Sonderbooks Book Review of The Boggart and the Monster

Reviewed July 7, 2003.
Margaret K. McElderry Books, New York, 1997. 183 pages.

Here’s a fun story that I just had to reread before I see Loch Ness with my own eyes. Emily and Jessup Volnik head back to Castle Keep, where they’ve already met a mischief-making boggart. With the new owner, Mr. Maconochie, and a local boy Tommy Cameron, they decide to take a camping trip to Loch Ness, and unknowingly bring along their boggart.

At Loch Ness, the boggart senses the presence of his long-lost cousin. It turns out that Nessie is a boggart, too, but when his family’s Castle Urquhart was destroyed, he went into the lake and forgot how to shape-shift. He’s stuck in the form of a plesiosaur.

Meanwhile, a research team is scouring the lake with new sophisticated equipment. If they get solid evidence of Nessie, he’ll never know a moment’s peace again. The kids and the boggart must help Nessie remember how to shape shift and get out of his terrifying form.

This is a delightful tale, without the bothersome computer details of the first book. I enjoyed the way it’s tied to a real place and a real legend. It’s a fun explanation for the old stories. The only thing I didn’t like is that if this story is true, then Nessie has left his old home. So I comfort myself that it is, after all, fiction, and maybe we still have a chance to spot him.

The earlier book: The Boggart

Reviews of other books by Susan Cooper:
The Magician's Boy
Over Sea, Under Stone
The Dark Is Rising
Greenwitch
The Grey King
Silver on the Tree

Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

*****The Boggart and the Monster*

by Susan Cooper