Book Review — “Frozen Northern Lights: Journey to the Lights”

Frozen Northern LightsDisney is keeping the magic of Frozen alive with Frozen Northern Lights, a new collection of books and animated Lego shorts that will premiere this summer on Disney Channel. Kicking off the line is a novel aimed at kids ages 6-9 called Frozen Northern Lights: Journey to the Lights by Suzanne Francis. This hardcover book appears bigger than it really is, with 217 pages of text plus 8 glossy pages in the middle with facts about the northern lights.

Under license by Random House, Frozen Northern Lights: Journey to the Lights is considered “A Stepping Stone Book,” meaning its for kids who know how to read and are building their reading skills up to young adult novels. The text is fairly large and boarders on each page mean they will read through it faster than you might think based on the books dimensions. There are no pictures, although the cover’s silhouettes appear at the beginning of every chapter.

Kristoff has a surprise for Anna, Elsa and Olaf when he invites them on a late night adventure. Their journey takes them to the trolls, where they meet Little Rock who has to earn his last level 1 crystal before the celebration that allows trolls to move to level two. Our Frozen heroes help Little Rock track Grand Pabbie to gain his tracking crystal, but it’s the end of autumn and time is running out before the Northern Lights Crystal Celebration.

Suzanne Francis does a great job keeping the characters true to their film counterparts, especially when it comes to recreating the humor of Olaf and the energy of Anna. Little Rock is a new addition whom kids will instantly feel a connection to. Whether your kids are reading this by themselves or having it read to them, they’re sure to find something to love about Frozen Northern Lights.

That being said, this novel attempts to make a mountain out of a molehill in terms of the amount of plot provided. The story would be best suited as a 20-page picture book, and indeed a Golden Book version of this same tale is scheduled for release on September 6th. I would only recommend this to kids who are working on increasing their reading level and do not recommend it to adult fans.

Frozen Northern Lights feels like it’s designed to keep Frozen fresh in our minds as Disney Animation works hard on the sequel. The plot is simple like Frozen Fever, but like that short offers a quick and fun visit back to Arendelle. I also appreciated the fact that eight pages are devoted to educating kids about the Northern Lights, one of earth’s most awe-inspiring natural phenomena.

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Alex Reif
Alex joined the Laughing Place team in 2014 and has been a lifelong Disney fan. His main beats for LP are Disney-branded movies, TV shows, books, music and toys. He recently became a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA).