Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight

by Douglas Gibson, Jez Tuya (Illustrator)

Overview

One day, Isaac Thompson is just your average fifth grader playing the part of a porcupine in the school play. The next, he has strayed into a mysterious subterranean realm that has been lurking beneath his school Castle Elementary and launches his quest to knighthood. When Isaac's little sister Lily goes missing from their school's creepy basement, he and his best friends Max and Emma set out in search of her. Their search takes them to the Underground, where they encounter an army of spear-wielding rats, a talking human-sized bat, and a thumb-nosed prison guard. But humans who stay in the Underground too long transform into weird, unpleasant creatures and are forced to work for the horrible Elf King. Can Isaac and his crew escape the Underground before it's too late for them to ever return home?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623702557
Publisher:	Capstone
Publication date:	08/01/2015
Series:	Middle-grade Novels
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	820L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Douglas Gibson and his wife and son live in lovely Asheville, North Carolina, along with a small dog named Spencer and a medium chicken named Juliet. When he isn't writing about books or designing them for other people, Douglas is usually hard at work writing books of his own.

Table of Contents

Lily loses her jewel gem — Into the furnace room — A lake, two hands, and a bat — Across the lake — The welcoming committee — Rats, frogs, and fireflies — Dining with an ear — Teaming up with the furniture — The park — The wrath of shelfliver — Under the warden's thumb — Max saves the day — Running for the docks — My last stand — Getting out of there.

Interviews

First-person narration with a funny, conversational, and at times self-deprecating tone, which will engage readers from the start. With equal parts adventure, fantasy, humor, and friendship, this book will speak to a range of readers. Will likely appeal equally to boys and girls.

Editorial Reviews

2015-06-29
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves. Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative "weirding." These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done. A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)

Kirkus Reviews

What an adventure! I think that this is a good book for ages 9-11.

Kid's Book Buzz/San Francisco Book Review