In her books, Below The Root and And All Between, Zilpha K. Snyder chooses to examine man's inhumanity to fellow man arising out of the abuse of power…. In her sequel And All Between, Snyder attempts an interesting literary experiment. The same story told in the first book is now told from the point of view of [a different character]…. The first reaction to the technique is "what an easy way to write a second novel," but a fairer assessment of Snyder's attempt to pr...

Until the Celebration, the final book in Zilpha Keatley Snyder's "Greensky" science fiction trilogy, is the least successful of the three. Below the Root, the first book of the trilogy, presented an imaginative and convincing future society with a strong focus on three Kindar young people…. And All Between, the second volume, retold the story of the first book from the viewpoint of Teera, the Erdling girl—an interesting innovation, but one that was not entirely successful....

In a succession of distinguished books, Zilpha Keatley Snyder has been exploring the nature of magic, not only for the benefit of children, one feels, but to satisfy herself—which is, of course, how all good books are written. Invariably at the center of her magic is an oddball—a highly individual, nonconforming, compelling character, so inventive … as to suggest that magic lies within the power of imagination itself. (p. 8) With each book the pattern of Mrs. Snyder's magic becom...

"And All Between" is the self-contained successor to [Zilpha Snyder's] earlier "Below the Root." (It is so self-contained, in fact, that the first 125 pages are devoted to a recapitulation of previous action from a different point of view.) Once the story proper gets under way, we find that it winds up the tale of the schism between the tree-dwelling Kindar and the subterranean Erdlings, the latter exiled and depicted as monsters because they know or suspect a forbidden tr...

A fantasy may be laid in the here-and-now, but in order to soar beyond its everyday setting, it must be written with imagination and better than average prose. [In "Black and Blue Magic"] Zilpha Keatley Snyder succeeds in humorously portraying the ordinary events in the life of Harry Houdini Marco, a 12-year-old with a legacy of magic, because she pays attention to slapstick details. But she fails to lift fumble-footed Harry into the extraordinary, which successful fantasy demands. Her languag...

The sureness with which the author draws her young characters and the deep perception and wisdom of her understanding of peer interplay and conversation will draw the reader into [The Truth About Stone Hollow] with its shadowy overlays of mystery and magic…. But the story consists of more than discoveries and wonderings. A clear picture emerges of the smug little town riddled with religious prejudices and family differences. If not rich in the creation of atmosphere and mood, nor always successful in...

Robin's character [in The Velvet Room] has far more facets than the usual sensitive child of fiction who needs a private place for dreaming. She is normally selfish and has a tough resilience behind her sensitivity. Her brothers and sisters are real children too. The reader, however, remembers not the realism of the rather stark tale of a migratory worker's family, but the magical aura through which an imaginative child sees the world. Ruth Hill Viguers "Early Spring Bookli...

A brief review such as this does not permit full recounting of the exciting characterizations, marvelous depth and intricate yet most readable plot that Mrs. Snyder has created [in And All Between]. Although a sequel to her well received Below The Root, this work is an even more powerful story. In this reviewer's opinion And All Between ranks as Mrs. Snyder's best book yet! Her presentation of two different societies that evolved from that of our earth somewhere in the future is a compelling a...

[When Pamela in Season of Ponies] is given her great-grandmother's curious amulet,… with its cryptic message, "Give the searching heart an eye, and magic fills a summer's sky," it carries her into adventures in an imaginary world. Here are the challenge and the paradox of fantasy, for in the clear light of the unreal world, everyday disappointments are obscured and truth is revealed. Summoned by the sound of a flute, Pamela finds, in a forest clearing, a boy with a herd of...

[In The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case] Amanda, although less hostile [than in The Headless Cupid], is still causing trouble; it's her boasting about her rich father in the U.S. that causes the kidnapping. The family is in Italy, where Amanda's mother has inherited property she can have only if they live there a year. What the kidnappers don't bargain for is holding five children captive, and Snyder makes the whole affair believable and very funny. The story would be enjoyable in any ca...

Although the events are not gentle, the relationship between Dion and Sara [in Eyes in the Fishbowl] suggests the Portrait of Jennie [by Robert Nathan]. Strange, unresolved, it will delight some young people, baffle others. Especially interesting is the characterization of Dion. To one of the students who tries to reconcile him to his very likable father, Dion exclaims, "I can't help it if I'm not rebelling in the right direction. Everybody has to rebel against what he has to rebel agai...

[Zilpha Snyder] attempts an overview of her troubled nation-states [in "Until the Celebration"]. But she doesn't have the zoom lens, or even an intercom. We seem to be reading the minutes of countless meetings, running down the pages of Kindar and Erdling phone books, rather than witnessing events. The air is befogged. We catch only occasional glimpses of stately figures with veiled faces moving from limb to limb before the mist wraps them again in obscurity. One wants to grab the tree ...

In the second volume of an intricately conceived fantasy [And All Between], the pending conflict of Below the Root … becomes confrontation…. Like the first book, this has some passages that move slowly, long monologues or explanatory passages, but they are compensated for by the imaginatively detailed conception of the light and dark worlds of Green-Sky and its deported citizens who live below the magic, ice-cold Root and by the suspense of the conflict that seems resolved by the end of the bo...

[This] suspenseful mystery [The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case] takes the family on a sabbatical year to Italy. A leisurely beginning lingers too long on the technicalities of getting to Europe and on the family's sightseeing jaunts to Venice and Florence. Only after settling in a villa near a small Tuscan village does the tension begin to build…. The story, told through David's eyes, has a typical 12-year-old's perceptions; and the imaginative character portrayals texture the na...

Zilpha Keatley Snyder has proven herself a nimble-fingered craftswoman before, in "The Egypt Game" and "The Velvet Room," but in "The Truth About Stone Hollow" she never even gets her materials together. There are some wisps and scraps labeled creepy cottage, new boy at school, crippled father, and there are some ghosts blowing around the landscape like plastic bags, but there are so many loose ends in this book you could build a bird's nest out of them.