Harry Moon is excited to present his science project to his class, but to his surprise, his beloved science teacher has been replaced with a new substitute named Professor Einstone. He doesn’t believe in magic, and Harry realizes that something is off when he asks his other teachers about the new substitute. They all have glassy eyes, and they never answer his questions. When even more changes come to his school, Harry knows that something is up. The adults don’t seem to want to do anything about it, so it is up to Harry and his friends to save his school!
I loved Honey Moon when I read one of her stories a few months ago, so it was interesting to see their world from Harry’s point of view. I liked seeing their family dynamic, and how supportive they are of each other. Even when Harry and Honey are fooling around and cause a homemade volcano to erupt in their living room, their father is upset, but then admits that he only really got upset because of his hard day at work. In my opinion, I would have been upset anyways to have disgusting homemade lava all over the living room, but it was still nice to see such a positive family dynamic.
Can I just say how much I love the world that the Moons live in? Even though Sleepy Hollow they have a mostly-normal lifestyle, there is magic and strange things happen from time-to-time. This allows Harry and Honey to have the strange adventures that they do, but they are still normal kids going to school at heart. I would have loved to read this book as an elementary-middle schooler because I could relate to the kids without feeling like I was relating to fake fantasy characters. Not to mention the book is around 200 pages, making it a perfect size of a book for a kid who loves to read and doesn’t feel like reading Rainbow Fairy books but isn’t old enough for larger books with more difficult subject matter.
The plot of this book moved smoothly, and there were no plot holes that I noticed. Even though there was fantasy, there was nothing too scary for younger kids. I ended up laughing by the end and cheering on Harry and his friends throughout.
There was character development as we got to see Harry’s father go through different stages in his job. I won’t say too much about that, but he definitely changed a lot in this story. Harry stayed the same mostly, but that was fine as he still experienced different things with his friends.
There are illustrations in this novel, but they do not take over the pages. I love how the pictures were drawn, as it reminded me of reading the old children’s mystery novels such as Cam Jansen or Jigsaw Jones. It was hand-drawn, which might influence kids to try to draw their own scenes for the book, making it even more interactive.
I did not see any editing errors in the advanced version of this novel, so the final version should be nothing less than perfect!
I would recommend this book to children aged 7 and up. It would definitely benefit advanced readers who are not ready for tougher subject matter but would like larger books to read. It would also help older children still struggling with reading to read a book with semi-simple words but a non-babyish plot.
I received an advance copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 6 out of 5 stars