Clabbernappers

A book fraught with danger,adventure,fun,and strategy, it makes a wonderful fairy-tale. It's a book that will be a favorite forever on your bookshelf! The way the sailing ships got goofed up with chess pieces made me laugh out loud! I recomend this book for everyone, especially for kids,(because I'm pretty young myself!) Happy reading!

I would wholeheartedly recommend Len Bailey's new book, "Clabbernappers". It was an extremely creative adventure story about an eleven year old boy, Danny Ray, who at the county fair, gets a choice of a prize or walking through a door marked "Adventure". Being the adventurous type, he goes through the door and finds himself offering to find the missing queen for the King of Elidor in time for the Great Chess Game. The story takes place on a chessboard with the chess pieces as ships on the "Checkered Sea". It's the good guys against the bad guys- Danny Ray and his friends on the ship "Hog", fighting off the Sarksa pirates (which are big black ant-like creatures) in search of the queen. There are gargoyles, bats, ghosts and countless other creatures in this creative novel, whose hero, Danny Ray, is one really confident boy. He never lets himself think that he cannot accomplish what he has set out to do. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to read a fast-paced adventure set in a completely different place than they've read about before. It was well written; I could visualize the characters and places in the story. I enjoyed it very much and am going to have my kids (ages 8, 10, and 12) read it next!

The Sarksa pirates abduct the Winter Queen, putting King Krystal of Elidor into a tizzy. He needs to mount a rescue, but who would undertake a seemingly suicidal mission. Krystal knows his champion must be the most courageous soul in the universe and no one in Elidor comes close so the monarch turns to the Dream Machine to summon a special hero to save the Queen. Conceptually the King's idea should have worked, but he has doubts when the Dream Machine brings him the best bull rider in the Oklahoma Junior Division rodeo cowboy Danny Ray who was lifted from a Cherokee County amusement park. The monarch is skeptical not because Danny is from earth; he has misgivings because the "champion" is eleven years old. However, Danny Ray upon grasping why they sent for him, plans to prove the royal dude wrong by rescuing the Queen. His crosses the Checkered Sea with the help of Sea Captain Quigglewigg and the Clabbernappers while pirates, an evil monarch, the malevolent Nightmare Queen, and a nasty ghost attempt to kill him. Middle school students will agree with confident Danny Ray that "CLABBERNAPPERS is the best dang adventure ever" as the young rodeo champion seems to land in one precarious situation after another while befriending interesting allies. The story line never slows down whether Danny Ray persuades his callers that he is the man albeit preadolescent for the job until the final altercation after a series of confrontations with the bad dudes. Len Bailey provides a wonderful young adult fantasy that is not a coming of age tale, but instead a youthful intrepid defender performing what he thought would be an itty bitty task. Harriet Klausner

Well-paced, colorful adventure with original characters galore, continual twists and surprises, and through it all a delight in language that sparkles!