If you are not prepared to talk to your child about the horrors and evils that people can do to each other then I would definitely stray from this book. Prejudice (of all kinds), value of life, lose of home or safe space, etc. There continues to be thousands of books published about WWII because there is so much for us (as a society) to learn and be reminded of from that war. It was an awful time in human history and there is no easy way to tell any of the multitude of stories that are relevant to the time. I worry that a child would not find this book to be very engaging as they would loose track of who was who very quickly.Īs with any WWII book the overall context is dark and foreboding.

This gets a little lost in the multitude of characters in Turnkey. Which means in a short period of time you need to not only tell the story/plot of your book, develop the characters, set the scene AND describe the magic. If you want a twist to shock a reader then it needs to make sense inside those parameters that you create. The thing with magic in stories is you have to set-up rules and parameters. The construct itself isn't too complicated but how it can or might work is.Īdditionally there are a lot of players in this book (seven turnkeys alone before we add in other ghosts and the Nazis) and while the language is very simple and well written for the 9-11 age range I still had a hard time keeping track of who was who. The four points above AND the magical construct that Rushby has created to tell her story from. Turnkey has to establish two things quickly for the reader. However the plot was complex and it concerns me that it's took much for the average 9-11 year old.ĭelving into the plot of Turnkey the reader needs to understand a few things:ġ) The Nazis were the 'bad guys' (easy enough)Ģ) They have levels or ranks of military (not too bad)ģ) They are trying to win a war by overtaking London (tolerable) and,Ĥ) They believe that mystical spirit magic can do this.(here's where it gets tough). The concept overall was really interesting and it was a fast paced book. Ghosts or spirits that keep everyone in their cemetery safe and at rest.

Allison Rushby does this by creating cemetery grave keepers, if you will.

Marketed as a middle grade book The Turnkey of Highgate Cemetery (Turnkey) is ambitious to take on the difficult topic of WWII and how to explain the complexity to children.

The turnkey by allison rushby