Saturday, January 16, 2016

Book Series Review: Enola Holmes by Nancy Springer

Every once in a while, I run across a book series that delights me. It is always like finding gold, since I enjoy reading so much, yet am fairly picky about the books I like.

Enola Holmes is aimed at 4th to 8th graders.

Enola is the fictional younger sister of the fictional Sherlock Holmes.  She is only 14, whereas her 2 older brothers are much older (she was a late in life, surprise baby.)  On her 14th birthday, Enola's eccentric mother runs away and Enola's 2 brothers, who have not seen Enola since she was 4, turn up and decide to send her to a boarding school. They do so out of love, but with limited understanding of the unpleasantness of boarding school life for an intelligent girl raised without corsets and with an inquiring mind. Using money her mother left for her,  Enola flees to London, and the next 6 or 7 books describe her making a life for herself as a "Perditorian", or a finder of lost persons.  She is thus a detective like her brother Sherlock, and uses disguises and brilliant thinking (and luck) to find a variety of missing people.

I described one of the books to Naomi, and she correctly pointed out that this kind of book usually drives me mad.  One of my big "things" is that young people should be protected and one of the reasons I hated the first Harry Potter so much was that magical "good" people dumped poor Harry on the doorstep of abusive relatives.  So why do I like Enola Holmes, where a 14 year old has to make her way safely through the cesspool of 19th century London after her mother abandoned her?

It's a good question, but I guess mostly the series is so light hearted that while Enola runs into danger, she is never badly hurt and it is exciting to know that she is clever enough to extricate herself. And that is another thing -- Enola, at age 14, is way more competent and smart than I am at 46. So she's not a very realistic 14 year old :-).

Much of my enjoyment has to do with her older brother Sherlock. I've been a Sherlock Holmes fan for decades, and each book includes amusing run ins between Enola and Sherlock and Mycroft.  Sherlock genuinely loves Enola and she knows that, but she also knows that boarding school life is far grimmer than her older brothers understand.  Pleasantly, the last book of the series ties up the family problems in an almost completely positive way.  I've always enjoyed books about fugitives, and in this case Enola is a fugitive from brothers who love her and really want what is best for her, so that makes it light hearted as well.

Heartily recommended.

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