From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6–When Alma, an 11-year-old foster child, finds herself alone and without a home in a small French city, she decides that the best possible place to live would be in the ancient cathedral at the center of the town. While there, she begins to uncover a sick secret kept within the walls of this holy site. The children of the town have been disappearing, and the cathedral's mysterious tour guide may nurse evil intentions that no one suspects. As Alma investigates, she befriends a bitter old street cleaner and some fellow foster children in a race to save innocent lives. Wizowaty occasionally writes in lovely prose, as in passages such as, She had a sudden vision of herself as the hands of an old-fashioned clock that had somehow got detached from the face where they belonged and were now walking around free but dazed. Unfortunately, the book is lamentably slow to reveal the evil of the title. Other problems come in terms of character and motivation. While the villain's obsessions are clear, his motives for kidnapping children (as well as disposing of them) are foggy at best, and readers are likely to be disappointed in the story's pace and sudden conclusion. Though a wonderful way to introduce youngsters to the enchantment and lure of old European cathedrals, Wizowaty's book is beautifully written but unmoored.
–Elizabeth Bird, New York Public Library Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Gr. 5-8. Wizowaty brings a distinct sense of place and equally distinct adult sensibility to her debut children's book, a quiet novel that teeters on the edge of horror. A village in northern France is the backdrop for the descriptive telling, which interlaces the perspectives of three characters: orphaned Alma, who stumbles upon a plot to kill a group of children; eccentric old Barlach, who, by helping Alma, assuages his own conscience; and Malocchio, whose madness has found focus in the village's grand cathedral. The action doesn't accelerate until very near the end, then plays out quickly and dramatically. What compels here is the disturbing idea that evil can thrive in the holiest of places, and Wizowaty, whose style cleaves more closely to Lovecraft's than to King's, unlocks a store of increasingly chilly connections that propel patient readers forward to see if good will out. However richly imagined the book is, though, the setting and pace won't be sufficient to win wide youth readership. Best for large collections.
Stephanie ZvirinCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
