The Peddler's Road

Matthew Cody

Book - 2015

While in Germany with their father, who is researching the Pied Piper legend, Max, nearly thirteen, and her brother Carter, ten, are spirited away to the magical land where the stolen children of Hamelin have been hidden since the thirteenth century.

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Subjects
Published
New York : Alfred A. Knopf [2015]
Language
English
Main Author
Matthew Cody (-)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
355 pages : illustration ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780385755221
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

The story goes that the Pied Piper took 130 children from thirteenth-century Hamelin after the townsfolk couldn't pay him for driving away its plague of rats. Jumping forward in time, 10-year-old Carter and his angsty preteen sister, Max, are visiting modern-day Hamelin with their father when rats suddenly burst from their house's air ducts. Horrified, they call an exterminator who turns out to be the Piper of old, returned to collect his remaining debt: Max and Carter. The siblings are transported to the Summer Isle, where the original Hamelin children now live among myriad magical beings, both kind and sinister. Max, Carter, and a group of New Hameliners strike out to confront the Piper and find a way back home. Cody's (Powerless, 2009) middle-grade adventure is a busy mash-up of fantasy and folklore that will appeal to readers who enjoy a good quest. The Summer Isle is a little cluttered, but most readers will be too swept up in the action to care. This is the first in a planned trilogy.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this first book in the Secrets of the Pied Piper trilogy, Cody (Villainous) seeks to answer some of the mysteries surrounding the famous legend. Did it actually happen? Who was this enigmatic piper? And what became of the children he led away? The book opens with 10-year-old Carter and his older sister, Max, reacting very differently to their trip to the German town of Hamelin, where their father is researching the folktale. Despite his clubfoot, Carter wants to explore with his sister, while Max would rather sulk and dye her hair pink. After the siblings are magically transported to an enchanted island where the long-missing children from the tale still live, they must embark on a perilous journey to fulfill a prophecy in hopes of returning everyone home. Shifting among various characters' perspectives, this engaging story introduces a world filled with human-size rats, magicians, kobolds, elves, ghosts, and more. Cody weaves an inventive fantasy that spans time and space in its exploration of the lighter and darker sides of magic. Ages 8-12. Agent: Kate Schafer Testerman, KT Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-7-Max and Carter reluctantly join their folklorist father on sabbatical in Hamelin. Yes, that Hamelin. So savvy readers won't express too much surprise when a flood of rats descends from the kitchen vent and the mysterious exterminator who comes to fix the rodent problem actually lures the pair to a fantastical land called the Summer Isle. There, Max and Carter discover a walled village built by the 130 children led away in the familiar Pied Piper tale, a group desperately working to defend themselves against an array of nefarious magical beings who populate the rest of the Isle. In Will in Scarlet (Knopf, 2013), Cody reimagined the Robin Hood legend with verve and charm, focusing on a young protagonist. In this first book of a projected trilogy, Cody attempts a similar feat on a more ambitious scale, meshing contemporary and historical characters as well as folkloric creatures from multiple European traditions. An endearing, resourceful team-the siblings plus three medieval Hameliners-undertake a treacherous journey across the Isle, during which Cody ably delineates each character's personality to yield distinct perspectives on their quandary. In a loving yet complicated sibling dynamic, older sister Max struggles to concede responsibility for her goofier brother, who handles his physical disability with stubborn aplomb. Juggling a squad of children, a Piper-opposing wizard (the titular Peddler), and a prophetic map, Cody's saga furnishes much pleasing kerfuffle but sometimes feels frustratingly diffuse. The ending sets up an obvious path for book two, and while many elements of this book augur rip-roaring sequels, readers may wish that the first had provided more narrative focus and a firmer resolution. VERDICT This opener assembles a promising collection of characters and fairy tale elements but leaves the motley components scattered a smidgen too wide.-Robbin E. Friedman, Chappaqua Library, NY © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

