Customer Reviews

The Star Of Kazan

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Some children's books read like your standard kiddie fare. A mystery here, an intriguing character there, mix it altogether and phoomp! One piece of child fiction for general consumption. There are other children's books in the world, however, that resemble nothing so much as sumptuous feasts. Books that you'd swear had more in common with three act plays and bewitching flights of fancy than you'd find in something like, "How To Eat Fried Worms". You read one of these books, you finish it, and you scratch your head wondering how the English-speaking/reading children of the world lucked out to have THIS kind of book on their library and bookstore shelves. Prior to this title, Eva Ibbotson was a kind of British pre-J.K. Rowling fantasy author. Her books (like "The Island of the Aunts" and "Which Witch") were sweet but not particularly entrancing. She treated her fantasy in an offhand kind of way. As if ghosts and mermaids and selkies were only vaguely interesting characters to come and go as they pleased. It seems obvious now that she's been toiling in the wrong genre. "The Star of Kazan" marks yet another Ibbotson foray into a fantastical world that's almost too interesting to call historical fiction, but too informative to be relegated as anything else. It is, without a doubt, her finest work put to paper.

Annika has a daydream that's been hers and hers alone for years. Found as an orphan in a deserted church, Annika dreams of someday meeting her real mother. A mother who's rich and elegant and smells nice. Not that the girl has a bad life of it. She was adopted early on by a pair of servants who work for three neurotic professors in the heart of Vienna. Annika loves her life, and has grown to be quite an accomplished cook. She even befriends the dying great-aunt of the snobby little girl across the street and learns to deal with death. Then, everything changes. Like something out of a dream, Annika's mother (Edeltraut von Tannenberg) arrives and is just as glamorous and beautiful as her daughter could have wanted. Without further ado she whisks her newfound child back with her to a drafty old mansion in Spittal, Germany. Once there, Annika has a difficult time adjusting to her new life. She makes friends with the local gypsy boy who tends the horses, but her half-brother is cold, the rooms are always freezing, there's very little food, and objects keep disappearing from the mansion. It isn't long before Annika discovers a mystery that lies at the heart of her arrival in Spittal. A mystery that will be difficult for her to unravel without friends.

When I mentioned before that this book was like nothing so much as a three act play, I wasn't kidding. I envy the schoolchildren of this world who may get a chapter a day from their teachers. There'd be no better way to appreciate the trials of Annika and her quest to find love. Stretching her literary muscles as far as they dare go, Ibbotson conjures up a Vienna that American children have never seen in such a magnificent light. Born and raised there as a child (and sent away when she was eight) Ibbotson plumbs her memories of the time she lived in sweet Austria. Here we can see horses that dance, a kind old emperor, and a tale that is much like "A Little Princess" but twisted deftly.

What Ibbotson really revels in, however, are good characters. Her books often include old women with moustaches or bratty children with spoiled attitudes. Here, she writes a mother character that seems almost to be a blood relation of the chilling Mrs. Coulter in Philip Pullman's, "His Dark Materials" series. Though Edeltraut rarely appears as anything but a beautiful mama, her slights and casual cruelties are almost invisible but frightening when discovered. One of the things that impressed me the most, however, was the character of the gypsy boy Zed. Gypsies are one of those ethnic groups that tend to get a beating in children and young adult literature. Lazy authors love to use them for magical/mysterious moments, always forgetting that gypsies are real people who live real lives. Ibbotson has not forgotten. Better still, she's presented a well-rounded portrait of a group that lives as best it can without being any better or worse than their fellow men. Zed isn't a dark mysterious boy with the ability to sense evil or nonsense of that sort. He's a kid who loves taking care of horses and who does the right thing even when it puts everything he loves into peril.

