Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my LOCUS Y-A list.I think I’ll always have a soft-spot for imaginative young-adult speculative fiction and as the good people at Locus did such a grand job with picking their Sci-Fi winners, I’ll trust them to single out some special y-a books too.Ugh. How

Not bad. I would have loved this ten years ago, but I think it's one of those children's books that doesn't really transcend to adults that well. very quick read with some lovely creative quirks.

Disappointed.How could fairies, the pied piper of Hamelin, & rock 'n' roll be less than titillating. It is. The imagery of rats is overly done. The characters flat. The story threads separated, not cohesive. Sorry I wasted my time.

This was a riveting extension of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, grounding the story in the exile of a Faerie murderer who owes a tithe to his father every seven years: "Silver, gold, or human souls." Modern-day Callie, doing a story on the folk rock band Brass Rat for her high school paper, discovers that two of its members are exiled Fae with dangerous intent. Somehow she has to turn what she knows into a way to save the kids of her town, including her little brother, when they vanish while trick-o...

I had picked up this book in one of my usual library raids amongst a stack of other fairytale books. I was actually really excited for it because of the whole, "a rock'n'roll' fairytale" aspect thinking it would be similar to one of my favorite books, War for the Oaks, also a fantasy book revolving around rock'n'roll. And a modern retelling of an old story always has its possible upsides, especially since this one was about the Pied Piper, certainly a tale that has yet to be overdone. But my ent...

I only got about 30 or 40 pages in. This was terrible. Honestly, it was terrible. The characters are cardboard and unbelievable, and my God, the dialogue! I have never in my life heard children that speak like this! I was actually sitting there flailing around angrily at how stiff and inexplicably unbelievable the dialogue was, yelling "HAVE YOU EVEN EVER SPOKEN TO A TEENAGER." Plus, a whole high school all excited about a folk rock band with a medieval schtick coming to town? Idk, maybe there a...

I was very disappointed with this book. Usually Jane Yolen writes fabulous tales, but Pay the Piper just didn't keep me interested. The story was flat, the characters wooden and the ending a little too obvious. The main thing that annoyed me was the constant defining of "difficult words". Yes, I understand the authors were trying to help their younger readers, but it really detracted from the flow of the story. A glossary in the back would do just as well. Or even a well written sentence explain...

Good consistent story with historical connections; the idea of a modern day pied piper ala Ian Anderson makes for a fun read. The wording was a little rough in places, but nothing an edit pass or a little rewording wouldn't fix. Fairly short chapters, made for good bedtime chapter book reading.Read with daughter, 12, who received the added opportunity to look up a few archaic and obscure words.

I really enjoyed this book, maybe because it was a short, quick read. I thought the premise was fun and the characters were quirky. I've not read a lot of Yolen's work (and what I have is the Children's lit not YA) so I can't say how it compares to other books, but I would certainly read more after this one.

Jane Yolen, practically the Pied Piper herself of children's fantasy lit (but in a good way, ho ho) and her (adult) musician son have kickstarted a fun series with this first book. Turning classic fairy tale lore into modern day teen angst and mystery works well, and I think will find a wide audience.

Gosh, I wanted to like this, but it was just terrible. The writing was uneven and weird. The story didn't always quite make sense or hang together. The "rock 'n' roll" sections were just embarrassingly bad. Yowch. I flipped through to see what would happen, but it just got weirder and worse. An unfortunate offering from Yolen, who is usually So Very Good.

I'm beginning to think it's just impossible to write the experience of music and concerts in a way that doesn't seem contrived or overdone, and on top of that the dialogue of the parents and friends seemed overdone too. Still, beneath that the base story was a really interesting take on the Piper's tale and there were moments of beautifully evocative writing.

Meh. This one was a little flat for me. Review will follow.

Here’s a story plucked out of history and retold centuries later, fused with new characters, a few new twists, and some fresh clever ideas. But, at its core, it is still the Pied Piper. It tries to rise above that and the story telling style helps. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough to lift it from sinking under its own weight. Callie is as strong a three dimensional character as Mars is a weak two dimensional one. While both tend to suffer a bit from overused cliches, Callie’s heart and honesty

Okay, look, Jane Yolen was one of my first loves when it came to books. She's written such a wide range of styles and levels and is basically amazing. I don't know if this one is so terrible because she cowrote it (I've never read anything by Stemple), or because they were trying to keep it short. Either way, this is a book that didn't need to be written, and I really don't want anything to do with the rest of this series...The characters are dull and stereotypical. I could not stand Josee's way...

