Book Review: Eleventh Hour – Graeme Base November 20, 2009
Posted by Realitybypass in Book Review, Children Books.trackback
Sounds like the books from October have been received and well loved. Thanks again to everyone who entered and stay tuned for Christmas give aways. 
Today’s Book Review comes from my local book club last night. Due to busy holidays we decided to share our favorite picture books and drink hot chocolate. Really not a bad way to spend the evening.
One of the most fascinating books which was talked about was Graeme Base’s Eleventh Hour. This is a book with absolutely beautiful illustrations which tells the story of Horace the Elephant who is celebrating his eleventh birthday on the eleventh day of November. He invites eleven friends to come and play games and have a feast at 11 o’clock. Are we sensing a theme here? However the feast is stolen just before eating time and now you need to figure out who did it. There are plenty of clues through the book and ever illustration includes codes and cryptograms. The book is absolutely fascinating to look at and try to solve and if you need a little help there is a sealed portion in the back which gives you instructions for where to start looking.
Great for both kids and grownups. I think it may have to be a Christmas pressie at my house this year.
Genre: Picture Book
Age: 8+ for reading level, all ages will enjoy the pictures, solving all the clues may be a 12+ or with parental help.
Content: Family friendly
Overall: 5 paws
Jana
Mmmm, codes and cryptograms. That’s what I lived on from age 8 to 14. My best friend and I would trade secret messages regularly. Our poor 3rd grade teacher had no idea that these weird columns of letters and numbers taking up entire sheets of paper were crypto keys. She just knew it was interfering with class time, and confiscated them. One day in 6th grade a girl (A GIRL??) stole one of our code books. Our elaborate Rube Goldberg plans of revenge were all bypassed when we just swiped it back from her desk during lunch.
One of the oddest memories from that time is that I still remember the alphabet in frequency order, most common to least: ETAONRISHDLFCMUGYPWBVKXJQZ. It comes in handy when yelling at Vanna White what letter you want to see next. “No, not B! The next consonant that makes sense is obviously N!”