Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures is a beautifully written fantasy filled with magical beasts, emotional depth, and vivid language. Perfect for strong middle-grade readers and fans of Harry Potter or Artemis Fowl.
Reviewed by LiteratureBaby
Genre: Fantasy / Adventure
Recommended Ages: 9+
Grade Level: 4-6
Pages: 334
Series: Book 1 of 2
“It was a very fine day; until somebody tried to kill her.”
The Story
Mal is a girl who flies over treetops and lives in a magical world full of incredible creatures called the Archipelago. She loves her island and her beloved griffin who is the last of his kind. Unfortunately, the magical islands are losing their magic and many beloved magical creatures are dying off. The magical world is rapidly changing, and there seems to be no help from within the Archipelago. There also seems to be a murder on the loose with a mission to do more than kill children.
Christopher is a normal boy who has lost his mom, and has to live with his grandfather while his dad goes out to sea. Animals love and gravitate towards him. The grandfather tells tales of a magical world to Christopher and informs him that he is its next guardian. Mal and Christopher’s world collides when Christopher is forced to leave his home to protect the Archipelago. Together Mal and Christopher face off with a murder, go on quests to find potions, and attempt to defeat a magical maze. Through it all, Christopher is amazing by the wonder of creatures all around him and the magic that holds it together.
What I Loved:
- This is a book that reads like a rollercoaster. You laugh and cry and are terrified all at the same time. Rundell’s style is humorous and so engaging. I read the book so quickly, and then reread it again. It was hard to put down and write the review. Rundell starts off with a bang. She has these short, snappy chapters that are engaging, humorous, and fast paced. It serves to get a reader involved very quickly, and she doesn’t jam up the reader with the world building at the beginning. It builds so naturally for the reader. It is just the right mixture of a world like our own, but with that hit of something magical in the air.
- So beautifully written. I could repeat that line several times, and it still wouldn’t be enough. The trouble with teaching middle school is that I love language. I love how it plays on the ear and in my imagination. I adore a sentence that makes me think about it long after the book has been put down. I want a passage that I return to over and over again because the words are so well done. Adult books, or upper level high school books have that incredible complex language and word choice in their writing. Most middle school novels do not. Unfortunately, recent literacy skills have forced writers and publishers to dumb down language in novels. Middle school novels are struggling with the dumbing down of the language. Most middle school books that are written recently rely on plot or cool concepts or neat characters to engage the reader. Middle school novels don’t rely on language to push the reader forward in the story. Rundell does though. Her writing is spectacular, and there are already pages and passages that I have marked up for demonstration to my classes on descriptive elements in novels. I might be writing a lesson plan based on this novel.
- As someone who has to read a lot of middle school novels for my work, it is obvious the impact Harry Potter has had on the genre of fantasy and middle school novels. This novel has the style and feel of Harry Potter, but it isn’t built around going to school, so it feels surprisingly fresh. Most of the time, these dip into another world novels feel dated to me. However, this novel feels inspired by Harry Potter, but not a copy of Harry Potter. It is like the author took the best of British children’s novels (Ronald Dahl, J.K Rowling, Lewis Carrol, or C.S. Lewis), and then wrote their own version of a fantasy. You can see the influence in the writing and the storyline, but it feels entirely new. Someday, someone is going to look to Katherine Rundell’s work for their influence. That is how good she is.
- Ironically, this novel should feel dated. It seems like everyone is doing fairy tales and fantastical creatures. You can’t pick up a book in the store without a dragon in it somewhere. Despite the premise, this novel feels fresh and original. It isn’t a remake or remix. It is just a breath of fresh air for the fantasy genre.
- Ashley Mackenzie’s art in the novel captures these wonderful and devastating moments in the novel. Middle Schoolers want to see illustrations with their reading, and this is done right. It has enough detail to give context to what is happening, but it doesn’t have so much detail that the reader feels like their imagination doesn’t mix with the novel. My only problem is the lack of color. I think that publishers need to get on board with giving color illustrations in novels. This is a novel that I would buy again if you offered a special edition with colored illustrations. And I would be willing to pay twice the price for it as well.
