Charming story but lacks focus and doesn't live up to its potential. Abi's magical episodes with her books are fascinating, but few and far between and not much is done with them. Then Abi virtually disappears in favor of Max who has a crush on babysitter Esme, and Louis who has conjured up a magical prehistoric wildcat named Iffen. The house is billed as being magical, but most of the magic in the story comes from the books the characters look at. Not much happens except the quest at the end to return Iffen to Esme's art book, which provides a brief moment of excitement but seems over too quickly.

A heart warming read about the importance of family mixed with a healthy dose of magic.
I'm a sucker for sibling relationships, old houses, and book magic. I absolutely loved this one and I can't wait to get my hands on more of Hilary McKay!

I received this ARC from Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This is the first book I have read by this author and I really enjoyed it. This book has the elements of a blended family working together and learning to accept each other. The story also shows the power of books and how the words in those books can come to life to develop beautiful images in the reader's mind. Overall, this book was beautifully written and I will be looking to read other books by Hilary McKay.

This is a book I would have loved as a child. Abi and her father (Theo) and grandmother (Granny Grace) are living a quiet life until THEO meets Polly and they decide to marry. Granny Grace leaves to go home, and Abi is forced into ready-made family life with her new family, including two step-brothers. Soon the landlord decides to sell their apartment, forcing a house hunt. One day they stumble upon an old tumbledown house covered with green ivy. Abi falls in love with it, and after much juggling of finances, the family ends up living in the ivy covered house.

Strange things begin happening whenever Abi finds herself absorbed in a book - a parrot emerges, a raft in the middle of a vast sea, bison come from a paint book, and Abi knows some how the house is filled with green magic. Little Louis conjures an imaginary friend - a cross between a tame cat and a wild beast. For a while he thinks the cat, Iffen, is his alone and no one can see him, until Abi catches him unaware.

Life in the ivy covered house is not tranquil. The children bicker and vie for attention of their respective parent, until Polly has to go away for time for her job, leaving Theo in charge. Tensions escalate, and even easy going Theo has a difficult time with it. This is the story of a family made up of all kinds of personalities and what it means to be accepted as you are for who you are always. This is a beautiful tale which centers around books and the magical worlds they can create.

This is a book about a family and magic. I would call it magical realism, as it does not have any witches or warlocks, or mages, just regular people touched by magic. Abi, 11, grew up living with her Father and Grandmother after her mother died. But her dad, Theo, an emergency physician meets and marries a woman, Polly, with two sons, Max and Louis. Abi’s grandmother returns to Jamaica and Abi misses her greatly, and feels displaced in her new family. After a year they move into an old, larger house covered in ivy. It’s a little spooky, but the whole family chose it together. Louis who is 6 wants a pet, but the landlord doesn’t allow pets. Max is 13 and is in secondary school, and feels very grown up. Abi loves books and moves into the bedroom in the house with lots of books. She finds when she gets lost in her reading strange things happen, such as becoming soaking wet with salt water when reading a book about an ocean voyage. Louis decides he wants an owl and expects one in the ivy outside his window, but finds a cat instead. Abi’s grandmother had told her about Green Magic when she was a girl in Jamaica, and Abi believes this is what’s happening.
This is a wonderful story written for middle schoolers. I’m a grandmother and I loved it. More important to me than the magic was these two families becoming one.

*2.5 Stars*

What I Liked...
» At its core, The Time of Green Magic is about the dynamics of blended families. I think the author did a wonderful job portraying the complexities of two families coming together and forging a new life together.

» McKay’s writing is lovely. I found the writing to be very atmospheric, adding to the overall eerie tone of this story. The atmospheric writing, paired with the eerie tone, suited the story well.

» I’ve always been a sucker for books centering around a mysterious house. Bonus points for a mysterious house covered in ivy.

What I Didn't Like...
» While I was anticipating a MG fantasy, this was more of a MG contemporary with some magic realism elements. Unfortunately, there was zero development in the fantastical elements, so the magic felt forced and odd. Even after finishing, I still have many questions surrounding the magical elements.

» This is a very slow moving plot without much action. I remember reaching the 40% mark and wondering if anything was actually going to HAPPEN. After the majority of the book dragged, the climax & ending was rushed.

» I feel like the story would have been better suited had it been told in Abi’s point of view.

A fully real place, brilliantly shining characters and a desperate and twisting adventure of a plot make A Time of Green Magic reason for Hilary McKay to become one of my new favorite authors.

