Rosie No-Name and the Forest of Forgetting

Owen, Gareth

ISBN 10: 0823412660 ISBN 13: 9780823412662

Publisher: Holiday House, 1996

Synopsis

While trying to save a kitten from a fire, Rosie falls through the staircase and somehow ends up landing in a magic forest where she is befriended by a boy named Alistar and confronted by two evil sisters, Sybilla and Grimoulde.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 4-6?This book has all the elements of any time-travel fantasy: Rosie is transported (indirectly) by a fall through a staircase into an unfamiliar forest, where she forgets her name, meets and befriends a boy in old-fashioned clothing, and is captured and imprisoned by a mysterious witchlike woman. The girl eventually escapes and saves herself and her new friend, only to wake up and find that she was in a coma the whole time. Unfortunately, the elements never come together into a cohesive whole and too many unexplained threads make the book more confusing than compelling: Who was the girl in the white dress, and why does she drop out of the story? Why does the forest make Rosie forget? Who is the witch and what is her interest in Rosie? And why doesn't the grown-up Allstair remember her? Episodes in the book happen too quickly and are not given the time or attention needed to make this a convincing fantasy. Pass on this title?buy extra copies of old favorites like C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Macmillan, 1950), Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden (HarperCollins, 1969), or Elizabeth M. Pope's The Perilous Gard (Puffin, 1992) instead.?Carrie Schadle, New York Public Library
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

This time-travel tale begins with a prologue set in 1916 when a witch pulls a young girl under the waters of a dark pool. When present-day Rosie falls from a crumbling staircase and finds herself face to face with a smiling girl in a long white dress, readers understand that Rosie has been transported back to 1916. The girl runs off with Rosie's diary, teasing her to follow, and follow her she must for Rosie remembers nothing of herself but her name. Her pursuit of the girl takes her into a dark forest fraught with dangers, and a complicated plot ensues involving the witch, an evil raven, and a black carriage of death. The well-realized setting and Rosie's fantastic predicament never come together convincingly; readers won't believe that a few hours after the raven dive-bombs Rosie's horse, she fails to recognize the bird on the witch's shoulder or to comprehend the danger of her situation. Promising a lot, this still fails to satisfy. (Fiction. 8-12) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Holiday House
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0823412660
• ISBN 13: 9780823412662
• Binding: Library Binding
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32