While accompanying their father on his research trip to Hamelin, Germany, 13-year-old Max and her 10-year-old brother, Carter, find that the Pied Piper is not just a fairy tale, but a very real and present danger. Max is bitter toward her father for dragging them away from their home in New York City to research obscure fairy tales. Carter is the opposite. Refusing to be coddled because of his braced leg or taken in by his sister's teenage angst, Carter approaches their trip as an adventure. But when a mysterious, pipe-wielding "pest control professional" arrives and lures them through a mirror and into a land called the Summer Isle, where nothing ever ages or dies, it will take both Max's stubbornness and Carter's optimism to survive and make it home again. J.M. Barrie, the Brothers Grimm, and Lewis Carroll all inform this modern twist on a familiar fairy tale. Unfortunately the intriguing premise is much like the Peddler's Road that the siblings must follow: winding and confusing. Monsters, magic, and mystery await readers willing to stick to the path, but the obstacles of a confusing plot might prove too much for any but the most determined traveler. A muddled and meandering series opener; perhaps things will coalesce in Book 2. (Fantasy. 8-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Chapter One Once there was a girl called Max who had pink hair. According to the label on the dye bottle, the hair color was actually Rosa, which the nice lady at the pharmacy assured her translated to "Wild Magenta," but in the end it turned out to be ordinary pink. The whole process was far messier than Max had expected, and though she'd read that she'd need a second person to really do the job right, she'd decided to tackle it by herself. There wasn't anyone around to help her, anyway. She'd imagined trying out pink hair would be like trying out a new Max. The Max that came in the Wild Magenta bottle would be impulsive and free-spirited and exactly the kind of girl who dyed her hair pink one morning on a whim. But as she stared morosely at the bathroom sink and at all the places the dye had stained the porcelain, she didn't feel any different at all. She was just . . . pinker. As she examined her new look in the bathroom mirror (she'd accidentally dyed the tip of her left ear, too), her brother, Carter, was banging on the bathroom door, telling her he had to go. "What could you possibly be doing in there that would take this long?" her brother complained from the other side of the door, and "If I have to break the door, we'll both be sorry, especially me, because the door looks really, really sturdy." Max turned the lock and yanked the door open in one quick motion. She was so fast that Carter was left banging on nothing at all for a second or two before he realized that the door wasn't closed anymore. Carter had just turned ten, and Max was nearly thirteen, so Max had a good four inches on her younger brother, even when she slouched (which was something she did a lot). She stared down at her brother as she waited for the inevitable snarky quip. There was no way Carter would pass up an opportunity to make fun of her new pink hair. Maybe he'd say she looked like one of those troll dolls you get out of those fifty-cent machines (Max worried that she kind of did). But Carter kept quiet as he shimmied by her, a pained look of concentration on his face as he squeezed his knees together. As they passed each other, Max bumped into Carter and he stumbled on his bad leg, barely catching himself on the marble washbasin. "Oh! Carter, I'm sorry!" said Max, but her brother waved her away. "I'm fine," he said. "But can I have some privacy, for Pete's sake?" Max stepped out into the hallway as her brother slammed the door shut. The squeaking floorboards beneath her feet made Max think of chewing on tinfoil. The floorboards back at their apartment in the States didn't creak like that. Their neighbor who smelled like mothballs let her alarm go off for hours in the morning, and you couldn't sleep at night with the windows open because of the sounds of people spilling out of the bar across the street, but at least the floorboards stayed quiet. Carter called to her from behind the bathroom door. "You've turned your ear pink, you know," he said. Little monster. When Max went down to the kitchen, she found half a carafe of cold coffee on the table and the lingering, apple-y smell of pipe tobacco--the signs of their father's recent presence. Max peered into the sink and saw ashes and flakes of tobacco gathered around the drain. Their father never emptied his pipe into the trash can for fear of catching it on fire, so he always tapped it out in the sink. Back home, when their mother wasn't scolding him for smoking, she was scolding him for forgetting to wash the ashes down the drain. For a few months, Max and Carter had even staged an intervention, hiding their father's pipe whenever they could, but he always managed to produce a spare one, as if by magic. Earlier that morning, just after dawn, the sound of the