Title: Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things
Author: Cynthia Voigt
Series: Mister Max, book 1
Major Themes: Detectives, Friendship, Fantasy, Mysteries
Synopsis: Max was supposed to travel with his parents to an exotic location—but they disappeared before he reached the ship, and then he discovered that something was quite odd about their travel plans.
I never know what to expect from a book by Cynthia Voigt. Sometime last year, we read her book Jackaroo and enjoyed it. I didn’t end up writing a review, though, because it was so strange. It sounded as if it was in a real place, but there were a number of things that made us realize it was actually fantasy in a realistic setting. Then, early this year, I bought a copy of Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things. My mom read it before we did, and she loved it so much that we put it fairly high on the to-be-read list. We were very quickly sucked into the storyline and had to keep going to find out what happened!
Publisher’s description:
Max’s parents are missing. They are actors, and thus unpredictable, but sailing away, leaving Max with only a cryptic note, is unusual even for them. Did they intend to leave him behind? Have they been kidnapped?
Until he can figure it out, Max feels it’s safer to keep a low profile. Hiding out is no problem for a child of the theater. Max has played many roles, he can be whoever he needs to be to blend in. But finding a job is tricky, no matter what costume he dons.
Ironically, it turns out Max has a talent for finding things. He finds a runaway child, a stray dog, a missing heirloom, a lost love.…So is he a finder? A detective? No, it’s more. Max finds a way to solve people’s problems—he engineers better outcomes for them. He becomes Mister Max, Solutioneer.
Now if only he could find a solution to his own problems.…
My thoughts:
This is a complicated story! We loved reading about Max and his adventures as he tried to make a living for himself. We were as baffled as Max was about what had happened to his parents, and then when the truth was discovered near the end, as surprised as he at what the author had made them endure. We loved the way Max interacted with people all the way through, finding solutions to their problems. Some were quite surprising; some were what we expected. The ant farm was a really fun twist!
The biggest problem with Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things is that it is the first in a trilogy. Yes, we learned where Max’s parents went—but how would they get back to him? It looks like we need to read the other two books to find out.
As far as fantasy goes, this is the only type I like. It is a realistic setting in an imaginary place. As far as we could tell, it was set somewhere in Europe, but a location is never mentioned, and the place to which Max’s parents went was an imaginary country on a real continent.
WARNING: Chapter 8: Talks about Greek mythology, with fathers swallowing their children, woman referred to as an old witch, “who the devil are you?” Chapter 17: Two people lie several times.
Age levels:
Listening Level—Ages 8 – 12, 10 – 12, 12 – 15, Family Friendly
Reading Independently—Ages 12 – 15
Links to buy this book:
Amazon: Paperback | Kindle | Hardcover | Audible Audiobook (unabridged) | Audio CD (unabridged)
AbeBooks: View Choices on AbeBooks.com
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