First released as a self-published book, written by a father for his daughters, this fantasy, the first in a trilogy, has enjoyed popularity in the Northwest and has now been picked up by a major publisher for national distribution. It will have wide appeal to younger YAs who enjoy strong heroines who are courageous and highly intelligent. Alexa lives in a society carefully explained by Carman, who includes a map that helps the reader. The major features of her land are high walls around the cities and even along the roads that connect cities-and the claustrophobic nature of these walls. Alexa’s curiosity drives her outside the walls, where she encounters a strange pulsating stone that enables her to speak to animals, who tell her of the threat to her people. She must return home, try to determine the spy in her community, and somehow save her culture from catastrophe. The most endearing parts of the story are the relationships Alexa forms with animals who help her: Murphy the squirrel, Darius the wolf, Ander the grizzly. The vocabulary is challenging, the puzzles intriguing, and Alexa is an admirable character. (The Land of Elyon, Book 1). KLIATT Codes: J-Recommended for junior high school students. 2005, Scholastic, Orchard, 251p. map., Ages 12 to 15.

In his debut fantasy, the launch of the Land of Elyon series, Carman crafts an intriguingly insular world, and introduces a plucky, convincingly curious heroine who yearns to see what lies outside of it. Alexa Daley, 12 years old, lives within the walled kingdom of Elyon with her father, the mayor of Lathbury, and his influential friends. As the story opens, readers learn through a flashback that Alexa was taking a walk with Warvold, the kingdom’s architect, when he inexplicably died; she takes a key from the locket he wears, and returns home. While the adults grapple with the population problem within this confined space, Alexa follows her passion-to find “a way outside the wall”-and escapes, thanks to Warvold’s key. Once outside, a two-foot-high man greets her and leads her on a quest through a seemingly enchanted land with talking animals. From them she learns that Warvold had selected her as “the chosen one,” to complete a task he left unfinshed. The author slowly reveals how Warvold’s internallized fears prompted him to build the wall, with all sorts of unforeseen ramifications. (“The monster is the wall itself,” one animal tells her.) Carman dabbles in social commentary with his intimations of the perils of isolationism, but even more effectively plumbs the psychological reverberations of playing out one’s fears. Readers of all ages will gain much from this tale and eagerly anticipate the next two planned volumes. Ages 8-13. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Writer Katie Haegele The Philadelphia Inquirer Don’t you just love a fairy-tale ending?A few years ago Patrick Carman spun a fantasy story with a 12-year-old heroine to entertain his two young daughters. He self-published the bedtime story as a three-book series, The Land of Elyon, then watched as it became a runaway hit. Then the world’s largest publisher of children’s books picked the series up, and Carman is taking it – and his wife and daughters – on a tour of the country.In the first book, The Dark Hills Divide, we meet Alexa, the precocious daughter of the mayor of Lathbury, one of four walled cities connected by roads – also protected by high stone walls – that make up the maybe-futuristic, possibly-ancient Land of Elyon. Alexa and her dad are on their annual summer trip to the city of Bridewell.With most of its inhabitants off peddling their wares, Bridewell in the summer is nearly deserted and stiflingly hot. And while the city’s walls protect its citizens from unnamed dangers said to lurk on the outside, they make Alexa feel “like a prisoner,” and she burns with curiosity about the dark hills and forests beyond. When Warvold, the cities’ creator, dies unexpectedly, Alexa gets the chance not only to investigate the outside world but to save Elyon.You could hardly ask for a more perfect hero than a skinny, investigative 12-year-old girl. From the get-go Alexa is hopping up on windowsills, peering, listening, exploring, borrowing things without asking, and spending hours curled up in a cozy, dusty library, doing research. Since she straddles the divide between the vivid imagination of childhood and a more adult awareness, her worldview is wide open to possibility – unlike the men in charge, “blinded… to the world outside” by years behind the walls.In the wilderness, Alexa meets animals who tell her she’s the only one who can help reunite them with their loved ones, whom they were separated from when the wall was built. Because of her size, she’s able to slither through narrow underground caverns. Just a few months older and she’d be too big. But she’s old enough to embrace the story’s important message without conflict: Sometimes it’s not bad guys who cause trouble, but good guys who make shortsighted choices out of fear.The book has quite a few elements of another, more famous wonderland: crawling and falling through tunnels; quirky, talking creatures (one of them’s even a rabbit, albeit a gray one); and things getting “stranger,” like Alice’s “curiouser,” all the time.Carman clearly has a fondness for old things – letters with wax seals, fancy spyglasses, jewels with symbolic designs etched into them – and Alexa’s world is charmingly arcane. Alexa’s narration makes occasional use of an old-timey turn of phrase that gives the book the feeling of a classic fairy tale. But the language isn’t overly cute, nor is the story elaborately strange. After all, the Land of Elyon’s problems are only a generation old and entirely fixable by one brave girl. Carman’s book isn’t so much a fantasy as a story about real people facing the usual strife – give or take a talking animal or two – that just happens to take place in a world that doesn’t exist. Strictly speaking, anyway.

