Sipping Streams Tea Company

Death By Darjeeling

Laura Childs

Berkley Publishing Group

Published May 2001

ISBN: 0-425-17945-1

$5.99 in US, $8.99 Canada

Paperback, Fiction

    I was hooked to this book from the very beginning.  I could see, hear, and smell the background setting.  The subject and action are appropriate for some people around my age, but could be a bit much for others.  I could not put myself in the story because the characters had skills and interests that I do not.  There was a surprise ending at the end of the book.  Hughes Barron, a customer at the tea shop, was poisoned while drinking his tea, so Theodosia Browning--who runs the place--tries to figure out who killed him.

    Theodosia Browning is a believable character because she runs a tea shop.  Some people in the real world run shops in town.  Readers can relate to her because she makes mistakes like real people.  Once, she was so caught up in investigating the murder, she forgot about an appointment in the afternoon.  Real people also get so caught up in one thing, that they miss, skip, or forget about something else.  I felt like I was a part of the adventure, the story seemed so real.

            I would recommend Death By Darjeeling, by Laura Childs, to people around my age who like mysteries.  I am glad I read it so I could see how tea can be involved with crime and mystery.    This book gets 3 and a half cups of tea out of five rating. The story relates to tea by having Hughes Barron die from drinking his tea, and that the main character runs tea shop.

Claire

Tea Associate

Frontier High School, Grade 11

The Haunted Tea Cosy

Edward Corey

Harcourt Brace & Company

December 1997

ISBN 0-15-100415-3

63 pages including pictures (Hard Cover)

$15.00 U.S./$21.00 Canada

Genre: Adult Satire

The Haunted Tea Cosy, by Edward Corey, is a fictional children’s book about a man named Edmund Gravel. It’s a parody of the book, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. It seemed to be very random and directionless.

            The book only mentions tea in the very beginning and all it says is that Gravel is making tea, sitting at his table, and then drinking tea alone. And after that, the story appears to just become random pictures, like a picture of a kid hiding behind a tomb stone for no reason and random words to describe those pictures. This seems like a story for children to read, but when you look at some of the words in the book, you would have to look them up if it were not for the fact that they are used in a sentence to give away their meaning.

            The book is random, for example, the story starts out with a man making tea alone, cutting up a decade old fruit cake. Why? It doesn’t explain either of those things at all. Then suddenly a giant bug pops out of his tea pot. A non-solid personage appears walking through his door, to whisk him away to random places.

            Honestly, this book lacks most things a book needs! Such as a plot, a story, and paragraphs that make sense. Some of the pictures were quite weird, and when combined with the words next to the page, slightly morbid.

            Overall, I give this book 1/2 of a tea cup out of 5 possible because I felt the pictures were just odd! It was a strange story, and really had little to do with tea, except for the beginning.

James

Tea Associate

Frontier High School, Grade 9