It's everything you want from a Middle Grade novel. There's plenty of adventure, lots of fun, and more importantly, a touch of magic. The book moves along at a lightning pace, which kept me turning pages late into the night. The book is simply unputdownable, meant to be read in one delicious gulp and then reread, savoring all the clues and beautiful sentences that McKay has seamlessly constructed. The book is easy to read and engaging. I’m sure all children have used their imaginations at some point to take them to another place, be that the ocean, space or a make-believe land so they will find a connection to the story.

Hilary McKay has created a wickedly exciting adventure, with a hugely satisfying conclusion, and I look forward to reading some more of her works. I'll for sure be passing this one on to a young person to enjoy.

The Time of Green Magic by Hilary McKay

Summary:

Abi has found herself in a mixed family which includes her father Theo, his new wife Polly, and her children Max and Louis. The family moves into an overgrown house (they call it the Ivy House) that they are surprised they can afford. Strange things begin happening to the children after the move. Abi finds herself participating in the books she is reading. Louis has a new night visitor that he refers to as Iffen.

Abi, Max, and Louis find themselves on an adventure to understand where Iffen came from, and how to get him back while growing closer as a family.

Thoughts:

The author does a great job describing objects. Readers will be able to create a magical mental picture while they are reading. The author also did a great job with character building: we start the story with three siblings who are struggling to get along for multiple reasons, and we end the story with three siblings who would do anything for each other.

There were several continuity errors that had me backtracking because I was afraid that I had missed something; for example the story barely mentioned Abi’s grandmother’s return to Jamaica. These errors and subsequent back-tracking made it hard for me to stay completely immersed in the story line.

I also think there was a missed opportunity with the use of French in the book. Children reading the book would appreciate a translation and potentially a pronunciation guide. It was easy for me to follow the parts of the book which included French because I have a basic understanding of the language, but the target audience would be less likely to be familiar and would want to use it as a learning opportunity.

As I neared the end of the novel, I began to worry about the lack of action. I wish the concluding action had been a little more drawn out and dramatic - the author definitely could have done a lot more with it.

Target Audience:

Middle grade readers will probably enjoy the atmosphere that the author created.

Conclusion:

I wouldn’t recommend this to just anyone. I would be hesitant to recommend it in general because I don’t want struggling readers to be confused by and lose their love of reading. More advanced middle grade readers will probably be fine with the continuity errors - they will automatically fill in the gaps that have been left in the story because that is precisely what makes them advanced readers.

I think McKay has a great talent for writing, but also has some growing to do as a writer. That being said, I would definitely read additional work written by her.

Stars: 3

The Time of Green Magic by Hilary McKay is a dreamy novel about the love between family and friends, no matter how those family or friends came into your life. This novel centers the love of reading and how reading, in any medium, can come to life. In the case of this novel, the stories come to life in dangerous ways. McCay uses her words to build an atmosphere that feels much like the house in the novel - slightly strange and off-center, and you're never quite sure what's real until suddenly you are. Did one of the characters come out of the imagination of another, or out of the imagination of a book?

I loved this, because the house to me seemed like a house of mystery and strangeness, and the way Hilary McCkay wrote lent that same strangeness to the book.

I was left with a few questions as to what would happen after the story ended. Will Abi's family stay there in the ivy house, or will they move? If they don't move, will any of the kids be able to read again without fear of being half-frozen to death or other such dangers? However this did not dampen my enjoyment of the novel.

I loved this. The Time of Green Magic was the first book I’d read by this author and I’m confident that the kids at my library will love this title

Moving into a new home can be very traumatic for children. Moving into a new home with a new family can be even harder.

The Time of Green Magic is more about the intricacies of family dynamics than it is about magic. The three children in this blended family all struggle with some serious emotions. Abi feels unwelcome in her new blended family, resenting sharing her Dad with her two new brothers and missing her grandmother terribly. Max and Louis are also struggling to accept Abi and her Dad as parts of their lives with mom Polly. Louis especially has issues with separation and anger.

Moving into a new house, completely covered with ivy, sets in motion a series of events that results in the family being renewed and bonded, but not without some excitement along the way. Truly, this is about the children coming to grips with love, loss, and fear.

McKay does a good job of telling a captivating, exciting story that seamlessly blends fantasy and reality. As a librarian and reader, I especially appreciate that books are the vehicle used to introduce magic to the children's lives.

Kids exploring fantasy will enjoy this, and I expect it will lead them to other, more complex stories.

Recommended.

When I was an actual middle grade reader of middle grade books, I’d reach time and again for the spooky, magical stories. The ones that made me want to read late into the night with a flashlight, perhaps because the idea of turning the flashlight off to stop reading was terrifying. The books that made the dark seem a little darker than usual, only to make the morning sun–or the flashlight’s beam–seem all the brighter. I fell into the winter of Narnia and the bleakness of Camazotz, stories of dragons and faerie and adventure.

