by Nancy Farmer
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| List Price: | $9.95 |
| Average Rating: |  |
| Lowest New Price: | $8.69 |
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Product Description
Tendai, his little sister and their younger brother escape from their splendid home to explore their dangerous city. Tendai is motivated by wanting to earn a scouting badge, and he desperately wants to prove himself, as their overprotective father has always placed tight restrictions on what the siblings can and can't do.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 spirits still roam the world in 2194, 2009-10-24
The book is set in Zimbabwe 200 years in the future but we learn about traditional
native lives in the Resthaven section. The children of an important man are kidnapped
from a trip to town by a talking blue monkey and his owner.
The result is a set of adventures in a plastic mine of an old trash dump,
in a community of traditional tribal natives, with an English horse lady
and finally with the dreaded Masks.
All the time the mutated title characters Eye, Ear and arm are detectives
searching for the three children.
Strange but parts of this novel remind one of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
The story has a mile high skyscraper in it as well as anti-gravity
flying cars. Robots do much of the labor for the rich,
but the poor are as miserable as ever.
I liked the story and the imaginative settings and characters.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Future Confusing, 2009-08-20
I was expecting an amazing story from a Newbery Honor Book, but I just couldn't get into this one. The structure of the future world was interesting and unusual, and the story concept (3 kidnapped children who have to use their wits to survive) is a good one. This could have been an awesome book, but it was dragged down by several problems.
(1) The title refers to three detectives in the book who have superpowers, but the book does not introduce the title characters until chapter 6! The first 5 chapters of the story are about the over-controlled children of the wealthy General Matsika. As each chapter passed, I began to wonder where the title characters were. When they were finally introduced, however, I was not impressed. In spite of their superpowers, all three are remarkably inept.
(2) The story is set in Zimbabwe in 2194. The author tries to introduce a flavor of early Africa (ancient kings, tribal spirits, witchcraft) at the same time as she plugs in technology of the future. Unfortunately, the way it was written weakened the two aspects, leaving the reader without a good sense of either time period.
(3) Would children raised in a strictly protected home be quite so naive when out in a dangerous area of town? One would imagine they would be even more cautious than the average child.
(4) The detectives arrived at a scene just after the children had escaped it. Then again they arrived just after the children escaped. Then again.... It became unbelievable after a while. Could we vary it a bit? Perhaps have the detectives actually find the children and then lose them again? It was ridiculously repetitive.
(5) Although the story started smoothly enough, it bogged down about halfway through. The story of the children is written separately from the detectives, and they do not intersect until the end. The constantly shifting locations were disorienting.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 African Science Fiction!, 2009-07-12
This book wasn't loved by me the way A Girl Named Disaster or The House of the Scorpion was, but it's pretty good! The future in the country of Zimbabwe is precarious. The Rich live in same compounds safe from the rest of the country's people, while the poor live in horrible squalor. When an important general loses 3 of his children to the "other side" where they have wandered, three detectives are hired - The Eye, The Ear and the Arm. Can they rescue the children and bring them back to their wealthy haven safely?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Great imagination, 2009-06-13
I borrowed this book from my 6th-grade daughter, who had borrowed it so many times from her classroom library that the teacher told her to keep it. I was drawn in immediately by the characters and their setting, and it got better from there. I've now read this book at least three times, and keep my eyes open for every new book -- each so different from the others -- that Farmer writes. I've enjoyed them all.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Great Adventure, 2008-12-04
This is a wonderful children's story, woven with myths and legends from Africa. It is a tale of a secret walled garden, three special children, a man-child, a holy innocent who helps to guide them, and three detectives Ear, Arm and Eye who help to track the children down.
It is the story of becoming, and of belonging, and of finding your place and purpose in the world. Incredibly well-written, it will keep most non-readers glued to the pages.
(First written as Journal Reading Notes in 1999.)
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