Lynne Reid Banks and Brock Cole - The Indian in the Cupboard: Movie Tie in

I was looking for some books on CD to listen to with my son, from my local library and saw that Indian in the Cupboard was available. I put the first three books in the series on hold and started listening to them with my nine year old son.

This is the first book in the series and introduces us to Omri and his friend Patrick who live in the UK. It's Omri's birthday and Patrick gives him a plastic Indian for his birthday. His older brother gives him a cupboard that he found in the street that he thought would appeal to his brother (it wasn't busted or dirty, but it was a cast off thing) and his mother gave him a key that belonged to family that she thought might be helpful with the cupboard since the cupboard didn't come with one.

That combination of things apparently made magic happen and when Omri put the plastic Indian in the cupboard and turned the key the Indian came alive: a tiny 3 inch tall person named Red Bull. His English isn't perfect but the two can communicate. He is from the time of the French and Indian Wars (1754–1763) and is Iroquois, so on the British side.

Omri lets slip that he has a live Indian to his friend Patrick and when Patrick comes over with a plastic cowboy they also bring to life a small cowboy who goes by the name of Boone who is from Texas in the 1800s.

Initially Boone is pretty mean to the Indian and says some nasty things to him but they start to get along better. The boys bring them to school one day and Boone draws an amazing (small) picture that Omri passes off as his own work, but the boys do realize bringing the small men was a bad idea.

Towards the end of the book Boone and Little Bull are watching a Western on TV, Boone keeps telling the cowboys to get the dirty Indians and Little Bull gets pissed off and shoots him with an arrow. Boone is so small the boys don't have a way to help him but Omri finds a plastic figure of a doctor from WWI. But they can't find the key. Will they be able to save Boone in time?

The concept is really interesting. I like the way the magic works. I like the issues the boys run into, having real little people. Little Bull and Boone both have distinct personalities, though they are rather stereotyped. The interactions between them was well done. The book was written in such a way that there were plenty of opportunities for suspense. My son said that's one of the things he liked about listening to the cd, there were lots of great places to pause it to look forward to coming back to see how it turned out.

One thing to be aware of, the words hell and damn are used. They are pretty low level cuss words, but they are part of the book, if that bothers you.

The book is written, and narrated on the CD, by Lynne Reid Banks and her narration made the story even more fun. She has a great accent for Boone and Little Bull. The story really is a fun one and we looked forward to reading the next in the series. For those reading rather than listening to the book it has an AR Book Level of 4.6 and I'd recommend it to students in grades 3 through 7. It is a little bit educational about the time periods the little men are from, but mostly it's a fun adventure.

It won the following awards: Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award, California Young Reader Medal, Pacific Northwest Young Readers Choice Award, A Virginia Young Readers Award.

Recommend this product? Yes