Fitting into a new scenario is always tough, but for Annika who has been used to a warm and friendly Vienna, her new home throws up many nasty surprises. Unfriendly relatives…lies and secrets…dreary food...dank climate...things are not as Annika imagined her new life to be. Eva Ibbotson's hugely entertaining The Star of Kazan is a timeless classic for readers young and old. Fourteen-year-old Opal's family falls on hard times when her accountant father foolishly forges a cheque to support his family. A simple story…a predictable mystery and a plot oft-repeated. But what makes Star of Kazan so engrossing is the absolute love and affection with which Eva Ibbotson describes the splendour and grandiose of a vintage Vienna : the ancient but much-loved Emperor Franz Joseph with his ‘mutton-chop whiskers and bald head’...the extravagant waltzes streaming out of the cafes...the decadent opera houses...the sinfully rich confectioneries bursting with aroma and taste...and of course the pride of Vienna : The dancing Lipizzaner Stallions.

The Star of Kazan - AbeBooks - Ibbotson, Eva 9780142405826: The Star of Kazan - AbeBooks - Ibbotson, Eva

Annika is the protagonist of the story. A foundling, she is found and taken in by Sigrid and Ellie. She has a real talent for cooking, but she is very trusting. After twelve-year-old Annika, a foundling living in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany. The professors are all siblings and have lived in the same house all their lives. None of them are married and are unlikely to be any time soon. Ibottson began writing with the television drama 'Linda Came Today', in 1965. Ten years later, she published her first novel, The Great Ghost Rescue. Ibbotson has written numerous books including The Secret of Platform 13, Journey to the River Sea, Which Witch?, Island of the Aunts, and Dial-a-Ghost. She won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for Journey to the River Sea, and has been a runner up for many of major awards for British children's literature.

She was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1925. When Hitler came into power, her family moved to England. She attended Bedford College, graduating in 1945; Cambridge University from 1946-47; and the University of Durham, from which she graduated with a diploma in education in 1965. Ibbotson had intended to be a physiologist, but was put off by the amount of animal testing that she would have to do. Instead, she married and raised a family, returning to school to become a teacher in the 1960s. Ibbotson was widowed with three sons and a daughter. One day while Annika is walking with Zed and Hector, the dog, Hector discovers some remnants of La Rondine's trunk in the lake, but there is no sign of the jewels. Upon asking Frau Edeltraut of the trunk's mysterious appearance, she retorts that Zed must have stolen it. Afraid of being arrested, Zed flees Spittal with Rocco and arrives in Vienna to tell the professors his suspicions about Annika's mother. I loved the subtle humor in this. It got me from the first chapter, when Ellie (a middle-aged cook) is hiking up a mountain with her friend Sigrid, and stops in a church to, as she tells it, pray for her dearly departed mother that she dreamed about last night. Sigrid rolls her eyes and says "I told you not to wear those new boots on the hike." I admired the heart in this story which emphasised the lengths some may go to find love and true friendship; that, and the authenticity of the details with which Ibbotson invested the narrative felt right to me. Even the fictional aspects I found convincing, such as the school at the schloss at Grossenfluss which at times outdid Brontë's Lowood School, and the von Tannenberg's castle of Spittal which belies its name, deriving as it does from the word for hospital as a place of healing. The uncredited map which accompanies this edition shows Grossenfluss and Spittal in the old region of Pomerania, once part of Prussia and now split between Germany in the west and Poland in the east; you will, however search vainly for either location, or that of the spa town of Bad Haxenfeld, even though castles and spas are numerous in this area. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-04-29 14:00:50 Boxid IA40098023 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

The Star of Kazan - Eva Ibbotson - Google Books The Star of Kazan - Eva Ibbotson - Google Books

It is about a little girl called Annika who was abandoned when she was a baby in an abandoned church. Two ladies, Ellie and Sigrid decide (after a nunnery says no to looking after her) to look after the baby and from then on lead a life filled with every emotion thinkable. From the vain Egghearts, whose child Loremarie taunts Annika continuously, to the lovely Zed, the gypsy, and the mysterious great-aunt of Loremarie, Annika's life is very complicated. Annika wants answers from people but as her life goes on Annika gets more questions than answers. Some of the books, particularly Journey to the River Sea, also reflect Ibbotson's love of nature. Ibbotson wrote this book in honor of her husband (who had died just before she wrote it), a former naturalist. The book had been in her head for years before she actually wrote it. In 1896, in a pilgrim church in the Alps, an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook and a housemaid. They take her home, and Annika grows up in the servants' quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there, but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her. This is my first Ibbotson and certainly not my last. This is the first book that made me really deeply feel the appeal of Austria. She writes a bit like Mary Stewart in her scene painting. I also loved the role food plays in this book. The joyous artistry of food in Annika’s kitchen upbringing and the role that plays in representing the health and goodness of her childhood . There’s a lot of warmth and ease in the storytelling. And the author takes the time to show us Annika’s life, from when she is raised as a foundling by a housemaid and a cook who work in the professors’ house in Vienna to when she thinks she has finally found her true home at Spittal with her mother, one of the great “vons”.

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Sigrid works for the professors as a housemaid. She works well, but can be a little 'snappy' at times. Sigrid is very good friends with Ellie and is a hardworking role model for Annika. Lo stile della Ibbotson è sublime! Si diverte ad esasperare i caratteri dei personaggi creando splendide caricature ai quali dona un tocco personale per far capire al lettore se quel personaggio è buono o cattivo.