- (Slight Spoiler Alert) The ending was beautiful, perhaps one of the best endings that I have ever read. It was not rushed, it fully encompassed the sorrow of losing a major character, and it left room for more stories in the realm. The funeral scene was devastating to read and yet also joyful in an odd way. The illustration that accompanied it was fantastical, and made a beautiful connection. The first part and the last part of this book are so incredible and beautifully written.
Small Improvements Needed:
- There is a lovely map at the beginning. However, illustrators and publishers misuse maps all the time in novels. It has become the go-to item to add in a book. But few kids read maps or understand them. Most students, when I have asked, didn’t even bother to look at the map. They blow right past it, and don’t understand its purpose. If we want to make maps relevant to the reader, the writers, illustrators, and publishers need to create context for the maps. For example, add in the map at the beginning, but then as Christopher and Mal journey from one island to the other, include a close up zoom of the map and a line to the next island at the start of the chapter. This would engage the reader, and help students better understand the purpose of the map. Then, they might even go back to the original map and trace the journey again. Kids would be fascinated by the maps in these novels if we just added in the context for them. This is a skill not taught anymore, so including it in a novel doesn’t work unless you are willing to reteach the skill.
- At the end of the novel, there is a little index of animals from the Archipelago. While I like it and find it amusing, I think it would have been smarter to make them chapter breaks. In the novel, Christopher is given a map of the Archipelago from his grandfather. However, the map seems less useful with a cat sailor who knows the way. Honestly, Rundell should have given Christopher a book of magical creatures, and then had Christopher interact with it as he encountered new islands. Then the pages of the book could have worked for each chapter break.
What I Disliked:
- This book’s concepts were too big for its pages. Rundell attempted to put a trilogy (or at least a duology) into a single novel. The first section of the novel was incredible and well paced. The last section of the novel was beautifully written and slowed down to deal with the significance of the events that unfolded. The middle was a garbled mess that had too much information, forced a very quick pacing, and the amazing adventure/quest got lost in all the powerful information that Mal and Christopher learn. Rundell tried to tell a much larger story too quickly.
- (Spoiler Alert) The death of Gelifen felt forced as a reader. I didn’t love Gelifen and I didn’t see enough of the character to care that he was dead. When Hedwig died in Harry Potter, I sobbed for a good half hour because there were these special moments that occurred over the course of the novels. As a reader, I felt like I had lost someone special. I could also see that Harry and Hedwig had a bond, so it made me understand Harry’s grief so much better. I know that Mal loved Gelifen, but there were no special moments that made me connect with Gelifen as a reader. It is obvious that the author and Mal felt that Gelifen was important, but for me the characterization build up wasn’t there. I struggled with his death scene and the funeral scene because I didn’t care, and it felt like a waste of time. To me the griffen has such a small and unimportant role.
Trends:
- While Rundell continues with the trend of parents absent from a middle school novel, she does have a fresh take. While the story contained absent/dead parents, it showed caring adults throughout. While the parents/guardians may not have always understood the child, there was clearly love there. I think that this is a smart move of the author because I am finding more students in my classrooms frustrated by the absentee parent issue or the non-interest parent issue post Covid. I think there are a lot of changes to how students see their parents as part of their lives. While I worry about helicopter parents, I also think that we are getting to a place where children acknowledge how important parents are to their world
Struggling Readers:
I won’t be using this book as an independent novel for struggling readers. It is stylistically and language wise very British, which will make American students who are already struggling anxious. The word choice is lovely for me as an adult, but as a struggling reader would be too much of a hurdle. I can see struggling readers liking this book because it is so fast paced at the beginning, but without parent/teacher support, a struggling reader will not get through it.
Teacher Trick:
I wouldn’t recommend it to a fourth or fifth grader unless they were a strong reader. The only problem is that it is clearly a British style, and there are some beautifully written but difficult phrasings that American students would struggle with. In order to get a kid interested in this, I might start off this as a read aloud and read the chapter where it is Christopher and Mal’s worlds going back and forth. I think it would get kids interested and then they would be willing to pick it up and read the rest.
Final Verdict:
I could read this book again and again as an adult. However, unless you have a strong elementary or middle school reader, they will struggle with this text without support. It is beautifully written and I look forward to the next installment.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Read if you like: Harry Potter, The City of Ember, Artemis Fowl
Leave a Reply