Secrets of Valhalla

Gr 4–7—Friday the 13th has always been an unlucky day for Buzz, and this year it promises to be even stranger, with talking squirrels, supernatural trees, and murderous dragons appearing from invisible caverns beneath the earth. With a cast of characters inspired by Norse mythology, Richards takes her reluctant hero on a quest to find and rescue a handful of adults who have mysteriously disappeared from Buzz's town of Crowmarsh. Buzz enlists the help of the unpopular Mary, and together they manage to persuade the Norse gods and goddesses to release the mortals they've possessed in order to fight Tyr and prevent Ragnarok (the final battle). In the meantime, the doomed citizens of Crowmarsh are trapped in an endless repetition of the same Saturday, and Buzz's mother, who, in a confusing and inconsequential subplot, disappeared from her research expedition in the Amazon a year ago, reappears. By the end, Buzz achieves a happy ending and his family drama resolves all too perfectly. His friend Mary, on the other hand, has less success with her rigid and authoritarian grandmother. Richards's story is yet another venture into the genre that Rick Riordan has so successfully made his own, and she doesn't quite pull it off. In an effort to explain the lesser-known details of Norse mythology, Richards periodically takes time out from the story to provide context, and the result is a little jerky. Nevertheless, kids will love meeting the lachrymose Kraken, who is also, apparently, the Loch Ness Monster and cheeky Ratatosk, the talking squirrel. Richards's vivid animal characters are the stars of this narrative.