Every reader knows how apt the term “fell into a book” is. It really feels as though the world falls away and you fall right into the story you’re reading. In The Time of Green Magic, that fall from solid ground to the murky world of fantasy becomes plot, rather than just metaphor.

When Abi’s widowed father marries Max and Louis’s mother, the two units don’t instantly blend into one family. Abi hates sharing her father and grandmother, Max hates sharing his mother and even his space. Louis, only six, is happy to share, glad to have the family he’d lacked–but he’s sticky and unkempt and talkative, and drives Abi crazy.

I loved this family dynamic from the set-up. Theo and Polly, the parents, are loving and devoted, even while their struggles as parents aren’t brushed aside. The relationship between the two older children (Abi is 12 and Max 13) is tense and moody, but because of switches in viewpoint, the reader is able to see into their thoughts, understand their feelings and appreciate their ultimately good motives. Louis is adorable and totally believable. He’s so much like my little boy that I wished I could jump into the story and give him a hug.

When the family moves to a new-to-them (but actually very old) house, draped with ivy and possessed of a “Narnia lamppost,” we get the first taste of the strange world Abi and her step-brothers are about to enter. Abi reads a story about a sea voyage, so realistic she feels as if she’s actually there. She chalks it up to good writing and imagination–until she “wakes up” to find her book wet and her fingers tasting of salt. Louis, wishing and wishing for “a nowl” (how he says, “an owl”), ends up with a mysterious nighttime visitor that is at first adorable and then increasingly frightening.

And this was the point where I wished I had a flashlight under my pillow. Okay, I was reading an e-book, so technically that was unnecessary, but I insist it would have been best enjoyed with a flashlight glowing on real paper pages. Take note, parents about to buy this for your children.

As the “green magic” grows in the lives of the children, they turn more and more to each other, deepening their trust and growing their relationships as they fight to keep their family safe and happy.

We need darkness to help us appreciate light. We need fear and unrest and pain to remind us of our need to turn to one another. To me, this is the magic of spooky, fantastical stories. Everyone quotes these words of G. K. Chesterton these days, but they’re true:

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

I plan on sharing this book with my two oldest, once I can get them a hard copy. But even if you don’t have middle graders in your life, you’ll likely enjoy the drop into a book that brings your childhood magic back to life.

This was a neat story with a bit of magic and a lot about how to make a family become unified. The story has a good pace and keeps the reader wanting more. I enjoyed it and can see youth enjoying it too.

It was bad enough that Abi's father met and married Polly but now Abi has to deal with two brothers and moving to a new home. When Polly is called away for an extended business trip, Abi's father hires french art student, Esmee to watch the kids afterschool. Abi notices something strange about the house; when she reads a book, it is more than being absorbed in reading, she is actually being drawn into the book. It is only when someone in the house calls her that she can return. No one realizes that struggling reader Louis has become a conduit for something in Esmee's art which should not exist in the here and now until it is almost too late to save Louis.

Blended family emotions ring true from the parents' joy at being married again to the kids' despair that life will never go back to the way it was. A masterful blend of adjusting to and accepting change with the magic of getting "lost" in a book.

I received an electronic ARC from Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing through NetGalley.
McKay offers readers a look at a blended family that is doing their best to make this work. A father, Theo, and daughter, Abi, and a mother, Polly with two sons, Max & Louis, move into a new home where everyone has space of their own. After settling in, unusual events begin to happen - all related to books. Abi's grandmother referred to it as the time of green magic. Abi ends up entering the stories she reads and Louis finds the pet he longs for mysteriously appear from the ivy covering their new home. Eventually, Max enters a book also and figures out where Louis' pet, Iffen came from. Together, they return the out of control animal and the story moves on to a more cheerful ending.
It's not a new concept but McKay uses this device of entering stories and book characters coming to life to challenge her characters and readers to figure out why this is happening. She builds the suspense and slowly leads readers to the explanation of why this is happening. Readers will connect to three children and teens trying to connect to each other and become one family.
The book drags in some parts and then rushes to the ending resolution. I was disappointed in the ending. No effort is made to address the magical situation that happened in the house although the hint is there that once everyone can read, it goes away.

