Fresh from near-fatal goblin and troll attacks in the previous book (The Seeing Stone, the children are torn over whether to hang onto their long-lost great-great-uncle's book or to turn it over to the menacing faeries. Thimbletack--the house brownie who's transmogrified into an angry "boggart"--has lost his patience with the kids, and he starts subjecting Jared to increasingly nasty pranks. Hoping that Lucinda might know something about Uncle Arthur's fate (or at least have some advice on how to fend off the faeries), the three children talk their mom into a trip to the asylum for a visit--but there they learn their situation might be even more dangerous than they imagined. (And, as readers of the series know, the kids already thought they were in hot water.)
Holly Black doesn't dish up the action quite as fast as she did in the first two books, but Spiderwick fans won't be disappointed: We learn more Spiderwick family history, we get an ominous glimpse of events to come, and Tony DiTerlizzi introduces a few new faeries to the menagerie in his ever-evocative pen and ink--including a special treat, the Cheshire-esque phooka. ("You've lost your uncle! How careless.") Ages 6 to 10) --Paul Hughes