The Books of Elsewhere

The Books of Elsewhere is a series of fantasy novels for kids and young teens by Jacqueline West.

There are five Elsewhere books^[1]

1. The Shadows (2010)
2. Spellbound (2011)
3. The Second Spy (2012)
4. The Strangers (2013)
5. Still Life (2014)

Characters

• Olive Dunwoody—Olive Dunwoody is the main character of the book series. Her parents are math experts, yet Olive is not very good at math. She moves into the house on Linden Street. Olive discovers that she can travel inside the mysterious paintings scattered about the house using a set of magical spectacles. Then eventually she goes on an adventure that she never thought was possible.
• Morton Nivens—Morton is Olive's friend. He is actually a painting and Olive meets him in her first encounter with the shadows. Morton is a small boy, and he is still adjusting to being Olive's friend. He wasn't always a painting; before, he was a little boy who lived on Linden Street. Like the other neighbors, Morton got trapped in a painting by the evil Aldous McMartin.
• Rutherford Dewey—Rutherford meets Olive in the second volume 'Spellbound'. He has curly hair, and is staying with Mrs. Dewey. He and Olive have an uneasy friendship, beginning when Rutherford was helping Olive find the McMartins' spell book. In the third book, he reveals he is a reader, a person who can hear people's thoughts.
• Horatio, Harvey, and Leopold—Horatio, Harvey, and Leopold are the house's guardian cats. Horatio is usually the leader and acts like many different made up people in this series. He also guards the main levels of the mansion. He thinks that his fluffy orange coat is just fabulous, and prefers not to get dirty. He is also the first cat introduced in the book. Harvey is a calico, who according to Olive, "Is every color in the cat fur rainbow," He guards the attic of the house, and likes to pretend to be historical characters, like pirates or knights. Harvey is also the best cat. Leopold is the soldier and is very loyal, he's also a very large black cat who guards the dark basement. Specifically, he guards the basement trapdoor that has Aldous McMartin's urn in it, which Annabelle McMartin is trying to get to bring Aldous McMartin (her grandfather) back to life. Olive forms a special bond with the three talking cats.
• Annabelle McMartin— Annabelle McMartin is the series' main antagonist. She is a witch, and the granddaughter of the late painter Aldous McMartin. In the first novel she gained Olive's trust only to get back her golden pendant so she could free her grandfather. She then deserted Olive in the middle of a black lake in a painting. Afterwards she released her grandfather only to have Olive and Morton thwart her plans. She becomes trapped in a painting in the end of the first novel. In the second novel she is released from her painting by an entranced Olive. She tries to get rid of Olive and Morton by trapping them inside a painting. Morton's older and now grown sister Lucinda prevents her from doing this but is destroyed in the process. Annabelle escapes in the end of the second novel.
• Aldous McMartin—Aldous McMartin is the artist of all the magical paintings inside Olive's home and the first owner of the McMartin mansion. All the neighbors thought he was crazy because he never sold a single painting to anybody who was interested. At the end of the book Annabelle released his ashes from his urn and to come back to life. He returns to his house as a mere shadow where he is destroyed by Olive at the end of the first novel (The Shadows).
• Alice and Alec Dunwoody—Mr. Alec and Mrs. Alice Dunwoody are two mathematicians and are the parents of Olive Dunwoody. In "The Books of Elsewhere" they are captured in the fourth novel.
• Morton's Parents—their names were Mary and Harold Nivens. They were the parents of both Morton and his older sister Lucinda. The fifth book reveals that Mary was on a mission to spy on Aldous. As part of her cover, she took painting lessons from him. When he realized that she was spying on him, Aldous trapped both her and her husband in separate paintings, from which they were later rescued by Olive.

External links

The main site of the series is: [www.thebooksofelsewhere.com]

• Jacqueline West at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Search results: jacqueline west at Kirkus Reviews