, she is really surprised and delighted when she learns that one of her favorite bands "Brass Rat" is going to play a concert there on the day before Halloween. Even though she has really strict and embarrassing parents, she manages to convince them to not only get her tickets, but a backstage pass to interview the band for the school newspaper as well.

After the concert is over Callie realizes there's some questions she forgot to ask the band during intermission. However, before she opens the door to the green room, she hears the band members having an argument about some sort of teind. Then, the next day, all of the children (except for Callie) disappear. She already has a hypothesis of who is responsible for this deed, but now she must figure out why they did it and how to get the kids back.

This book reminds me of a great story for all ages I read a couple of years back. It was called The Phantom Tollbooth. They are related in the sense that they both have a main character who doesn't have an imagination and is sent to a magical land and must learn to think "outside the box" in order to overcome a challenge and be allowed to return to their home.

There are a few reasons why I enjoyed reading this book. First, I love the authors' style of writing. Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple were very descriptive. Also, I am obsessed with music, so I like any story that has to do with that (except for when the music is jazz). Finally, I took pleasure in reading this tome because it involves part of a myth.

The only reason I gave it four instead of five stars is because it took longer than usual for the plot to develop. Other than that, I think it is a fabulous book and I highly recommend it to people who love fairy tales because it has an unusual twist.

Pay the Piper, by Jane Yolden, tells of girl, Callie, who discovers that an exciting new rock band, called the Brass Rat, is from another dimension and is kidnapping children as the result of a curse. Callie ends up following the bands leader, Grigras, into the other dimension and is able to break the curse put on him and his associates. The writing style was impressive and linked the genres of realistic fiction and fantasy very well. However, there is a lack of excitement in the story and that can cause a reader to lose interest in the book quickly. This is not a book for readers who are looking for a thrill.

Pay The Piper by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple is a fairy tale about Callie, a teenage girl who lives in the valley and claims she has a boring life until the concert. Callie thinks she is an ordinary girl living a boring life in a boring town until her friends spread the news about a band called brass rat coming to town. Little does Callie know that things are about to get a lot more interesting around there. This story has everything from magic to music and is full of adventure, and excitement, also a very interesting plot twist at the end
the author has an interesting style of writing because he gives many details and writes very carefully, even though this style did not appeal to me I would understand why it might appeal to other people. One thing I did like about the book was the way it jumped from character to character every chapter so if I wanted to find out to one person I had to read through the next chapter to find out. Even though the book was a little confusing at first after a while they started to make more since.
I enjoyed this book most of the time although the author seemed to ramble on but it wasn't an edge of your seat stay up all night reading type books it was a more relaxing walk in the park read. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading fantasy style or fairly tale stylebooks and has more patience when it comes to books. The reason I gave this book a 3 out of 5 is because it was exciting but not exciting enough for me and it could be hard at times to pay attention to.

I would highly recomend this book to anyone--teenager or adult--who enjoys reading about modern Faerie/Fairy. If you like Charles De Lint, Terri Windling, Emma Bull, or Midori Snyder you'll like this book.

The book is a quick, fun read. My husband and I each devoured it in just over one day, and I know that I will read it again someday. Why not five stars? At times the writing gets a little clunky (my guess is that these are Adam Stemple's bits), not terrible, they just seem like the work of someone about to really hit their stride.

This is a book I will buy for my adult, pre-teen, and teen friends.

Fantasy and rock'n'roll go together. Led Zeppelin's songs about Middle-Earth, really bad metal bands with fantasy names, and even those cheesy fantasies about punk elves playing electric guitar.

But "Pay the Piper: A Rock and Roll Fairy Tale," a new novel published by Starscape Books (known mainly for reprints) is something a bit different. The first of a series by Jane Yolen and her rocker son Adam Stemple, this is a more intricate, intelligent rock fantasy. Well written, intriguingly thought out, Yolen's latest collaboration is definitely worth reading.

Classic folk-rockers ("rock'n'reel") Brass Rat are coming to Callie's hometown. Even better, she's the only one with a press pass, allowing her to go backstage and interview the band, especially the eerie, melancholy frontman Peter Gringras. But after she hears strange arguments about being paid -- in gold and silver -- Callie begins to suspect that the band is made up of people who aren't really human.

Then on Halloween, all the kids go missing, except for Callie. She goes in search of her brother and the other children, with the help of Brass Rat's guitarist Scott. On the borders of Faerie, Cally learns that Gringras was exiled to mortal lands, for a deception that went horribly wrong. To save him -- and all the kids -- she has to work out the curse that was laid by the king of Faerie.

Giving a new twist to fairy tales is nothing new. But Yolen takes the basic idea of the Pied Piper, and crafts an elaborate story around it, full of curses, rivalry, friendship, death and spells. There's even a "songbook" at the back of it, and despite the lack of actual musical notes, you can make up some folky-rocky melodies.

And the writers are in fine form here. Yolen and Stemple really craft a solid setting, with a minimalist Faerieland full of lost kids, and a homey New England town where nothing happens. Not to mention a rock concert that may give you goosebumps. But there are some humorous moments, such as Callie encountering the "little princes" in Faerie.

Though Callie is the heroine of this novel, Gringras is the character who stands out. He committed a deceptive crime that snowballed into murder, and now has to pay "gold, silver or souls" in order to stay alive. He feels rotten about it, but is afraid to stop. Equally compelling is Alabas, his immortal bandmate who will do whatever he must to help Gringras.

A really good rock concert can be hypnotic, even if most urban fantasy can't capture it. But Yolen and Stemple do a brilliant job in "Pay the Piper," with its mix of fantasy and rock'n'roll.