I absolutely loved this book. I think I read it about 100 times. Great characters and great pictures. It will defiantly let my kids read this.

The Eleventh Hour is one of the greatest books of all time. I just love, love, love everything about it. The illustrations are so gorgeous and lavish, a total contrast to the lazy and cartoonish drawings in most picture books being published today. Every square inch of every page is filled with the greatest care and consistency, with attention paid to details from the leaves and grass outside to the characters themselves and their costumes. Books illustrated by true artists who take pride in their work and put in the extra hours to make something outstanding are so very rare. Any child who receives a copy of The Eleventh Hour will surely cherish it for that reason alone.

The writing, entirely in verse with perfect iambic heptameter, is very much of a piece with the drawings. Writing poetry is hard, folks. Rhyme and meter don't come easy.

The Guests were met by Horace as they stepped into the Hall
(He'd dressed as a Centurion of Rome Before the Fall);
And once inside they looked around and notice with a smile
The way the Hall had been designed in High Renaissance style.

No sooner had they entered than a rumour filled the air,
And stopped the conversation as the news spread everywhere.
Their Host had made a Banquet! It was huge! Immense in size!
And one by one the Guests were drawn within to feast their eyes.

And then there's the mystery, the heart of the book. Horace the elephant has invited his friends for his eleventh birthday party and prepared a gigantic feast. While the crowd is playing games, somebody steals the food … but who? The entire books is packed with clues. Codes and hidden messages pack every page, mixed with an endless stream of jokes and visual puns. Intelligent children will be able to spend hours getting lost in this wonderful book.

This is a mystery book for children. It is gorgeously, sumptuously illustrated and the text (in verse form) is delightful. The illustrations are intricately detailed, which is what led to my frustration. The clues and codes needed to solve the mystery are implanted in the illustrations and are often hard to spot (or decode). I couldn’t even find some of the hidden items when I cheated and looked at the key in the back of the book. Maybe I’m just no good at puzzles. Maybe a six-year-old could breeze through this with no trouble at all. But I think it could drive Sherlock Holmes into retirement. Finally, I will give potential sleuths two hints crucial to the solution of this mystery: buy a good magnifying glass and keep a bottle of your favorite relaxing beverage close at all times.

A whole host of animals are invited to an elephant's birthday party. When the beautiful birthday cake is discovered eaten at 11 o'clock when the guests were supposed to dine, it is up to readers to find all the hidden codes, ciphers, clocks, and clues in the pictures throughout to see who could have devoured the cake. (The answers to all the numerous puzzles and the mystery are sealed in the back of the book.)

This is a combination mystery and picture book in rhyme. It is extremely rare to find such a skilled and creative illustrator/poet that makes children's books. I remember working on solving all the different puzzles hidden in this book with my siblings when we were young. It took us quite a while (like several days...there are some crazy complex codes in this book), but we felt very accomplished when we figured them out. Because of the level of difficulty of the codes and puzzles, I shelve this for middle grade readers.

Graeme Base is an expert in carefully crafted puzzles, hidden codes and verse. Add to that - exquisite illustrations and a clever mystery to solve and you have yourself a genuine winner. Worthy of your home library shelf space, I assure you.

Absoultely amazed at how well illustrated this book is. The colors used kept me the reader engaged, loved reading the writing that looking up at the illustration to find what the writing was talking about. Additionally, I love that the illustrations were framed with the design going along with what was taken place in the pictures. For example there was apart about Music and the frame had music notes around it. Futhermore I loved how the book rhymed at the the ending of the sentence it made it an easy read and fun at the same time. This book is an amzing mystery book for children to dive into.

I absolutely love this children's book. I appreciate all the puzzles, hidden messages, and secret codes even more as an adult. Lastly, the artwork is phenomenal, just like all of Graeme Base's other works.

I've been surprised in revisiting Base's work that I don't like it as I did as a child.

I've had this book for years and have read it a few times, but now that I'm older and wiser, I was able to solve the riddle. I recommend it to anyone who likes to figure out puzzles.

I have tremendously fond memories of this book from my childhood. For starters, as with most of his work, Graeme Base's illustrations are gorgeous. They're aesthetically pleasing, varied in style, and with intense amounts of detail. The latter is particularly important in this case! The story is a simple rhyming tale of an elephant who hosts a birthday party, with various funny little accounts of what he and his guests get up to until the big 11 o'clock feast. But they discover the feast has been eaten by some nefarious party! The animals themselves never do solve the mystery - but the reader is given the opportunity. There's a cipher at the end of the book that can be translated only if you use the correct name of the culprit as a key, which lets you confirm your theory, as well as gives a quick explanation of what happened. In addition to this, for those who really don't want to miss anything, later editions of the book include a physically sealed dossier, which gives a full page-by-page explanation of the mystery and all the clues.
After the first read-through, the real fun begins, with poring back over the book to hunt for clues. I honestly can't recall how difficult it was, but I know as a child of about 6 years old that I was at a bit of a loss to solve it on my own. I can say that the mystery is solvable and fair, however. I'm not sure how much it would necessarily challenge an adult, but I would still say this is a beautiful work that's worthy of admiration from readers of any age.

Oh my God, seeing this book today brought me such a jolt of recognition. I pored over this book as a kid. I adored it. I found every hidden little thing and finally solved it. I need to find my copy. like today. I'm having flashbacks of intricate tiny mouse illustrations.

A childhood favourite of mine.