100 Cupboards

1/17/25: SIX TIMES IT'S TAKEN ME SIX READS TO REALIZE THAT DOTTY AND FRANK WENT INTO ENDOR ALL THOSE YEARS AGO!!! grabbing henrietta and shaking her girl you are so dumb. maybe DONT open the black cupboard and maybe the witch wouldnt be out in the wild now who could have guessed (i am a henrietta apologist except for that entire saga)
my favorite part of this book is just how zeke shows up and is like ok guess i go here now ?
(EVERYBODY LIKES ZEKE AND I WOULDNT WANT A WITCH TO GAS HIM)
blake is my g still
baseball is magic brb writing an essay about little magics in fantasy books
the letters are SO funny actually. whimpering child, reprehensible and a shame to all who pursue wisdom. enemy, hazard, and human mishap. going to start calling show more people that
anastasia and richard are both insane characters
i love you so much cupboards to other worlds (that are really all the same world connected by trees :))
frank and dotty penny my unbothered eldest sister queen (she should've let anastasia kill nimiane)
erm yea i will always love this book. kind of funny to me most of this series is just henry desperately having to come into his heritage because of HENRIETTA and then zeke getting dragged into it and simply not leaving
Westmores!! Sons of Amram!!!
hi darius hi monmouth hi eli fitzfaeren hi carnassus hi byzanthemum hi badon hill

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10/24/22: bros what am i doing reading this Again. it's the FIFTH TIME! i literally have been reading this instead of doing the million and two homework assignments i have to do. i am literally exhausted don't run barn chores in 70 degree weather :D . anyway like - cupboards. Henry. Henrietta and Penny and Anastasia. Frank and Dotty. Raggants. Zeke. everyone likes Zeke!!! Nimiane and Bast. mildly excited for everything go insane in dandelion fire now if i ever get time to read it I love mondays which is not something I thought I'd ever say. but mondays are OFF and FREE and of course i spent it rereading a random middle grade book i've read four times already. cupboards are cool I'm going to go stare at the list of cupboards again. I want to have cupboards. Henrietta is SUPER annoying and stupid in this one but so was I at 11 probably x100 so whatever. understandable. i love rereading books and realizing what Certain Things mean because i know the full story. this book is literally so tame compared to the next ones that's funny for some reason. I am so tired I am just rambling in here WAIT WHAT IS MONMOUTH DOING IN THE EPILOGUE ??? ok so this book was written in 2007 and i would've been 3-4 then which is legitimately INSANE but it is funny reading about Frank and his old computer and Internet store. TWO THOUSAND SEVEN? that was literally 15 years ago. WHAT. i just realized that ??? it's not even 10pm and i am like going to black out at this point this is such a revelation to me (that is 5/6ths of my life). cupboards are cool i am mildly fascinated by the workings of them even though they're just like vaguely unexplained by the clever plot device of Henry simply choosing not to read that part of the letter but i feel 12 again reading this book for the first time suddenly. this had made me realize that Door Before would've been set in like the 70s-80s at latest if my approximate timeline works out WHAT THE LITERAL HECK ! !!!! shoutout to Ashtown tbh. uuhhhhhh also shoutout to the faeren lmao . MORDECAI! RIP to frank tbh I have never considered exactly how !RJIo2375135u his story is. his home world be BRUTAL lmao i have been thinking about it quite a bit and i have come to the simple conclusion that it is absolutely harsh on everyone but that is how medieval ish fantasy is like. 2007 was 15 years ago??! im still not really over that mfw. shoutout to Blake the cat i want a Blake except i wouldn't shove him in the toilet as a four year old RIP to henry but I'm different. goodnight I forgot everything else I was thinking during this book

edit, 25 minutes later: i opened my laptop for the sole reason of editing this to say that i find it hysterical that Wilson only deals with 12-13 year old MCs. 7th grade boys are another breed of Girl What Is Going On!!!!! they are somewhat fascinating creatures that i do not envision as book protagonists thumbsup ok to be fair it's been 6 years since i was 12 but still. yeeowhchh. Henry and Cyrus and Sam and Alex and what's his face from Boys of Blur and Leepike Ridge you know et cetera. I am still incredibly tired but I don't want to sleep because now I've pulled out Dandelion Fire!!! life choices. have to be up at 6 tomorrow bro

