SERAFINA AND THE BLACK CLOAK

SERAFINA AND THE BLACK CLOAK by Robert Beatty

Once upon a time (a few years ago) there was a family who went to Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. They all fell in love with the grandeur of it, even their little boy who came home and built several Lego versions of Biltmore for weeks after.

Fast Forward to spring of this year when the mom of that same family was in a shop in South Carolina and came across a fiction middle grade book that was set at Biltmore. It was almost, not exactly, but almost as if she had found the Holy Grail in that little shop. Her children would be delighted, and she promptly bought the book, took it home and added it to her reading pile, until the day it had its turn in her hands. Its turn came this week and for me it was not the Holy Grail that I was hoping for.

Some of you may already be familiar with Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty. The book has been out for a few years now and there are three more in the series. This post is only about book one.

The story unfolds with Serafina and her father, who is employed at Biltmore, living in the basement of the great house unbeknownst to anyone else. Serafina has some physical characteristics that cause her father to keep her hidden away. When children start disappearing from Biltmore and Serafina has a run-in in the basement with the man (or spirit) who has been taking them, she feels drawn in to solve what has been going on. This book is full of constant twists and turns, but it does contain some concerning dark elements.

HEADS UP - When the man in the black coat takes a child, it's really very creepy. The first time is in the basement and there is a little girl whimpering, " No Sir! Please! No!" And, "We're not supposed to be down here." The man responds with, "There's nothing to be frightened of, child. I'm not going to hurt you..." with lots of screaming. I honestly thought for a moment that I was going to encounter a pedophile scene in a middle grade book, (I didn't) but the cloak ends up folding around her and he basically absorbs her into himself, and she's gone. This happens with other children.

-As the story goes on the man leaves bloody bits of himself around as he is deteriorating and that is especially why he needs children.

- There is a cemetery scene in which several of the graves have weird epitaphs written on them because people/children have been murdered or were missing, etc.

-We learn the origin of the cloak in the end. It is discovered the cloak was made by a sorcerer, but the cloak took control of people's souls, so the sorcerer tried to destroy it and had to kill himself in the process by throwing himself down an old well.

Partial Spoiler Alert Serafina's mother and father were catamounts which means they were mountain lion and human. This gives Serafina a unique connection to nature, explains her different physical characteristics, and also makes some mountain lion cubs her siblings.