The Nixie's Song: Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 1 (by Holly Black)

With his mother dead, Nick is none too happy when his father remarries and he has to give up his bedroom to his new stepsister, Laurie. He's even less happy to find that she's a weirdo who believes in the fairies and the unseen magical world she has read about in The Spiderwick Chronicles. But he's really unhappy to discover that she's right.

This is the beginning of a new series spun off The Spiderwick Chronicles. The characters are new, the setting changed to Florida, but the concept is the same: we are surrounded by an unseen, mostly malevolent, world of magical creatures, and certain magical items (here a four-leaf clover and the water a nixie has swum in) can give one the Sight to see it.

While it doesn't have the freshness and exciting suspense of the original series, and Nick and Laurie are rather unlikable protagonists, it does have one bit that long-time fans will enjoy: an appearance in the story by the author, illustrator, and the twins on whom the series is supposedly based. Nick and Laurie go to see them at a book signing, hoping for some advice in dealing with a problem with a giant, and are vastly disappointed. The author has fun razzing herself and her partner, and it provides a little metafiction interlude that jazzes the proceedings up for a while. But in the next book the basic story will have to pick up considerably, and Nick and Laurie will have to become a whole lot more appealing, to hold onto fans of the original series.

Author: Holly Black
Illustrator: Tony DiTerlizzi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: September 1, 2007
Number of pages: 162
Hardcover price: $10.99
Read Aloud: 8
Read Alone: 9