squeaking floorboards had awakened Max, and she'd made it to the bedroom window in time to see their father's gangly frame as he opened the front gate out onto the street. His glasses were perched askew atop his head as usual, and he was walking lopsidedly with his overstuffed briefcase beneath his arm. In the bed next to Max's, Carter hadn't even stirred. Now with the kitchen all her own, Max helped herself to what was left of the coffee and picked up one of the German-language newspapers off the table. She liked to play a little game as she flipped through the pages, to see how many English words she could find. She'd just spotted iPhone and Hollywood when the front doorbell buzzed. It was their housekeeper, Mrs. Amsel, waiting on the stoop with a bag of groceries. She was short and squat and had skin so ruddy and wrinkled it looked like leather. And the woman possessed a terrible habit of speaking her mind. "Mein Gott!" said Mrs. Amsel in her heavily accented English. "This was on purpose?" She poked one finger up at Max's hair. "It's just hair," said Max, suddenly and stupidly self-conscious. Why was she embarrassed? Didn't people dye their hair pink because they wanted other people to look at them? Wasn't that the whole point? "Ah, such things you children do these days," said Mrs. Amsel, shaking her head. "I didn't think it was a big deal," said Max, just like a carefree girl would. Care. Free. "Mm-hmm," said Mrs. Amsel. "Well, at least the color makes your cheeks look rosy and plump. Very nice." As the tiny housekeeper brushed past Max and into the house, Max surreptitiously felt her cheeks. "Plump" was certainly not what she was going for. Their father had hired Mrs. Amsel to tidy up the house they were renting and to cook meals. The woman also kept an eye on Max and her brother, more for their father's peace of mind than anything else, Max suspected. Mrs. Amsel wiped her forehead with a kerchief. She always wore one over her hair and kept a second one for mopping her sweaty brow. "We're in for a hot day today!" Then she set the brown paper bag on the kitchen table and began arranging plates of cold cuts and thick, whitish sausages. Next she took out a baguette and a hunk of yellow cheese. "Ah, meine liebe, could you bring me a nice sharp knife?" Max went through the various drawers until she found a long knife with a serrated edge sharp enough for sawing through the thick bread crust. She still didn't know her way around this new kitchen. "Danke," said Mrs. Amsel, and she began to saw off generous slices of bread. Max had never been able to guess Mrs. Amsel's age. She bustled around with the energy of a young woman, but her hair showed white beneath the scarf, and the loose skin at her elbows wiggled as she sawed the baguette. "I brought you and your brother a traditional German breakfast. Mr. Weber's children won't starve under my care. And that nice man at the corner grocer gives me a good price on bratwurst." Everyone Mrs. Amsel talked about was a nice person. The nice man who delivered the mail, the nice woman who made change at the bank. This nice person and that nice person. If Mrs. Amsel was to be believed, then this was the nicest town in all of Europe. But then Max remembered the nice lady at the pharmacy who'd sold her the hair dye. . . . Great, now Max was doing it, too. When Mrs. Amsel was done setting out the spread, it looked more like a lunch buffet than a breakfast. Cold cuts, sausages, bread and cheese. Max had explained to her several times that she was a vegetarian, but the housekeeper either hadn't understood or was choosing to ignore her. "I'll just have coffee to start, thanks," said Max. But Mrs. Amsel snatched the coffee mug from Max's hands and slid it to the opposite side of the table, far out of Max's reach. "Coffee stunts your growth," said Mrs. Amsel. "You want to end up small like me? There's juice in the icebox." As Max dragged herself over to the refrigerator, she wondered how much coffee the diminutive woman had to have drunk to stay that size. She didn't feel like searching the kitchen for a glass, so Max took a long drink of chilled orange juice straight from the bottle. Mrs. Amsel arched her eyebrow at this lack of manners, but she didn't comment on it. "Did you call your mother last night?" "We talked online." "You should call your mother." Max wanted to tell Mrs. Amsel, for the sixteenth time, that talking to her mother online was better than calling because they could actually see each other, but Mrs. Amsel was willfully ignorant about computers and, it seemed, the twenty-first century in general. No matter what Max said, in Mrs. Amsel's mind, a phone call would always be more personal. Calling your parents when you were away was just the right thing to do. "Did you tell her about your hair?" asked Mrs. Amsel. "No," said Max. "I only did it this morning. It was an impulse." "Mm-hmm," said Mrs. Amsel as she slid a plate