The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book I: The Mysterious Howling

by Maryrose Wood

Book Overview

Found running wild in the forest of Ashton Place, the Incorrigibles are no ordinary children: Alexander, age ten or thereabouts, keeps his siblings in line with gentle nips; Cassiopeia, perhaps four or five, has a bark that is (usually) worse than her bite; and Beowulf, age somewhere-in-the-middle, is alarmingly adept at chasing squirrels.

Luckily, Miss Penelope Lumley is no ordinary governess. Only fifteen years old and a recent graduate...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061791059
• ISBN13: 9780061791055
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: Balzer & Bray/Harperteen
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

We have listened to the series 3x

Excellent storytelling in writing and performance. Kids were 1st and 3rd first time through. Current listening is at 3rf and 6th. Pausing to collect all the sayings of Agatha Swanburne and to discuss history of bicycles, start of WW1 and Russian revolution etc.

Cute and funny but mystery was lacking

Where this was a cute book I though the book was going to have more of a mystery plot through it, buuuut the mystery doesn't really start till a good 80% into the book. I assume the last 50 pages where the mystery starts, is what the over arching plot of the series follows. Which I guess is interesting in theory, but I don't really feel compelled to find out what the end of it is. For a middle grade, it is cute and comical, but without really delivering what the book was advertised as, a mystery with a mysterious setting. A mystery it is not.

Mysterawoo

When you're a parent or a librarian or a teacher or a bookseller who reads a lot of children's books, you sometimes wish for fun. Children's books are often by their very nature "fun". But there's fun that's strained and trying to appeal to everyone and then there's fun that appears to be effortless. You read a book, are transported elsewhere, lose track of time, and never want the story to end. It's the kind of fun a person encounters in a book like Book One of "The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place". In "The Mysterious Howling" you meet a book that's a little like "Jane Eyre", a little like Jane Yolen's "Children of the Wolf", and a little like nothing at all. Pure pleasure for kids, for adults, for everyone. Treat yourself. If you were to hire a governess from the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, you would find yourself with a young lady of exceptionable talents, knowledge, and intellect. Such is the case when Lord Frederick and Lady Constance hire fifteen-year-old Penelope Lumley to be governess of three children. The catch? Well, they're not your average nippers, these three. Found on the sprawling acreage of Lord Frederick's estate, the children appear to have been raised entirely by wolves. Literally. Their new guardians have dubbed them "The Incorrigibles" and are expecting miracles. Now it is up to Miss Lumley to get them civilized and educated or it's to the orphanage with them and unemployment for her. And there are certainly strange goings on at Ashton Place, that's for certain. Does someone have it in for the children? Where does Lord Frederick constantly disappear to? Is there something nasty lurking in the attic? Fortunately for everyone Miss Lumley is made of sturdy stuff, and it will take more than a mystery or two to keep her from fulfilling her duties to the fullest. Since the story takes place in the year when "Moby Dick" first came out, we can place the period of this piece somewhere around the early to mid-1850s. However, this does nothing to prevent author Maryrose Wood from leaping forward and backwards in time in terms of the narration. It is not uncommon for the story to say something along the lines of "nowadays it would make a fine documentary for broadcast on a nature channel on cable television" and then go right back into the past again. The effect is mildly jarring the first time it happens, but as it goes on the reader gets a feel for Wood's style. Books of this nature (which is to say, gothic books for kids) these days have a tendency to be compared to the works of Lemony Snicket. I would argue that there is very little in this book that is similar to Mr. Snicket's works, except perhaps the delightful vocabulary (though Snicket never seriously attempted Latin the way this book does) and the narrator's tendency to become a confidant of the reader. What is most remarkable is how well constructed the entire endeavor is. Ms. Wood manages to make the whole story fit together