School Library Journal Review
Gr 4--6--The story begins with a six-line poem under a small, rectangular image of a tough, leafless tree with white blossoms. The slightly overexposed, photorealistic style continues throughout, as a girl and her three older brothers drive through a desert landscape. The four leave the car to pick flowers for their mother, but the boys run off, reciting lines from the poem, leaving the girl to follow them into a silent, massive building, where they unwisely drink, eat, and are therefore trapped. The girl, cleverly, does not eat or drink, and makes a deal with a huge lion called the Teller to get her brothers back. She keeps her bargain, and the four reach their mother, who seems to be staying in a medical facility (bed with wheels, no decorations); from the girl, the mother intuits what happened on their trip. The whole story has the haunting, ominous feel of an old, dark fairy tale; in the illustrations, which have a bleached quality, the human characters are often dwarfed by the landscape, buildings, or animals. VERDICT This spare, atmospheric book may require some book-talking to find an audience, although it could be used in a unit on fairy tales and legends.--Jenny Arch
Publisher's Weekly Review
Four white-presenting youths on the road follow a poem to their peril in this dark desert fantasy from Pinfold (Greenling). On a car trip with her three brothers, the narrator suggests they pull over and pick flowers for their mother, whom they're headed to visit in a hospital. When one brother sings the first line of a nonsense rhyme ("White roses we follow, toward Teller's hollow"), and another follows, the fragments hint at mischief to come: the girl follows her siblings into a vast, forbidding edifice, where they drink from a spring, eat from a marvelous feast, dive into a pool--and turn into dolphins. The girl wants the family to be on their way, but the smooth-tongued lion who oversees the place has other ideas ("You belong here"). He promises to restore the brothers to human form if the girl does not eat or drink for three days--then taunts her with a sumptuous banquet. The girl keeps her promise, but a small misstep invokes a curse that eerily suggests a connection to the past. Chilly, precision-drafted spreads with dazzling architectural motifs confer gravitas on this haunting fairy tale centering a steely character who remains resolute in the face of trickery. Ages 5--9. (Nov.)