If there's a flaw to the book (and what, may I ask, is there on this good green earth that isn't flawed in some small way?) then it lies in the illustrations. Kevin Hawkes has faithfully illustrated most of Ibbotson's books in America, and his style is almost synonymous with her name. This is almost always a gifted pairing, but only when the topic is fantasy. Here, Hawkes' lighthearted pen and inks don't seem to encompass the grandeur of the tale. We hear that Zed is a thirteen-year-old with "thick, dark hair that looked as though it had been cut with shears - but his brown eyes were flecked with lighter colors, with bronze and hazel and with gold". The boy in the pictures, by contrast, looks to be eight-years-old and sports incredibly short, only slightly curly locks. This difference appears with almost every picture here. With the possible exception of the shot of Annika cleaning the floor with dusters strapped to her feet, no drawing in this book lives up to the readers' expectations. It would have been better to have left the book alone, sans illustration.

But that's neither here nor there. On top of everything I've already written, the book also has thrilling rescue sequences, good common people rising over and above haughty snobby people, redemption, falling harps, stolen jewelry, and a ferris wheel that can see the tips of distant mountains. It's a long book, but a great one. Kids who like their heroines good and their adults eccentric will find much to love here. A fabulous read and a truly fulfilling story through and through. Can't make myself recommend it enough.

A story with jewels, horses, and fantastic food--a triple treat!
Ellie and Sigrid find an abandoned baby in a church and raise her with love in the household of three brilliant but dotty professors where they work as servants. Though happy in her life, Annika dreams the dream of all foundlings, that one day her missing mother will arrive and explain why she deserted her little daughter.

She has many friends including a lonely old lady who shares the story of her life through beautiful but seemingly worthless costume jewelry.

Annika has a gift for cooking and food is deliciously described in this story.

One day Annika's mysterious mother does show up. She seems to be everything Annika ever dreamed of and she sweeps her daughter off to a decaying and crumbling estate in Germany. Compared to her simple life in Vienna where she was always warm and well fed, here the rooms are unheated and the food is served cold. Annika happily offers to help out but she is reminded she is now an aristocrat and may not cook or clean. Her only joy is working with the gifted stable boy who cares for the one remaining horse on the estate.

Old Vienna is wonderfully described from the Lipizzaner horses to the Sachar tortes! Kevin Hawkes is the illustrator of choice now for Ibbotson's books. His fine detailed drawings throughout the story are a treat for the reader.

Like "River to the Sea," this story is rich in atmosphere with great characters and a very exciting crisis and escape that satisfies completely, sort of like a bite of rich, chocolaty Sachar torte!

My name is Miranda and I'm seven years old. My mom reads me tons of books and we listen to lots of books on tape, and this book is defenitely one of my favorites. My mom read this book to me and we both absolutely loved it. Now my older sister is reading it and so far she loves it as well. All the characters are people you can relate to. Each one of them is so different and unique from the others. At the end of the book you feel as if the characters are real live people you know. The characters are what makes the book five stars. Other favorite books of mine that I reccomend are: "Dragon Rider", "A Single Shard", and "Montmorency". Thanks! (Hope you enjoy the book!)

I'm an adult - a really old adult! - and I loved this book. A children's librarian told me it was the best book written in the last year and I was skeptical. But she wasn't wrong about Harry Potter so she has a good track record with me.

This book was the best book that I've read in a long time. Thrills, danger, love, family.

I think you'll love this book.

I was shocked that there were only 2 reviews, though both were 5 stars so I wrote this one very quickly. Don't wait - get it!

I loved Ibbotson's "Company of Swans" and "Countess Below Stairs" and started out loving this one as well. However, as soon as Annike's mother showed up, the book took a dark and depressing turn that made it hard for me to even continue, even though I knew it would all end happily. The cruelty of many the characters was way overdone. Mostly, however, I could not swallow the plot conceit that the spunky heroine was so idiotically able to discard her spunk when it came to her supposed family. Anyone with half a brain would have realized that she was in a nest of vipers and where her true loyalties lay; in fact Annike never realizes this and is ready to forgive her mother (oh, come on!) and jump right back into the snake pit, forcing her friends to come to her rescue for a *second* time.

