White Grass

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I am not quite sure how many times I have read 100 Cupboards in its various incarnations. Originally the entire trilogy was one big monster manuscript, which Random House decided to break into three separate books. And as the editorial process has gone forward, I have been privileged to read the story in its various stages of formation. And when Nate got his author’s copies the other day, he gave a couple to Nancy and me, and so I had the pleasure of sitting down to read it again, and enjoying some of the last changes very much.

To answer the most common question asked right up front, Leepike Ridge is a stand-alone adventure book. This second book from Random House, due to be released the day after Christmas, is the first book of the trilogy. Got that? The second book is the first book. Right now, the trilogy titles are: 100 Cupboards, Dandelion Fire, and The Chestnut King. The last two books will be published in 2008 and 2009 respectively. But don’t panic — this will not leave you hanging for a year between each book. Each volume contains a complete story arc, but obviously with some more to write about.

Now given the release date, you can’t get the book under the tree, but if you are in the Moscow area, you can get the book one mere day after Christmas at Ball and Cross Books, and still have plenty of vacation for reading it in. If you have a Borders or Barnes & Noble near you, I think your chances are also good. If you are getting yours through the mail, then of course it will have to be shipped after Christmas, and we all admire your patience.

To the review then, and no spoilers. The story opens with Henry York arriving to live with an uncle and aunt in Henry, Kansas. This was necessary because his parents were kidnapped in South America while on a bicycling tour. Henry is coming from Boston, and the world of Kansas represented a number of alien experiences just waiting to shock him. These involved much more than just the regional differences because Henry’s parents were particularly over-protective, sheltering him from many forms of ordinary life. In Kansas, Henry starts to experience a much more colorful world that included playing baseball, owning a knife, drinking soda, eating hot dogs, and riding in a pick-up truck. Henry’s Uncle Frank described the sheltered Henry to his Aunt Dots this way — “The boy’s white grass . . . Like when you leave a board in the yard. You pick it up after a coupla weeks or days even, and the grass underneath is all white and yellow. No sunshine. Only, Henry’s been under a board in the yard for longer than a coupla days.”

But the real strangeness is that the room Henry is given in the attic has a plastered wall, and behind this wall Henry heard a strange thumping one night, with some of the plaster coming off as a result. Because of this, he finds out that the plaster is actually covering up a series of cupboards built into the wall. Together with his cousin Henrietta, he chips the plaster away to discover that the entire wall is made out of cupboards. At the center of the wall are two dials, which are apparently there to provide the settings to determine which cupboard you might go through. But the cupboards are too small to go through — although Henry can see through some of them, into other worlds entirely.

It turns out Henry’s grandfather and great-grandfather were the ones responsible for the cupboards. But after his grandfather died, his bedroom in this house was magically sealed up, with no way to get into it. In order to figure out how the cupboards work, Henry has to get into his grandfather’s old room. But knowledge is a dangerous thing, and once he and his cousin learn how to operate the cupboards, control of the story starts to slip away from them. At the same time, being exposed to the weather can do white grass an awful lot of good.

This story has mysterious challenges for those who like to puzzle their way through a book, it has a really satisfying witch (one of the cupboard doors leads to a place called Endor), the smell of Arthur’s resting place (Badon Hill), bureaucratic fairies, completely believable interaction between the kids in the story, and a secret about Henry’s past that Henry himself has to discover. This is good stuff.

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