This is a middle-grade novel set in Britain. I'm normally a bit biased toward such novels, and this one started out for me in great style, with Abi from one family, and Louis and Max from another being brought together into one big family when Abi's father Theo marries the boys' mother Polly. They move into a larger house, which has a lot of character and Abi finds that her immersion in novels becomes a little too literal. She'd be reading Kon-Tiki and the book would end up wet, with the water tasting of salt. She'd be reading about an Arctic adventure and almost get frostbite.

That would have been adventure enough, but there was also other stuff going on that seemed unconnected with Abi's experiences - like the large cat that young Louis encounters, or the paranoia that Max experiences, alongside his interest in this French art student who occasionally babysits. On top of that, Polly's work calls her away from home for a couple of weeks (I'm not sure why the author wanted her out of the way), and Theo it seems is hardly home, so the kids are left to their own devices a lot. At once there seemed to be both too much going on and not enough.

The story was going in so many different directions that things were becoming confused, and also being skipped: like how these kids were getting along given that one of them was entirely unrelated to the other two, and how little information is imparted about the books they're reading. The kids seemed to have no inner life, and the novel reached a stagnation point about halfway in. I began quickly to lose interest in it. It did not improve and I gave up on it at seventy percent out of sheer boredom.

Again, it wasn't written for me, and middle-graders might get more out of it than did I, but I've read and enjoyed many middle-grade level books and found them highly entertaining. This one wasn't in that category, and while I wish the author all the best in her career, I can't commend this particular novel as a worthy read.

McKay gives us another gem in her latest work for children, and embraces the fantastic mixed in with her trademark family drama. There are hints from the start that we are in the grand English literary tradition of magic creeping up on unsuspecting but plucky child characters. Max, Abi and Louis are coping not only with their new lives together as a blended family and loving but overwhelmed parents, but also their move to an old house covered with ivy vines and full of atmosphere. Between school, shortage of money, the absence of mum Polly due to work travel and lovely but harried dad Theo's struggle to take care of everyone, there are Narnia lamps and quarrels, crushes and rocking horses, where the children's passions and preoccupations and engagement with books and art and emotional storms bring their own brand of magic into the house. It's a mysterious, messy, challenging sort of magic that brings drama and menace, but also brings the children together as they reckon how to manage it. A dash of E. Nesbit, a nod to Phillippa Pearce, a soupcon of Susan Cooper and Lucy Knowe all echo in Green Magic, but McKay makes the tone and rhythms of this book her own blend of gentle whimsy and intensely felt characters with some eerieness and danger to spare. A special nod to the sensitivity to individual relations with books - Abi loves reading so much she literally begins to fall into her books, teenage Max falls in love which is just as terrifying, whereas Louis hates to read, dreads his school assignments, but longs to receive and write letters. Abi the reader recognizes how privileged they are to have this experience, Max the big brother recognizes his responsibility to his siblings, but it's Louis the youngest, who brought the magic first to the house, who articulates the tension they face.

"...But sometime's it's scary."
"Like Iffen," said Louis.
"Is Iffen scary?" asked Abi, so gently that Louis could whisper, "Yes."

Theo and Abi, a family of two; Polly, Max and Louis, a family of three. When Theo and Polly fall in love and get married, their suddenly larger family moves into a house covered in ivy, a house that quickly reveals itself to be quite magical, in both a fantastical and very real sense. As the kids get used to being around each other and the idea that they really are a family, the magic of the house starts to become dangerous, and the three must work together to resolve the situation and make their home happy and safe once more, all while dealing with rather ordinary things such as friendship, first love, and how we face fears both big and small.

This was such an incredibly charming book, it really was a delight to read. McKay lays out a magical and eerie story, full of heart and family both old and new. It's perfect for younger readers, although I would recommend this book to people of every age group. I'm almost 31, but this book reminded me of what it was to be a young adult again, the things children say that don't make sense except they do, the simple compassion between friends and family, how love can be a weight and we sometimes need to let things go in order to be safe and happy.

I really can't say enough good things about this book, as I write this review I keep thinking of things I liked so much about it - the lush scenery, the magic of books, everything about Louis, Mrs. Puddock, Theo and Polly falling in love at first sight and making a wonderful family with their kids... There is so much to adore about The Time of Green Magic, chief of which is that it reminds the reader of their own times of green magic, and what it feels to want that magic again.

Very interesting and beautiful book. It had its moments where I was a bit confused on what was going on, but other than that the vibe and atmosphere of this book was very creepy but whimsical!

Somewhat confusing, overly ornate, and never quite sure if it wants to land in the "magic is creepy and ominous" camp or the "magic is a delightful adventure" camp. I suspect the intended audience (who I imagine to be middle school girls and thin willowy adult women) will love it, but I found myself regularly lost and/or indifferent