Water Wishes

May 24, 1999
With water as its theme, the inaugural volume of The Magic Elements Quartet drowns in extraneous detail, sodden dialogue and a plot that is anything but watertight. While vacationing at the beach, 10-year-old Polly and seven-year-old Sam spot a glass bottle bobbing in the water; a note inside promises to grant three wishes. After several failed attempts, Polly makes a wishto become a mermaidthat comes true. Though the sequence of events gets murky, next the siblings 13-year-old brother, Joe, apparently gets hold of the bottle and is granted his wish to become Neptune. Meanwhile, Polly and Sam discover that his transformation seems to have wiped out everyone elses memory of their older brother. The plot becomes even sillier as Polly and Sam make their final wishto locate Joeand transform, respectively, into a mermaid (again) and an octopus, and find themselves in an underwater city; the rules that applied to Pollys wish (she reverted to her normal body after 24 hours) dont apply to Joes situation. Outlandish without being at all magical, this tale is summed up in a comment that Polly makes when she and Sam, so engrossed in their new serpentine identities, forget all about their mission to find Joe: Were wasting time! she exclaims. Readers of this washed-out tale will likely feel the same way. Ages 8-10.

July 1, 1999
Gr 3-5-A poorly imagined fantasy. Ten-year-old Polly and her 7-year-old brother, Sam, nearly drown while trying to retrieve a bottle bobbing temptingly on the ocean waves, but are saved by their surly, no-longer-fun-to-play-with teen-aged brother, Joe. They are disappointed when they can't find the bottle afterwards, and more than a little surprised when they discover it the next morning on Joe's dresser. Inside the bottle they find a note granting them three wishes "of this element," and after a little trial and error, they manage to get the promised fanciful adventure started. The upshot is Joe's disappearance, which no one seems to notice except for Polly and Sam, who have to figure out where he is and rescue him. There is nothing compelling about this story-the characters and dialogue are uninteresting and unconvincing, and the plot seems to have been constructed with convenience rather than logic in mind. For a classic story about wishes, try Edward Eager's Half Magic (Harcourt, 1954), or suggest Franny Billingsley's Well Wished (S & S, 1997) and Bill Brittain's The Wish Giver (HarperCollins, 1983).-Carrie Schadle, Beginning with Children School, New York City

Copyright 1999 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 1999
When Polly, Sam, and their older brother Joe retrieve a bottle from the ocean that offers them three wishes "of this element," they find themselves under the ocean, transformed into a mermaid, an octopus, and a sea serpent. Although the relationships between the children ring true, the fantasy elements are not convincing and the explanations of them are unclear.

(Copyright 1999 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)