Information
Goodreads: The Adventures of Lily Huckleberry in Scandinavia
Series: Lily Huckleberry #1
Age Category: Children's
Source: Library
Published: 2018
Summary
Lily Huckleberry is ready for adventure! Upon being invited to The Worldwide Adventure Society of Shenanigans and Hullabaloos, she travels to Scandinavia with the help of her magic globe. There she learns that the strawberries for the Midsummer celebrations are missing. But, with the help of some new friends, she plans to track them down!
Review
The Adventures of Lily Huckleberry in Scandinavia aims to introduce young readers to different places and cultures around the world. The main conceit is a magic globe that whisks the titular Lily away to new adventures--nothing dangerous or scary, only whimsical. The story itself is not really the strong point of the book; it verges on twee and is rather fast and episodic. Rather, it is the illustrations that are the highlight of the book. The illustrations are simply gorgeous, and readers will delight in spending time poring over each page. The Adventures of Lily Huckleberry in Scandinavia is certainly the type of book one longs to collect, if nothing else.
Since the story is for young readers, the plot focuses on a fairly low-stakes mystery: the disappearance of the strawberries (all of them across all of Scandinavia) for the Midsummer festivities. No one is ever in any danger, though certainly a lack of desserts would be most tragic. Lily steps up to solve the case right away and does so with comparative ease. She quickly learns who the culprits are and simply needs to catch up with them. It is a way for her to travel around, learning about local customs, cuisines, and culture.
But this is not a straightforward educational tale. The story does have a magical element, of course, as one might gather from the presence of a globe that can transport Lily across the world. This means that there are talking animals, Vikings, mermaids, and more. It's all meant to be whimsical. Lily does things like randomly shout, "Hello, beautiful world! I'm ready for you!" She lives in a place where the flowers are as tall as trees. At times, it can feel, well, a bit much. Readers will likely fall into two camps: those who think the whole thing wonderful and those who wish the cuteness would be damped down a bit.
But those illustrations! They are exquisite and invite the readers to slow down and admire them, rather than rushing through the story. And the whole book is a work of art. It is nicely bound with a beautiful cover. It has detailed patterned pages to begin and end the book. It even has a collector's patch inserted at the end--a clever way to inspire readers to pick up the other books in the series and dream of being world travelers.
While the story sometimes left me feeling uninspired, I did love the illustrations. I would likely give the story itself three stars, but bumped up the rating because of the art.
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