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The Clockwork Three
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When Giuseppe finds a green violin washed up in New York docks, somehow he KNOWS it will change his life. But how? The very same day, Hannah, a maid at a local hotel, gets a strange new mistress. Why are Madame X and her mysterious Russian minder living in a hotel? What are they hiding from? Across the square, Frederick, a clockmaker's apprentice, hides his dark terrors, and an amazing gift. There is nothing to link these three children, except the green violin and a chance encounter on the street. But soon they are swept away in an epic adventure. A mesmerizing story of chance, friendship, and courage.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
Gold Star Award Winner!
Desperate to escape from his cruel master and make his way back to his home in Italy, Giuseppe is excited to find a green violin that is like new. Playing it every day in the streets, he is able to make large amounts of money for his escape. Storing it in a crypt of a man by the name of Stroop, he dreams of the day he will be able to buy his passage home. However, his cruel master, Stephano, grows suspicious of Giuseppe and begins watching him like a hawk.
Once a great stonemanson, Hannah's father has become an invalid after suffering a bad stroke. Her mother must stay home and care for him as well as the two youngest children. Forced to work in a hotel as a maid, Hannah longs to be able to go back to school and move out of the tenement housing they live in. When her father falls seriously ill from a bedsore, Hannah's desperate attempts to get money for the medicine her father needs all fail. Her only hope is to find the missing treasure of Mr. Stroop, a once wealthy, prominent, living person in society.
Apprenticed to a clockmaker, Frederick was lucky enough to escape the orphanage life. Curious to a fault, Frederick seeks unique ways to becoming a journeyman in his field. When he gets the idea to make a clockwork man, he begins saving pieces of scrap metal from around the shop and starts creating them into the form of a man. All he needs is a head.
Their lives spun together like clockwork, these three's paths become entwined for better or for worse. Working together to try and meet all three of their goals, they are able to find a way into Mr. Stroop's old hidden room above the hotel, find a clockwork head for Frederick, and help Giuseppe get out from under his oppression. Their plans, however, soon backfire and make matters worse.
Now, Giuseppe is on the run for his life from his cruel master, Frederick has mysterious men from the town museum after him for stealing their clockwork head, and Hannah is on the run from the police for theft and burglary from the hotel she was working at. Their only hope is to find the treasure. Will they succeed?
An amazing adventure filled with excitement, action, and friendship. The characters are well-developed. The plot is unique, well-done, and does a great job of holding the reader's interest. Those who like fantasy, adventure, and mystery will all enjoy reading THE CLOCKWORK THREE.
Reviewed by: Kira M
Desperate to escape from his cruel master and make his way back to his home in Italy, Giuseppe is excited to find a green violin that is like new. Playing it every day in the streets, he is able to make large amounts of money for his escape. Storing it in a crypt of a man by the name of Stroop, he dreams of the day he will be able to buy his passage home. However, his cruel master, Stephano, grows suspicious of Giuseppe and begins watching him like a hawk.
Once a great stonemanson, Hannah's father has become an invalid after suffering a bad stroke. Her mother must stay home and care for him as well as the two youngest children. Forced to work in a hotel as a maid, Hannah longs to be able to go back to school and move out of the tenement housing they live in. When her father falls seriously ill from a bedsore, Hannah's desperate attempts to get money for the medicine her father needs all fail. Her only hope is to find the missing treasure of Mr. Stroop, a once wealthy, prominent, living person in society.
Apprenticed to a clockmaker, Frederick was lucky enough to escape the orphanage life. Curious to a fault, Frederick seeks unique ways to becoming a journeyman in his field. When he gets the idea to make a clockwork man, he begins saving pieces of scrap metal from around the shop and starts creating them into the form of a man. All he needs is a head.
Their lives spun together like clockwork, these three's paths become entwined for better or for worse. Working together to try and meet all three of their goals, they are able to find a way into Mr. Stroop's old hidden room above the hotel, find a clockwork head for Frederick, and help Giuseppe get out from under his oppression. Their plans, however, soon backfire and make matters worse.