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i have no idea when i wrote this down:
everytime i reread this book i suddenly gain a new appreciation for the cupboards
and zeke show less

What a fantastic read!! I've tired of children's fantasy, where the main character discovers himself magic. I love the tension and suspense the Wilson creates by authoring a character unsure of himself, uncertain to act, and full of instincts he might not want to follow. The thumping that led Henry to pry off the plaster in his room, finding cupboard after cupboard is downright spooky, but intriguing. Each is locked of course in its own special way. Why were they plastered over? Who would do such a thing? Some are beautifully made and bright, others dark and foreboding. Henry has a physical reaction to one in particular. Another, once opened allows cold air to rush into his room, bring the scent of pine, cedar and rain into his hot, show more Kansas attic bedroom. It's worrying that this door comes open again during the night and it rains into his room, leaving a puddle and worms on his floor. Does that mean that the cupboards can be opened from the other side as well, leaving something or someone to travel through to his bedroom?!?!? A must read! The first in a series that I hope continues in the same delightful entertaining vein.... show less

Opening the door to another dimension.

This was almost two books in one. One was about Henry, a young boy whose parents go missing, forcing him to move in with his aunt and uncle, and a sci-fi/fantasy story about a room with portals into other worlds and a fight against an evil sorceress. While the fantasy story was good, and I'm looking forward to reading about more worlds in the next installment, I really preferred the story of Henry. His parents sheltered him from almost everything, never letting him have soda, controlling his pasttimes, even sending him to boarding school with a protective helmet he was supposed to wear during any physical activity. It's only when he meets his Uncle Frank, who promptly gives him a pocketknife, lets show more him sleep outdoors, buys him a baseball mitt, that he realizes what he's been missing. With Frank's seemingly casual friendship, he begins to develop confidence. A good reminder for some of those hovering parents that kids need space to try their wings.

I'm looking forward to reading more, mostly to see how Henry develops. show less

100 Cupboards is the second novel by N.D. Wilson and I must say that it is many, many things: deliciously dark, insightful, suspenseful, and filled with magic.

Henry York's parents have been kidnapped biking in South America, and so he is sent off to live with his aunt, uncle, and three girl cousins on their farm in Kansas. Henry is not a farm child; for that matter he's like no other child as he's never had a soda, thrown a baseball, owned a ball glove, or used a pocket knife, among many other things.

All the characters are delightfully odd, from his overprotective Aunt Dotty to his Uncle Frank, who was charmingly excentiric; he sells tumbleweeds for $700.00 a pop on the internet, and on the other hand, shows Henry a better way to live, show more to love soda, baseball, and knives and ride in the back of a pick-up truck.. The three cousins, Anastasia, Henrietta, and Penelope, reminded me very strongly of the interactions between the girls in Little Women.

The novel takes its time setting up the situation and slowly but surely revealing the mystery of the cupboards, all of which is magically fun. The mystery builds for close to a hundred pages before Henry really starts working with the cupboards, but there is never a boring moment. Even though the book is written for 10-12 year olds', it is a delightfully light and fun read. show less

First off: ages 9-12? The writing is way to complicated and the book is too gory for this age group . . .

I'm usually a sucker for beautiful, lyrical writing. But sometimes, I feel like authors try too hard to attain this. N.D. Wilson writes as though he's trying to make every sentence a masterpiece and, although I can understand why he'd attempt for it, it doesn't end well (at least in my opinion). His sentences are clunky and really take away from any immediacy in the story.

And for the story itself, I felt the idea BEHIND the story was more interesting than the book's execution of it. Henry York goes to Henry, Kansas to stay after his parents were kidnapped. In Henry, Henry finds 100 cupboards in his house that lead to different show more worlds.

However, the book took maybe 100 pages to get to any point of action (the opening of the cupboards). And after that, everything seemed suddenly rushed and without point. Henrietta (Henry's cousin) gets lost in a cupboard suddenly because she's curious and he has to find her. Suddenly he finds a random boy that follows him back for no reason. Suddenly a villain is introduced: a witch with no real backstory, no motives, and no personality traits other than PURE EVILNESS. She's one of the most cliched evil characters I've ever read about, complete with a cat to stroke and all.

