Customer Reviews

The Glass Table

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I purchased this book a couple of weeks back from Amazon. I'm a keen follower of twitter and I saw Leigh K Cunningham and started to follow her. I became intrigued with her story and decided to read it for my self. Today's youth are extremely savvy and expect to be treated as such, Leigh K Cunningham does just that.

Her characters are all believable, children should have no trouble relating to them at all. as for the story it moves along nicely while cementing images into the brain for future use. I think the kids of today will love this story because it is so relevant with what's happening now in our world. All kids these days have knowledge about global warming and protecting our environment. So I'm sure there's plenty of room in their hearts for the Glass Table. Well done Leigh K Cunningham.

K C Webb

Cunningham easily combines elements of fantasy into her cautionary tale for young readers, the first in a series, about the need for conservation.

Twelve children disappear while swimming at Lake Como during the summer school holidays. While the children's parents and police assume the worst, the children have been cast into a spell by the witch who lives at the lake. Six of the children become river spirits, and six are wood spirits.

There might be some undertone about being disadvantaged as the wood spirits certainly get the short end of the stick - the river spirits can escape the spell by swimming through the river mouth, but a wood spirit perishes with each escape. When Toby Witherspoon escapes, rivalries and mistrust make life in the river even more difficult. Add to this, they have to find a way to break a complex spell.

There is definitely a message about working together, trust and comraderie, and overcoming the issues that caused a divide. The two groups do work together on one threat - a development on the banks of their river, but the story concludes with uncertainty. Hopefully the sequel will deliver the ending we're all wishing for.

Action-packed and abounding with quirky, likable characters, this small gem has the power to keep middle-grade readers entranced. Kids who love fantasy with humor will enjoy The Glass Table.

My daughter loved The Glass Table. She enjoyed it so much, she kept coming into the living room to read parts of it to us, so my wife and I read it also to make more sense of her excitable excerpts. In particular, my daughter related to Ming Zhi Chen, the Chinese girl whose mother had escaped China with Ming when she was a baby to avoid the baby traders. She was just learning about this in school, and so it struck a chord with her. She also loved Jack, and might even have a crush on him. Jack is the leader of the river spirits. He had run away to the lake because he believed his parents no longer cared about him. My daughter was a little distressed by the part in the book when Jack returns home as a spirit, unseen and unheard, and life had returned to 'normal', but he stayed around and was able to discover that his parents missed him very much. From a parent's perspective, I did like the way this was told as we often don't make the time to tell our kids how important they are.

This really is an unassuming, precious story with all sorts of positive, hopeful messages for children. My wife and I both enjoyed it as well. The story didn't end on the last page though, so now we have to wait for the sequel.

When twelve children vanish from the vicinity of Lake Como, their parents and the police have all kinds of theories, but the truth is beyond their wildest imaginings. In fact, a witch has cast a spell on the children, turning them into spirits. There are six water spirits living beneath the River Kai, and six wood spirits, and a glass table setting out rules which they all must follow on pain of death. They are charged with persuading a group of money-grabbing businessmen to drop their ideas for developing the area and preserve it as a nature reserve where the witch can live in peace. If they can't do this, they will never be able to go back to their former lives. Soon, the two groups of spirits are at war with one another, largely due to the machinations of the selfish, bossy Zeb, resulting in the death of one of the spirits... The plot is absorbing and page-turning and the characters are vividly drawn, from brainbox Ming to Madam Aurora the colourful clairvoyant, and Officer Qwerk, forever at odds with the grumpy chief of police. It requires a feat of imagination to combine humour, fantasy and adventure with an ecological message, but Leigh Cunningham has pulled it off and I can't wait for the next book in the series.