Watch Hollow by Gregory Funaro

Genre: Middle Grades, Fantasy, Adventure

Source: I received an advance reader copy to facilitate my review. The opinion expressed here are my own.

I love reading middle grade books because I teach middle grade students. This is one that will be on my shelves the day it comes out.  Who wouldn’t love a story that had middle school age kids with all of their issues, monsters, a spooky house with talking animals?  On top of that there is a monster in the woods called the Garr.

The book opens with Lucy Tinker sitting in the display window of her dad’s clock repair shop. She is sitting there because she is in trouble. Her brother is trying to help her father. As they begin to close up a gentleman enters and makes a proposal that seems too good to be true. Mr. Quigley wants Mr. Tinker to repair a cuckoo clock in an old house he has recently acquired. He throws down a large amount of gold as an advance.  Up to this point the family has had it financially tough. It doesn’t help that their mother had died from cancer two year before. Lucy seems to be the one who is often impulsive yet seems to be the glue holding them all together. 

Mr. Tinker agrees to move to the house and fix the clock. It seems that Mr. Quigley didn’t tell them everything they should have known. The house is very peculiar. There are talking animals. The woods seem to be alive with something evil within.  Lucy can tell that something is not right. There father is thinking about how far the money would go.  Trouble is not that far away. This book definitely takes you on a journey. The characters are very well done. My students could easily identify with them.   Some of the problems they face are the same problems my own students face each day.  This has easily become one of my favorites of this year.  The adventure, magic, overall story will draw you in and hold you there for some time.  I highly recommend this book.