http://hollybooknotes.blogspot.com/20... ( )

A wonderful book about a young girl (Theodosia) who can see ancient Egyptian curses. Her parents both work at a museum, her father as a curator and her mother in the field. Theodosia spends more time at the museum trying to dodger her parents, a sneaky curator, and school, than she does at home. While at the museum she researches Egyptian curses and tries her best to remove curses from objects that her mother sends back from her digs in Egypt before somebody gets hurt by them.

my cover says "Theodosia Throckmorton and the Serpents of Chaos." Apparently, the title got changed. Weird.

Theodosia (her last name remains Throckmorton--it's only the book title that's been changed) is 11 years old and lives in London. The story takes place in 1906.

Theo's parents are archaeologists--her father runs a museum of antiquities while her mother is in the field. Her younger brother is away at school, something Theo's been working very hard to avoid for herself for two reasons: she feels it's a waste of her time, and she's busy enough as it is, trying to protect everyone from curses.

See, Theo can sense ancient curses on many of the artifacts in the museum, and she's developed ways of neutralizing them. And nobody else seems to realize they're there at all. With her mother and brother gone, Theo and her father spend most of their time at the museum, where he tends to lose himself in work, and she ends up spending her nights sleeping in a sarcophagus. It's safer.

When Theo's mother returns from her latest expedition, she brings the Heart of Egypt, which is seriously cursed. Theo needs to return it to Egypt, but before she can accomplish that, she teams up with her little brother and a street thief to foil evil villains, falls in with a secret society, accidentally curses her cat,... well, life is pretty hectic.

It's a wonderfully exciting story that doesn't talk down to kids, and provides quite a few situations they (or an adult who remembers being a child) can relate to. Even though Theodosia does possess a special gift, and her parents are neglectful and oblivious to the dangers she sees so clearly, the adults in this book aren't painted as bumbling idiots. Theo's parents and the adults of the secret society do their best with the information they have, and Theo knows when she needs the assistance of adults. Likewise, the children are neither completely helpless nor stupid. It's a nice balance. ( )

I loved this book!

My first clue I was going to love it was the dedication: "To clever girls everywhere who get tired of feeling like no one's listening."

Theo is nothing if not a clever little girl. But she's also deliciously sassy, which kept me chuckling throughout the book.

The book is set in London in the early twentieth century, and I'm a sucker for British language in a children's book (thank you, J.K. Rowling)—lots of "bother" and "boiled cabbage" and "don't give a fig."

I gobbled this book up as fast as I could, and now I have to wait until the library gets copies of the next book in the series, Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris. It just so happens to release today, but the store-release-to-library-shelving interval will keep me waiting for at least a couple weeks. Bother. ( )

This was a wonderful book! Imagine Hermione Granger crossed with Indiana Jones in turn of the century London and you have pretty well got a handle on Theodosia. I thought the story maintained even pacing throughout. The characters were likeable, with the exception of the required bad guys and an overly stuffy grandmother. The locations were well-described and the characters internal dialogue was delightful. My only complaints would be the characterization of Theo's father, it seemed overly harsh and I would have liked a better explanation of what happens to some of the bad guys at the very end, otherwise I have nothing but praise. It is clear that LaFevers did a fair amount of research regarding turn of the century Egypt as well. The descriptions, though brief due to the genre of the tale, read as though they were pulled from travel books written during that time period, particularly A. Edward's "A Thousand Miles Up The Nile".

All too often I suspect that adult readers of children's books have a tendency to read the book with an adults eyes. Books like Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos are simply wonderful when read through the eyes of a child, or an adult who can easily suspend their disbelief, otherwise the reader does the author and the story a disservice. ( )