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Summary: A delightful fantasy in the best of the British style!
Review: Desperate because you've read all the Harry Potter books? Try THE SECRET OF PLATFORM 13. This is the kind of charming, funny fantasy that the British seem to do so well.
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Summary: Absolutly Terific!!
Review: This is a wonderful book for all ages! A great combonation of adventure and mystery, along with wonderful insight on the human nature. Anyone who likes the Harry Potter books will certainly love this book!
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Summary: This was a PAGE-TURNER!!!
Review: It was a very imaginative story about a little boy!! It was very well written! There is an excellent heroine in this book, called "Odge With The Blue Tooth". I enjoyed it a lot!
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Summary: Amazing twisting plot.
Review: Welcome to an island undiscovered by most people. It's full of magical creatures and delightful mistmakers. Only one problem, though. The royal family has lost their son, the prince. A rescue party of an old wizard, a kind fey, an invisible man and a determined 9 year old hag are sent to find him. There they meet Ben, a kind and courageous house servant, and they meet Raymond, a very spoiled boy. The question is, which one is the prince? In this lushly detailed book, you have your suspicions about what will happen, but in the end it winds up being surprising. The characters are well developed. The book is a cross between a Lloyd Alexander book, Half Magic and the Boggart. I am a 12 year old girl in 7th grade.
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Summary: Characters are fabulous and many exciting adventures.
Review: The characters are delightful and interesting. The story altogether is a surprise and kept me reading on the edge of my seat. The Prince gets captured which leads on to lots of adventures with Odge, a very nice so-called hag, Gurkie, a fey, Cor, the wizard, a delightful boy named Ben and a spoiled brat Raymond. I am a nine year old girl in third grade.
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Summary: Amazing Fantasy Story for Middle Readers
Review: In one of the busiest train stations in London, under Platform 13, is a forgotten old doorway covered with various peeling posters. Behind this door is an entrance to a secret island where humans, mistmakers, mermaids, ogres, and more, live together in harmony. However, the door between the world of human beings, and the island only opens every nine years, for exactly nine days. In the year 1983, tragedy struck the island, for in the last moments before the door was closed, an evil, rich woman named Mrs. Trottle stole the young prince of the island from his three nannies. Every since that fateful day, the king and queen of the island have planned his rescue. And now, nine years later, as the door is about to open once again, four magical creatures of the island have been chosen as the rescue team. Gurkie, an agricultural fairy (fey); Odge, a determined young hag; Hans, a one-eyed giant; and Cor, an old wizard. It is now up to these four islanders to find the prince, and get him back to the island before the nine days have passed, otherwise, it will be another long nine-years before an attempt to save the prince can be made.THE SECRET OF PLATFORM 13 is an exciting, magical journey through two separate lands. One where humans live among other humans, and one where humans live among magical beings and creatures. The characters are intriguing, while at the same time enjoyable and entertaining, and the plot is well-crafted. Readers will enjoy the descriptions of various magical creatures, and find themselves searching for more mention of the very seal-inspired magical mistmakers, who emit fog from their mouths when they hear soothing music. Overall this is a wonderful effort from Eva Ibbotson that will be loved by children young and old. Erika Sorocco
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Summary: It fun, silly, has lot of adventure
Review: Years before J K Rowling invented Platform nine and three quarters, Iva Ibbotsen created her wonderful book: `The Secret of Platform 13,' about a secret portal beneath a railway station leading to a mystical island kingdom far, far away.
Unfortunately, this portal (or gump) only opens briefly once every nine years ... and last time it opened the king and queen's newborn baby was stolen. Now the royal family send four islanders to rescue their son: An elderly wizard, a magical fey, an invisible ogre and a young hag. Unfortunately, the now nine-year-old prince doesn't want to be rescued.
The writing is a sheer delight, describing the fantastical characters with such charm that they are easy to visualise and become utterly believable. This book is perfect for 8 - 9 year-olds to read on their own - or would make a great bedtime story read nightly to 6 - 7 year-olds. It's exciting, magical, mysterious ... but best of all, there's nothing too frightening and plenty to make you laugh out loud! If you're an adult analysing the narrative for subliminal messages then you're missing the point - This is entirely and purely for the entertainment of young readers.
