Sunday, January 13, 2008

Georgia Byng

Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism
by Georgia Byng
Recommended Age: 10+

This is an adorable story about a very plain, unloved little girl in a British orphanage, who discovers that she has the gift of hypnotism.

Molly mesmerizes her way to New York, makes a bit hig on Broadway, lives it up in the Waldorf Hotel, and has a precarious adventure with a would-be bank robber who knows her secret to success. Then, realizing what she has left behind, and deciding that having everything she wants is meaningless when she's lonely and homesick, she goes back to undo the damage her mischievous tricks caused back home.

Featuring a sparky little pug dog named Petula, a best friend named Rocky Scarlet, and an orphanage from hell, it's a thrilling and fun-filled adventure in the wonderful world of mind control. It even has a plot twist that will completely throw you...twice. Well recommended!

Molly Moon Stops the World
by Georgia Byng
Recommended Age: 8+

The second adventure of young British orphan and hypnotist Molly Moon is an even wilder and sometimes scarier adventure than the first one, which was Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism.

Molly is miserable, since Rocky, her best friend at the Happiness House Orphanage, forced her to swear not to use her hypnotic powers again. Without them, there doesn’t seem to be anything special about Molly. But things change quickly when her librarian friend, Lucy Logan, sends her to Hollywood on a risky mission. It seems a rich businessman named Primo Cell has been climing the ladder of fortune and power by using a stronger and more permanent form of hypnosis than anyone has heard of before. And other hypnotists have been disappearing or falling prey to bizarre accidents. And now Davina Nuttel, a child actress Molly met on her first adventure in New York, has disappeared. Only a young, gifted hypnotist like Molly can hope to stop the greedy, power-hungry Cell from enslaving or destroying hundreds of people and achieving world domination! (Insert dramatic musical interlude.)

So Molly, Rocky, and the whole crowd from Happiness House fly to Los Angeles to have fun in the sun and hobnob with movie stars. Only for Molly and Rocky, it isn’t all fun and games. They enemy they have to work against is more powerful than they had ever imagined. They unravel a fiendish plot to turn celebrities into puppets of an advertising empire, and to capture the hearts and minds of Americans, if not the whole world! How do you fight against an enemy who can steal your mind—and who has no problem with kidnap and murder to boot?

Part of the solution has to do with Molly’s newfound ability to make time stand still. Another part has to do with meditation techniques taught by an aging hippie. And part of it has to do with the surprise revelations Molly learns about who her parents really are, and how she came to be abandoned on the orphanage’s doorstep in an empty marshmallow box.

Enjoy all the old friends from Molly’s first adventure, and meet some new heroes, villains, and comic relief. Nibble your knuckles over all the danger, for Molly and Rocky as well as for the world. And relish the story’s charm and humor and its lovable heroine. The plot may be a bit on the complicated side, but one thing is simple and obvious: Molly Moon is a star!

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