"Pay the Piper" was an interesting book to say the least. It is about a girl named Callie who gets a backstage pass to a band that she really wants to see in concert. It is on Halloween night and come to find out the band is not what it seems to be...or who it seems to be. When Callie's younger brother goes she missing she goes on an adventure to find him. She learns a lot about faeries and myths and why they take children every Halloween.I did not really like this book. When I read the back of

An enjoyable enough retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, but nothing spectacular in the changes. In the current times, the Pied Piper is in a band - that seems to be not aging (there are some bands that are still touring that I sometimes wonder HOW?) - and I liked the addition of the faery aspect.

A fun and different take on the Pied Piper story. It works on all levels.

Surprisingly good for being a short story.

30 pages in. I can't stand her friends or how people talk or how she explains everything. Obviously it's for a younger audience.

I find it interesting how often Yolen co-authors books. It makes me wonder how much of her own voice I'm getting and what not. This isn't to say I don't like her work. I do. I find her to be an interesting author who tackles a wide range of subjects and styles. There's something a bit admirable about that. This time, she teams up with her son, a professional rock musician.Pay the Piper is an interesting book. It takes as its premise that the Pied Piper of Hameln was an outcast prince of faerie.

The book’s chapters go back and forth between telling the story of a banished fairy prince and Callie, a high school student. The meat of the story happens in Callie’s chapters. Everyone at Callie’s high school is excited because the band Brass Rat is coming to town. At the concert, Callie gets to go backstage and interview the band members because she’s writing an article about Brass Rat for her school newspaper. After the concert, she eavesdrops on the band and overhears some very unusual thin...

The prolific children's author Jane Yolen attempts to create a rock n' roll rendition of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, in which the piper is really an exiled faerie prince. The initial narrative begins promisingly enough, with 14 yrld burgeoning journalist Callie, convincing her hippie but protective parents to let her attend a rare local Brass Rat concert, so that she can interview them for the school paper. Yolen and her co-author and son Adam Stemple admirably connect the mesmerizing power of ro...

[The narrative was a little disjointed to start, but I really liked the story once I got into it. It's possible that my own unfamiliarity with the Pied Piper story was what held me back. The Grimm Brothers collected a version for their book German Legends. Alas, I can't find an English translation. And there's also the Browning poem.:]When Callie sees the lead singer of Brass Rat making rats dance, she knows she’s stumbled onto more than the eccentricities of the music world. She’s found the Pie...

I personally find it hard to define what is a 'children's book' and what is an 'adults book' and I find the term YA weird and confusing - likely because I was reading 'children's books' and then was suddenly reading Tolkien, McCaffrey, Eddings, Zelazny and so on from the age of 11 upwards, therefore I tend to come to these 9-12 and YA books from an older reading age if that makes sense.Why the above paragraph is related to this book is that I think it probably gets the 3 stars for being a faerie...

This is an intriguing update of the "Pied Piper of Hamline" story, set in modern times. It was a quick read, consisting of two interconnected stories.It was chosen as the book for the AUGUST 2013 "Book Club of Doom." The overall consensus was that it was a "good read," but that it didn't have the "depth" many members hoped for. In our conversation, we agreed that there was a lot to like about the book: The characterization of the protagonist and antagonist, the lyrics to the songs, some of the p...

On the 26th day of June, in 1284, came a colorful piper to Hamelin. Hamelin had rats: many many rats, and the town elders hired the piper to lead the rats away. He did, but the town council did not pay...so the piper led all of their children away.Come away o human child!To the water and the wildWith a fairy hand in handFor the world’s more full weepingThan you can understand Callie lives in the Valley with her strict, wish-they-were-hippy parents and her little brother Nick. The hot band Brass

I chose the book “Pay the Piper” because the book blob was interesting. Callie, the school news reporter, lives in a Massachusetts town where nothing ever happens, so when the news broke out that a band, Brass Rat, was performing everyone was excited. Callie got a chance to interview them and she figured out something that she hopes she never knew. On Halloween everyone went out for trick a treat except her (she didn’t know how to write an article about Brass Rat that people would actually belie...

The Pied Piper goes rock ‘n’ roll with PAY THE PIPER. Interesting and modern twist on the classic tale Peter the Pied Piper of Hamelin. A clever retelling with rock bands, and Faerie lore as the famous piper is portrayed as the middle son of the Sidhe Faerie King, who has been cursed and banished to live among humans for a treason committed against his brother. I found PAY THE PIPER to be an easy and entertaining enough read as far as the concept went; but the story was hindered by its overly ju...

On the 26th of June 1284, “came a colorful piper to Hamelin and led 130 children away…”More interesting, of course, is the why of it. And so, many tales have stemmed from this brief account… tales that had been weaved and threaded to give reason to these unfathomable bare facts. I’m sure you’ve heard or read some of them. Well then, there is no harm in giving way to one more; but this time the Piper came to Northampton, Massachusetts. The question is, “Who will pay the Piper this time?” Calcepho...