The King in the Window - Hardcover

Gopnik, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 078681862X ISBN 13: 9780786818624

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion, 2005

Synopsis

Oliver Parker is a ten-year-old American boy miserably trapped in Paris, where his father is stationed as a journalist. Intimidated by his French school and its prickly teachers, oppressed by gray and wintry Paris, and feeling curiously remote from his father--who spends more and more time staring dully into his computer screen--Oliver longs to return to America.

About this title

About the Author

Adam Gopnik has written for The New Yorker since 1986. His previous books include Paris to the Moon, a New York Times best seller, and Americans in Paris, a literary anthology. He lives in New York with his wife and their two children.

Reviews

Grade 5-9–A fantasy that is as ambitious in theme, sophisticated in setting, and cosmic in scope as the works of Madeline L'Engle. The unlikely and eponymous hero is Oliver Parker, an 11-year-old American boy living in Paris with his mother and journalist father. After he finds a prize in his slice of cake on the night of Epiphany and dons the customary gilt-paper crown, the boy is plunged into a battle over nothing less than control of the universe. His enemy is the dreaded Master of Mirrors, who rose to power during the reign of Louis XIV, when Parisians developed technology for making sheet glass. This faceless, evil being, capable of capturing souls through mirrors and enslaving them in an alternate world that lies beyond all mirrors, now seeks to dominate the entire universe by mounting a quantum computer on the Eiffel Tower. Oliver's mission is to defeat the Master of Mirrors and save his father's stolen soul. Empowered by the ideas of the French Enlightenment–logic, rhetoric, and his understanding of the difference between irony and metaphor–Oliver is aided by a wild assortment of living allies, along with spirits from the past who dwell in windows, longtime enemies of the Master of Mirrors. Nostradamus, Racine, Molière, and Alice Liddell make guest appearances. The story starts slowly, for its complicated and rather far-fetched premises require quite a bit of exposition, but rises to an action-packed climax. The book's strengths are its engaging characters and its lovingly and specifically evoked setting.–Margaret A. Chang, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams
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Gr. 5-8. Gopnik, New Yorker writer and author of the adult best-seller Paris to the Moon (2000), tries his hand at writing for children, with mixed results. Eleven-year-old Oliver Parker is an American living uncomfortably in Paris, where he feels out of place and ignored by his father, a journalist busy on a story. Through a series of unexpected and magical events, Oliver learns that he is the King of the Windows, the leader of a court of window wraiths centered at the palace of Versailles. The history of the wraiths and their battle with the malevolent Master of the Windows seems, at times, interminable and is so filled with twists and turns that it would be impossible to follow if Gopnik did not periodically recap; the confusion wrought by stepping through a mirror takes on a literal meaning for the readers. On the plus side, Gopnik writes beautifully, especially when he is describing Paris and his characters (the enigmatic Mrs. Pearson is especially well drawn). But it will take a child who loves, or is as intrigued by French history as Gopnik is to carry on to the finish. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 078681862X
• ISBN 13: 9780786818624
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416