Rating: 
Summary: Good enough
Review: _The Secret of Platform 13_ was a hit with the 6-year-old bookaholic in our house; I can't say (speaking as the person who read it aloud to her) that it did all that much for me, though. The basic plot is simple enough. Through the nefariousness of a rich but childless woman named Mrs Trottle, a baby is abducted--who is, unbeknownst to her, the prince of a faraway magic island. The "gump", a magic hole that joins Platform 13 of King's Cross Station in London with the island, only opens for nine days every nine years; though Ibbotson states that the island is simply on a remote part of the Earth (not on a different world entirely), the King & Queen seem inexplicably to think it necessary to wait nine years till the next opening of the gump before they can rescue the child. So: jump ahead nine years, & a bunch of rescuers make the journey to London: an old wizard named Cor, a "fay" named Gerkintrude, a giant named Hans (rendered invisible with fernseed), & a young hag named Odge. There they encounter an incredibly nice, helpful boy named Ben at Trottle Towers, whom they initially assume is the Prince, but they then discover he's only in a quasi-menial position there, & that the son of Mrs Trottle is really the odious Raymond. Ibbotson hints heavily from the start that Ben is the real Prince & that Raymond is indeed pure Trottle--suffice it to say even my 6-year-old daughter already had it figured out after a few chapters--so the main suspense (aside from the increasingly elaborate plans to kidnap the disgusting Raymond from his possessive mommy) is exactly when & how the rescuers will figure out the switch. Like other reviewers I find it hard not to compare this book to the Harry Potter series (which of course postdates Ibbotson's book). Imagine a Harry Potter book if Dudley Dursley became a central figure, & you begin to see the problem with _The Secret of Platform 13_. Furthermore, there's a big difference: the Dursleys are fools & subjected to an endless series of humiliations, but they are basically figures of fun. But Ibbotson's visceral loathing of Raymond Trottle & his mother pushes beyond Rowlingesque slapstick into genuine hatred, & occasionally into borderline prurience (the fascination with Mrs Trottle's personal hygiene, her appalling perfume called "Maneater", her interest in attracting the attentions of a male bass player when she's away from her husband [her plan is to place a rose in her cleavage]). -- Ben himself is pure goody-two-shoes: he knows (& pointedly tells the other characters on occasion) that you shouldn't tell lies, that you must always keep a promise, &c &c. I guess I could take this seriously if he actually had much personality but he's basically there to be a paragon of niceness. Animals like him, too, & in general he's just too good for this world, so it's just as well there's another world to be going to. Ibbotson's habitual themes turn up in the book, as one expects: I've yet to read a book of hers, for instance, that didn't have an unsubtle plug for vegetarianism in it (here, the fay Gerkintrude can virtually hear the bits of meat calling out in pain when she has to go into a fancy restaurant). The incredibly disgusted portrait of the harpies (their reek & lack of hygiene is described in the most hyperbolic terms) is clearly meant as a dig at Margaret Thatcher--Ibbotson equips each harpy with a handbag, to cement the resemblance. & there's other bits of editorializing here, like the flat assertion at one point that bad parenting is to blame if a kid turns out no good. Well, fine, I'm hardly asking that kid's books be bland & lacking in strongly held ideas; for that matter the kinds of disgust & hatred on display here are emotions that kids can certainly relate to--witness Roald Dahl's books (though Dahl is far better at transmuting these emotions into knockabout comedy, removing their sting). But looking at this book with an adult's eye I can't really enjoy it too much: it's simply too pushy & tetchy. I'll give this 3 stars for my daughter's enjoyment, but it's not I think all that good nonetheless. Like Philip Pullman, whose recommendation emblazons my edition of _The Secret of Platform 13_, Ibbotson rather lacks a light touch. This book isn't nearly as funny as it _could_ have been.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Enjoyable book, but not a great one
Review: The Secret of Platform 13 is an enjoyable book that separates two worlds by a "gump" in a railroad station. The "gump" only opens up every nine years, during one of these openings the infant prince of another world is kidnapped in our world. The rest of the book involves the rescue of the prince nine years later.
This book has been compared to Harry Potter many times, which I feel is, unfair they are two different books. This one is clearly written for younger children.
(Interestingly, there is a parody of Harry Potter where the main character is named "Trotter" the arch villain in Platform 13 is named Trottle, I wondered if the parody was trying to point that out?)
While I did enjoy the book there were things that I found disappointing, for instance, the Ibbotson goes to the trouble of creating another world and yet the majority of the plot is set in London, that's too bad as it would have been far more interesting to tell us about the other world.
Where other books in this genre leave the world as we know it, Ibbotson can't seem to get herself to do it.
Ibbotson tells us that "And in 1983- the year the Americans put a woman in space-..." I kept wondering what was going to happen that made 1983 important, as it turned out the date had no significance to the story at all, no other years were mentioned. The Americans and the woman in space were simply thrown in for a PC statement. Throughout the book she never lets you leave this world. Even when she travels to the other world, she keeps reminding you of this one.
There are the "Harpies" which she describes as horrible vulture type creatures that smell horribly. She describes their leader "Mrs. Smith" having a face of a "bossy lady politician." This and the following description was an obvious dig a Margaret Thatcher. The illustrator left no doubt here that is what she meant.
Later we also are told that Raymond's dad is a banker, which gives Ibbotson another opportunity to express a political opinion.
In spite of all this, the book is fun to read, however it could have been better.
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