piled high with sausages and lunch meat in front of Max's nose. "And your father?" asked Mrs. Amsel. "What did he say?" Max tried not to stare at the meat mountain in front of her as she nibbled on a piece of plain bread. She had yet to find a toaster in this house. "Dad came home late and left early. We didn't talk." Mrs. Amsel didn't answer at first, but poured herself a cup of coffee instead. "Well," she said after she'd spooned enough sugar into her coffee to turn it into syrup. "Mr. Weber is an important man. And very busy. That's why I'm here, meine liebe." "If he's so busy, why'd he drag us halfway across the world with him?" said Max. "I would've been happier with my mom back in New York, not stuck in this stupid place." Max immediately regretted not that she'd said it, but how she'd said it. This stupid place was Mrs. Amsel's home, after all. Max took another bite of bread, not wanting to look the housekeeper in the eye. Max's father was ruining her life with this stupid trip of his, but that wasn't Mrs. Amsel's fault. But if the little woman had taken offense, she didn't show it. "Where is your brother?" she asked as she pushed herself up from the table. "I promised your father I would show you Old Town today, if the walking is not too much for Carter. The boy's breakfast is getting cold." Max didn't bother pointing out that the traditional German breakfast was mostly cold to begin with. Mrs. Amsel set off in search of Carter, and the floorboards complained as the little housekeeper hauled herself up the rickety steps. Then Max heard her knock on the bathroom door and her brother's voice loudly respond, "But I just got in here!" With a quick glance toward the stairs, Max reached for her coffee and stole a sip. It was room temperature, and Max didn't normally take it black, but she didn't feel like searching for the milk, and she was pretty sure Mrs. Amsel had used up all the sugar. Outside the kitchen window, people were walking briskly along the street, laden with their briefcases and bags as they headed to work, just like back in New York. Cars sped by, and life went on as normally. As Mrs. Amsel had warned, it was turning out to be a hot day already, and Max was wondering if she could figure out how to work the old house's air conditioner when she spotted something across the street. There was movement in the shade of the grocer's awning, and at first she thought it must be a cat, but when it moved out into the sunlight, she recognized it for what it really was--a rat. More than one rat, actually, and they were scurrying about the grocer's fruit stands. What's more, there was a man standing there as well, and though his torso and head were hidden in the shade, Max could tell that he was very tall, and she could clearly see his muddy shoes and the bottom of his long, threadbare coat. Perhaps he was a street person. There were plenty of those back in New York City, but Max had yet to see one here in this tidy little town. Maybe he was the grocer, and he was content to just let rats play in his food. Max made a mental note to tell Mrs. Amsel not to shop there anymore. Max was leaning out of the open window to get a better look at the man when her view was suddenly obscured by a group of teenage boys strolling past--laughing and shoving each other as they shared some joke. One of them glanced up at Max, but before they could make eye contact, Max quickly retreated from the window. By the time she looked again, the boys had moved on, and the odd man in the black coat, and the rats, were gone as well. Max tugged at a pink lock of hair that had fallen in front of her face and examined it between her fingers. It was a soft pink, like baby pajamas. Nothing wild about it at all, really. Just baby-pajamas hair. "Hamelin stinks," she muttered. Chapter Two The worst thing about Carter's sister was that she hadn't always been such a giant pain in the rear end. There was a time, not so long ago, when they'd been friends, not just brother and sister. Back then, coming to this new house their father had rented would have been an adventure. The two of them would have played explorers, searching for hidden rooms and passages. A house this old just had to have secrets. Now, however, Max spent most of her time alone, and when she was with the family, she was constantly staring at her phone or glaring at nothing at all. Carter had been left to explore on his own, and the house had thus far proved to be depressingly ordinary, though Carter held out hope for the cellar. Still, he would have had a better chance at finding something really interesting if Max had helped. They should have been playing detective and staying up well past his bedtime to tell ghost stories by flashlight. But Carter feared it was too late now for his sister, because the Crouch had gotten hold of her. Excerpted from The Peddler's Road by Matthew Cody All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.