Now, Giuseppe is on the run for his life from his cruel master, Frederick has mysterious men from the town museum after him for stealing their clockwork head, and Hannah is on the run from the police for theft and burglary from the hotel she was working at. Their only hope is to find the treasure. Will they succeed?
An amazing adventure filled with excitement, action, and friendship. The characters are well-developed. The plot is unique, well-done, and does a great job of holding the reader's interest. Those who like fantasy, adventure, and mystery will all enjoy reading THE CLOCKWORK THREE.
Reviewed by: Kira M
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
47 reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
It Has Heart, in Abundance
1 Oct 2010
Format:Hardcover
Every boy or girl, no matter how old, should read this book. I'll try to tell you why.
I believe at some time every child, no matter who or where they are, feels at least once and maybe several times like a slave of sorts, even in the best of times and in the most favorable of conditions. I know I did, and most of the people I've talked to enough about it to know, did also. Even though I was raised in pleasant circumstances with everything I needed, I did. Nonetheless, I had red hair and freckles, and my skin burned like the dickens. Ginger hair and abundant freckles that multiplied like crazy when I stayed out too long in the sun didn't appeal to me, not at all. Neither did the painful blisters from my sunburns. And that is putting it mildly. I felt like my light complexion made me a slave to it. I knew that my red hair made me an object of ridicule and bullying, and there were times when I utterly hated it and thought almost no one else, except perhaps another redhead, could ever understand.
THE CLOCKWORK THREE is the title of Matthew J. Kirby's novel about three young people that every person can identify with who is in or has experienced similar circumstances of crises, big or small: Giuseppe, Hannah, and Frederick. It is set on the eastern seaboard in a bustling city of the United States around 1900. Those three young characters provide ample opportunity for every young reader to find a friend to identify with relative to feelings of enslavement to something, whether it's freckles and red hair or something else much more or less serious.
Take as a mentor either the orphaned Giuseppe, who must play his violin in the streets for money and turn over all the earnings from doing so to an evil master, or the lovely and tender Hannah, who must work her fingers to the bone with little opportunity or future as a maid in a high-class hotel in order to provide for her impoverished family, or the handsome and strong Frederick, the young apprentice to a clockmaker who can't remember what happened to him earlier in his life so that he lost his mother and ended up in an orphanage. Because, if you do, you'll find more than the magic in Giuseppe's green violin found as flotsam in the bay, or in the automaton Frederick has long dreamed of bringing to life, or in the treasure in the park Hannah hopes to find to deliver her family from poverty and worse. You will find the magic of friendship, of sacrificing yourself for someone else, and of loyalty to both people you love and to principles.
This is Matthew's debut novel and what a grand one it is. You will love his tight storylines that will carry you away into the world of the three children; you'll marvel in the way he weaves his prose together so flawlessly, and you'll find satisfaction in the ease with which he employs metaphors and other literary devices. And characters! Oh my, the characters. Awesomeness.
Steampunk, fantasy, history, it has it all, subtly. But most of all, it has heart, in abundance.
I wrote ALEJANDRO THE GREAT.
I believe at some time every child, no matter who or where they are, feels at least once and maybe several times like a slave of sorts, even in the best of times and in the most favorable of conditions. I know I did, and most of the people I've talked to enough about it to know, did also. Even though I was raised in pleasant circumstances with everything I needed, I did. Nonetheless, I had red hair and freckles, and my skin burned like the dickens. Ginger hair and abundant freckles that multiplied like crazy when I stayed out too long in the sun didn't appeal to me, not at all. Neither did the painful blisters from my sunburns. And that is putting it mildly. I felt like my light complexion made me a slave to it. I knew that my red hair made me an object of ridicule and bullying, and there were times when I utterly hated it and thought almost no one else, except perhaps another redhead, could ever understand.
THE CLOCKWORK THREE is the title of Matthew J. Kirby's novel about three young people that every person can identify with who is in or has experienced similar circumstances of crises, big or small: Giuseppe, Hannah, and Frederick. It is set on the eastern seaboard in a bustling city of the United States around 1900. Those three young characters provide ample opportunity for every young reader to find a friend to identify with relative to feelings of enslavement to something, whether it's freckles and red hair or something else much more or less serious.
