Root Bound Tour Schedule
Title: Root Bound (Emma & the Elementals #1)
Author: Tanya Karen Gough
Publisher: Baba Yaga Press
Acquired Via: CBB Book Promotions
Release Date: June 3, 2012
Root Bound is a fast-paced, action fantasy novel about a young girl finding her place in the world through a series of adventures involving magical creatures, and a journey to the centre of the earth. Root Bound is both a topsy-turvy riff on traditional literary children's fantasy and an allegorical coming-of-age tale.
Emma and her father, a jazz musician, are always on the move, travelling from place to place as her father’s work demands. Their new home, however, is different. There’s a frightening woman who lives down the hall: she bears an uncanny resemblance to a witch. A mysterious light comes from her apartment, and a small boy seems to be trapped inside.
School in this town is no happy place either, with an odd principal and a gang of girls who make tormenting Emma their special project. And strangest of all is the fact that there seem to be brownies - basement brownies, in the air vent in her bedroom. They are searching for the Wanderer, a powerful being who can help free the Crown Prince of Under from the black magic prison that holds him. Emma travels through the brownie burrow to the valley of Hades to visit with the goddess Ceres, following a series of clues that lead her across the sea of memory to the centre of the world. There, on an inhospitable rock floating in a sea of steaming lava, Emma must find a way to free the prince, release her mother from the sea of memory, and restore magic to both the brownie burrow and the human world above.
My Review
Root Bound is a fun-filled, middle grade fantasy novel by Tanya Karen Gough that reminded me of other children's novels, The Littles by John Peterson and The Borrowers by Mary Norton. Root Bound is different in that the magical creatures - brownies - only came to "Over" (the human realm) because "Under" (where the brownies live) was in trouble. The main character in the novel is Emma, who just moved to a new house because of her father's latest music gig.