Don’t you just love a fairy-tale ending?

A few years ago Patrick Carman spun a fantasy story with a 12-year-old heroine to entertain his two young daughters. He self-published the bedtime story as a three-book series, The Land of Elyon, then watched as it became a runaway hit. Then the world’s largest publisher of children’s books picked the series up, and Carman is taking it – and his wife and daughters – on a tour of the country.

In the first book, The Dark Hills Divide, we meet Alexa, the precocious daughter of the mayor of Lathbury, one of four walled cities connected by roads – also protected by high stone walls – that make up the maybe-futuristic, possibly-ancient Land of Elyon. Alexa and her dad are on their annual summer trip to the city of Bridewell.

With most of its inhabitants off peddling their wares, Bridewell in the summer is nearly deserted and stiflingly hot. And while the city’s walls protect its citizens from unnamed dangers said to lurk on the outside, they make Alexa feel “like a prisoner,” and she burns with curiosity about the dark hills and forests beyond. When Warvold, the cities’ creator, dies unexpectedly, Alexa gets the chance not only to investigate the outside world but to save Elyon.

You could hardly ask for a more perfect hero than a skinny, investigative 12-year-old girl. From the get-go Alexa is hopping up on windowsills, peering, listening, exploring, borrowing things without asking, and spending hours curled up in a cozy, dusty library, doing research. Since she straddles the divide between the vivid imagination of childhood and a more adult awareness, her worldview is wide open to possibility – unlike the men in charge, “blinded… to the world outside” by years behind the walls.

In the wilderness, Alexa meets animals who tell her she’s the only one who can help reunite them with their loved ones, whom they were separated from when the wall was built. Because of her size, she’s able to slither through narrow underground caverns. Just a few months older and she’d be too big. But she’s old enough to embrace the story’s important message without conflict: Sometimes it’s not bad guys who cause trouble, but good guys who make shortsighted choices out of fear.

The book has quite a few elements of another, more famous wonderland: crawling and falling through tunnels; quirky, talking creatures (one of them’s even a rabbit, albeit a gray one); and things getting “stranger,” like Alice’s “curiouser,” all the time.

Carman clearly has a fondness for old things – letters with wax seals, fancy spyglasses, jewels with symbolic designs etched into them – and Alexa’s world is charmingly arcane. Alexa’s narration makes occasional use of an old-timey turn of phrase that gives the book the feeling of a classic fairy tale. But the language isn’t overly cute, nor is the story elaborately strange. After all, the Land of Elyon’s problems are only a generation old and entirely fixable by one brave girl. Carman’s book isn’t so much a fantasy as a story about real people facing the usual strife – give or take a talking animal or two – that just happens to take place in a world that doesn’t exist. Strictly speaking, anyway.