Take as a mentor either the orphaned Giuseppe, who must play his violin in the streets for money and turn over all the earnings from doing so to an evil master, or the lovely and tender Hannah, who must work her fingers to the bone with little opportunity or future as a maid in a high-class hotel in order to provide for her impoverished family, or the handsome and strong Frederick, the young apprentice to a clockmaker who can't remember what happened to him earlier in his life so that he lost his mother and ended up in an orphanage. Because, if you do, you'll find more than the magic in Giuseppe's green violin found as flotsam in the bay, or in the automaton Frederick has long dreamed of bringing to life, or in the treasure in the park Hannah hopes to find to deliver her family from poverty and worse. You will find the magic of friendship, of sacrificing yourself for someone else, and of loyalty to both people you love and to principles.
This is Matthew's debut novel and what a grand one it is. You will love his tight storylines that will carry you away into the world of the three children; you'll marvel in the way he weaves his prose together so flawlessly, and you'll find satisfaction in the ease with which he employs metaphors and other literary devices. And characters! Oh my, the characters. Awesomeness.
Steampunk, fantasy, history, it has it all, subtly. But most of all, it has heart, in abundance.
I wrote ALEJANDRO THE GREAT.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
An enticing novel
13 Oct 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
The Clockwork Three is the first fantasy novel by Matthew J. Kirby. One of the unique part about how the novel came to be written centers upon a historic newspaper article from 1873 that involved a child street performer by the name of Joseph and the complex ramifications that occurred during the period that concerned child labor laws. Kirby recreates Joseph's as well as any other child's story at the time of the turn of the century as seen through the eyes of the three main characters, Guiseppe who is the street performer who eloquently plays his green violin, Frederick is an apprentice clockmaker under the tutelage of Master Branch, and Hannah a maid at the grand Gilbert Hotel.
The strength of the novel is attributed to the three characters and the relationships that are established within a cosmopolitan landscape of New York along with other children that the three encounter and befriend. As one reads each passage of the book, Kirby does a good job of showing the independent minds that these band of youthful individuals exhibited with very little mention of parental guidance but rather reliance on each other to arduously survive as working-class children who helped to support themselves and their families. With each of the character's stories intertwined within the novel, one thing breathes through, these individuals were children despite having to work from morning until night and possibly never had the opportunity to go to school, they too still possessed child-like qualities of innocence, such as Hannah's story. But it is the chance encounters that are surprising, and by he end of the book all come together.
Young readers may be enticed and engaged with the stories of Guiseppe, Frederick, and Hannah because The Clockwork Three is filled with depictions of the past that young children may not imagine today. Their stories are ironic and triumphant as told through fiction, but it is the creativity that these children also possess through the magic of music, interaction, and invention.
The strength of the novel is attributed to the three characters and the relationships that are established within a cosmopolitan landscape of New York along with other children that the three encounter and befriend. As one reads each passage of the book, Kirby does a good job of showing the independent minds that these band of youthful individuals exhibited with very little mention of parental guidance but rather reliance on each other to arduously survive as working-class children who helped to support themselves and their families. With each of the character's stories intertwined within the novel, one thing breathes through, these individuals were children despite having to work from morning until night and possibly never had the opportunity to go to school, they too still possessed child-like qualities of innocence, such as Hannah's story. But it is the chance encounters that are surprising, and by he end of the book all come together.
Young readers may be enticed and engaged with the stories of Guiseppe, Frederick, and Hannah because The Clockwork Three is filled with depictions of the past that young children may not imagine today. Their stories are ironic and triumphant as told through fiction, but it is the creativity that these children also possess through the magic of music, interaction, and invention.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Could not stop reading
10 Oct 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Three kids with separate lives--a hotel maid, an orphaned clockmaker's apprentice, and a street musician--all with desperate troubles come together in this riveting story. This book has everything: wonderful characters, an engrossing plot, lots of suspense, and even some moments that made me tear up. I literally could not stop reading it. I cannot wait to recommend this to my upper grade elementary school students.
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