Worse than this, is the characters. They don't really have personalities. Dialogue seems to bounce off of them with no real thought behind it. Henry, for example, was a character I could not identify with at all, and it's beyond me how any young adult could identify with him. The apathy he has for his parents' plight is almost inhuman. At one point he says himself how he wished he'd be more worried about them, but really doesn't care. When he finds out secrets about his parents or even himself, he brushes them off. There's no shock or anything!

"Oh, your parents weren't actually your parents."

Henry: "Oh, okay." And that's that. The matter ends.

I'm being really mean and sharp-tongued; I apologize, but this book just didn't do it for me. It's a series and I can find it in almost every book store, so I guess it's doing well. I guess it does have a good audience somewhere, which is good for N.D. Wilson . . . show less

I love books that don't have any predictable turn of events and are strong on characters. Henry has been sent to the town of Henry, Kansas to stay with his uncle Frank and his aunt Dotty. He has three girl cousins to also contend with - Anastasia (who never shuts up and is an annoying 9 year old) Henrietta ( same age as Henry and also called Henry for short) and Penny, the oldest ( who is inlove with a boy called Zeke). Henry's parents are travel writers and he has been a token child - looked after by a series of nannies and boarding schools until now as his parents have been captured. In the room where Henry sleeps, he hears scratching behind the plaster and after scratching away himself; discovers nearly 100 small doors set into the show more wall. Henry also soon discovers that his Uncle Frank seems to be a very lost soul who doesn't quite fit in in this world and that his grandfather (who died 12 months ago) has a bedroom in the house that has never been opened because the door is stuck.
Henrietta and Henry soon discover that behind the door lie other worlds but it is the one near his bed that causes them the most grief as there is a creature inside trying to get out. I can't say anymore as it will give away the plot of a very quirky book which takes the Narnia idea and gives it a sinister reverse twist. show less

I had heard N. D. Wilson's books were a little above the ordinary fare for young readers, with that hint of timelessness about them that marks books like the Chronicles of Narnia and the Borrowers series. So I was excited to finally read one of his books — especially since he is writing the screenplay for C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce. Gotta check this guy out!

I quickly fell in love with the language and writing style, and felt immediately Wilson's skill in writing real characters. He clearly understands kids and portrays them in a way that is both realistic and endearing. We've all been Henry, grasping at the chance of a forbidden treat suddenly permitted — making ourselves sick drinking soda we were never allowed to have before. show more Some of Wilson's descriptions are just so poignant, such as Henry being like the white, sun-starved grass lying under a board that will soon become green again when the board is lifted off. A better metaphor for Henry's overly solicitous, paranoid parents could hardly be imagined, and I think it was at this point that I really sat up and started paying real attention. Wilson has something, it can't be denied.

But despite these wonderful elements, the second half of the story is something of a disappointment. I found the technical descriptions of how the cupboards worked to be tedious and somewhat hard to follow. Far too much time is dedicated to that rather than the delightful character sketches and insights that are Wilson's strength. It wasn't a struggle to finish the book by any means, but the second half did fall down a bit. And it's hard too when a book ends on not exactly a cliffhanger, but a tantalizingly unresolved conclusion that just points you right to the next in the series (Dandelion Fire, I believe).

Of course the whole idea of a wall of 100 cupboards that lead to different worlds owes a big debt to Lewis's Narnia books: it's a combination of the attic-exploration and the Wood Between the Worlds of The Magician's Nephew, and the wardrobe of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe surely has something to do with the idea of opening an ordinary door in your own house and finding yourself in a different world straightaway. Wilson knows he owes this debt, and nods to Narnia in the note that it's very foolish to shut oneself up in a cupboard. Always leave the door slightly open: this is the cardinal rule of all exploratory ventures into fantasy worlds.

It's too bad the second half of the book didn't live up to the first or this would have been a four-star rating. Still, it was enjoyable enough that I'll be looking for the second book, and I feel pretty good about Wilson adapting one of my favorite Lewis titles. And that's a big compliment! show less