The writing is excellent, and the scenes in Vienna brim with love and life. Readers should be warned that the brilliance of the first few chapters is quickly eclipsed by the dark machinations and cruelties of a sadistic family of brutal faded aristocrats.

This is my all-time favorite book. It is one of those books you just can't put down. I would be dishonest to say it had any flaws. My favorite parts are where Anika (the main character) is listening to her neighbors' aunt's stories, especially about how the jewel shop owner gave the old woman "glass" copies of the jewels she had and the time where she makes the Christmas carp by herself. Eva Ibbotson is a great author anyway, and this is her book "jewel," fitting the story.

The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson is a wonderful old-fashioned story. The cover of the edition that I read includes a NY Time blurb "with echoes of Frances Hodgson Burnett." Perhaps it was the power of suggestion, but I could really see these echoes myself (particularly of "The Secret Garden").

The Star of Kazan tells of Annika, an early 20th century foundling discovered as an infant by the housemaid and cook for a family of Viennese professors (three eccentric siblings). Annika is raised like a daughter by the housemaid and cook (Sigrid and Ellie), and gradually comes to be treated as a niece by the three professors. She works as a servant for them (expected to make herself useful), but also receives Christmas gifts, and a special treat every year on her "Found Day." Annika is also much beloved by her friends from the neighborhood, especially the timid bookworm Pauline and the stalwart Stefan, middle child in a large, struggling family of boys. Annika even befriends the elderly aunt of her wealthy neighbors, offering friendship and attention to a very lonely woman. All in all, Annika has a happy, contented life, secure in her place in the world.

However, Annika has one weakness. She fantasizes repeatedly about the mother who gave her up at birth, imagining her mother appearing on the doorstep and loving her. And lo and behold, one day a grand and beautiful lady appears, and says the magic words "my darling, darling daughter--have I really found you at last!" She whisks Annika away to Northern Germany to the family estate, a crumbling moated castle fallen recently on hard times. There Annika meets her spoiled half-brother Hermann, her self-effacing cousin Gudrun, and the half-gypsy stableboy, Zed. And that's where her adventures really begin.

I did unravel the plot in this book long before Annika did, but I'm not sure that 10-year-olds will piece it all together ahead of time. And despite this, I really LOVED this book. The details are perfect, from the warm kitchen in the Professors' house in Vienna to the gaps in the walls where paintings used to lie in the family castle in Germany. The characters are extremely likable, especially Annika's friends, Zed, Stefan, and Pauline, and her fiercely loving foster mother Ellie. Even the quirky professors, who only gradually come to appreciate Annika, display bravery and loyalty when it's needed. My favorite line in the book (page 268) is from Stefan, who tells Zed that "People belong to the people who care for them." This book has adventure and betrayal, Gothic suspense and grand gestures of bravery. But in the end, it's about what makes a family. I highly recommend this book. Happy reading!

This book review was originally published on my blog, Jen Robinson's Book Page, on July 15th, 2006.

This was an awesome book. I read it for a book project in the seventh grade, and it was amazing. I just love the way that Eva Ibbotson writes, she really goes into a perfect amount of detail, not too much and not too little. I like her historical fiction/fantasy books because they are easy to read and once you pick them up, you can't put them down.

~e~

The Star of Kazan charms readers with well drawn characters in this smooth and appealing novel for everyone. There is less whimsy and more realism then many of Ibbotson's other novels for children. Although the writing isn't always perfectly clear it is still very readable and all the plot twists are cleverly tied up in the end.

This book stands far above most of what I've lately read. It shines with intelligence and wit--I laughed aloud often. Who could resist a story that includes a hymn called "Slay and Smite If God Demands It"? Or an aristocratic family whose motto is "Stand Aside Ye Vermin Who Oppose Us!"? There's a luscious setting replete with good food, endearing characters, delightfully horrid characters, and a splendidly entwined, compelling, and satisfying plot. It's the first book by Ibbotson I've read; I plan to read more.