The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

by Claire Legrand

Rating: ***` (3.5 stars)
Age group: 9.5+
Type: fantasy

Victoria Wright has a stubborn personality and strives for a perfect academic record, but she only has one friend--Lawrence. Even if Victoria criticizes him and thinks of him as an experiment, he's loyal to her. But soon Victoria notices children going missing in her town--all the imperfect ones. And then Lawrence disappears! Victoria has a feeling that the mysterious, sinister Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, run by Mrs. Cavendish and Mr. Alice, is behind the kidnappings and she decides to investigate. But she always encounters strange ten-legged bugs that leave marks behind when they touch you. When she meets the only adult who will believe her, the bugs suddenly take him! Victoria digs deeper--too deep, apparently, because then Mrs. Cavendish takes her, too. Now she is trapped in a terrible prison with walls that alive and strange slaves to Mrs. Cavendish called gofers. Finally she knows what's happening to the missing children--but she has to get everyone out before their thirteenth birthdays or something terrible happens to them that nobody knows. Victoria finds out a dark secret--a dark, gross secret, and Lawrence's thirteenth birthday is coming up! Will she ever save the kids and destroy the Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls?

 This book is pretty good and it's interesting how Victoria's personality changes. The author does a really good job of making the Home feel creepily nightmarish and there's a lot of pressure put on Victoria to escape which makes parts of the book suspenseful. This book is very exciting but there are some really disgusting parts. Also it's a little bit scary. But overall it is okay.

PARENTAL SECTION
Sexual parts: no
Violence: not really
Fighting: not really
Kissing/romance: no
Pregnancy: no
Stealing: no
Vandalizing: no
SPOILER ALERT!!!




There is one really, really disgusting part where Victoria finds
out that on the kids' thirteenth birthdays they are turned into
gofers and eaten. This is also somewhat intense but not really.