4 posts tagged “fantasy”

Now that all the hoopla is over, I can get back to my primary passion -- reading kids' books for fun! Awesome! Here's what just came in:

A graphic novel. About going into a volcano. How has no one done this yet? I can't wait to eat this.

Suzanne Collins wrote the Gregor the Overlander series, which I thought was great. This looks pretty decent, although it has the distinct possibility of being derivative. This involves a fight to the death on live TV and I feel like I might have seen that movie before.  Also, violence between kids was done to perfection in House of Stairs, what, 30 years ago, so I might be disappointed.

When I was young, I always wished I had a cave nearby, a la Tom Sawyer and others. I would retreat to this cave in order to be alone and to do Serious Solitude Thinking. Having no local caverns, I was forced to revert to burying a pen and a notebook in a plastic bag in the woods behind our house, which could be dug up in Solitude Moments should profound thoughts need to be jotted down. But the trees were rather sparse, and you could totally see the Braico's backyard from my fortress, and it just generally sucked way more than a cave would have.

Now, had some of these recent jolly underground books been around, I might not have been so keen on a cave (although you'd think Tom Sawyer would have been a bit cautionary, too).

Leepike Ridge has a fast-moving river that acts all innocuous as it flows past your house and then SPEEDS UP and HEADS UNDERGROUND for a long time before bottoming out in a dank underground pond, complete with bodies from previous spelunkers and treasure-hunters. Naturally, the grouchy son of a possibly-remarrying mom would hop on to a piece of refrigerator foam and accidentally end up there, with no apparent way of ever getting out. Scary, suspenseful and fun, with a great archaeological-mystery, avenge-my-dead-dad subplot. But what a stupid cover, and not the world's greatest title either.

My other recent underground read is the fourth book in the City of Ember series. Right now I'd like to give a shout-out to my stand-up buddy Paul, who actually schlepped all the way to San Jose and then came with me to see the tepidly-reviewed, PG Kid Thriller Flick "City of Ember", based on the first book. The author, Jeanne DuPrau, is local and came to our school last year and made me a Totally Awesome Librarian Hero with the 4th-6th grader set for hooking that up.

The basic premise of the series is that some unspecified apocalypse has forced the remains of humanity underground,

where huge generators and acres of stored canned goods provide the electricty and sustenance for the city. But, after two hundred years, the generators are beginning to fail and no one knows what lies beyond Ember or how to get out. By the fourth book, the Diamond of Darkhold, our cute cute teen heroes Lina and Doon have made it out of Ember, found survivors on the surface, tamped down rebellion, and started to think about the supplies that were left behind when the people fled the City. Lots of adventure for two little kids.

I actually thoroughly enjoyed the movie, although I think it was enhanced for me by the backstory that any movie has to eliminate for time purposes. Maybe because the story was less meaty to begin with, it translated to the screen with greater ease than, say, Harry Potter. Usually I'm afraid to see the movie of books I've loved, because I don't want my mind's view of them tainted, but since this wasn't exactly a life-changer, I was happy with how it turned out.

(But I'm going to continue to keep away from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and another book-turned-movie I won't be seeing is Blindness. Just in case.)

Oh, it was like Hanukkah and Purim all wrapped together in a matzah ball at work this week when FIVE HUGE BOXES arrived from Baker & Taylor, my library distributor. Among many other gems, I received Book Four of not one, but TWO reasonably decent fantasy series -- Septimus Heap and Ranger's Apprentice. (I also killed Books 2 and 3 of KUNG FU PRINCESS, which completely lived up to its billing. Slays the demons, gets the cute kung fu boy -- what's not to love?)

The Septimus Heap series is a strange breed ... deeply loved by kids, fun to read, but just not that compelling. I open them only because I have to, then I really enjoy myself while reading them, but then I'm completely underwhelmed as soon as I close the book again. Queste was no different. All the characters have little tics or "things" that I guess stand in for character development -- like, she's cluttered! That's her thing! She's the cluttered one! -- but you don't really care that much what happens to most of them or feel like their actions are real. The Puppet

Master is most apparent in these. I suppose it boils down to: good idea, fun plot, poor execution.

Ranger's Apprentice is all about the well-placed Ominous Tone and Mood. It just doesn't let up.This series I think is better encountered when you can read them all in rapid succession -- there are some intricate plot lines and foreshadowing that I've just forgotten in the previous books. But a good adventure!

(I am reading this at the exact same time as my neighbor, who is going into fourth grade in the fall and is a smoking fast reader -- I recommended probably 40 books to him at the beginning of the summer and he's killed, oh, half? maybe more? Actually, I think he finished The Battle for Skandia and is re-reading the series. You know, to give me a chance to catch up.)

But by far the most impressive read this week was Sunrise over Fallujah, by Walter Dean Myers, who is a formidable author with much less formidable subject matter than Iraq. It's YA fiction that reads with the same compelling first-person-memoir feel as Jarhead, but without the English-major, I'll-be-a-writer-someday self-consciousness. It felt real -- like an 18-year-old kid tossed in over his head, trying to be tough, liking some of it, hating more of it, and fearing what he's becoming, not to mention gradually growing to believe that those in charge are not necessarily the good guys, at least not all the time. Another book I'm going to press on every kid I see. Well, maybe not my neighbor. Not quite yet.

Saturday was a good reading day. I killed some grown-up books (Tamar and Nature Girl) and some kidlit (The Wish List and Clash of the Sky Galleons), worked down my New Yorker backlog, and generally enjoyed life. I also served as a Cloth Diaper Expert at Tiny Tots, wherein I diapered a stuffed tiger in front of several very pregnant couples, and took home a $40(!!) gift certificate, which is about half a Thanksgiving/Festivus dress for Ainsley. That shit is PRICEY, yo.

But oh, do I love to evangelize about the diapers. I totally tried to downplay my crunchiness, so as not to scare off the fencesitters,  but I let it slip that we travelled for long periods with the diapers, and just shoved the stinkies into a huge duffel bag and dropped them off at TT when we came back ... Even the Tiny Tots Representative, who you'd think would be on my side, was all "Yeah. That's not usual." My point was that they are convenient! Excuse me for being Hard Core!

Anyway. Tamar gets shoved into some YA categories, because there is a teen protagonist in one part of the book, but

I think Mal Peet is wr ongly pigeonholed as a writer for teens. This is a brutal, scary, tragic, amazing read. You know how your grandpa won't talk about what he did in World War II? This is why. I can't think of any teenagers I know who would "get" this, but I kinda want to give it to everyone I see. One side effect of being a parent (for me) has been enormously excessive empathy for parents separated from their children (or somehow unable to protect their children). Thus all Holocaust literature (fiction or non-fiction) has become unbelievably hard for me to read.  But this was worth it.

The sub-genre of Afterlife Lit (Lovely Bones, Five People You Meet in Heaven, etc.) is better done in kidslit than in adult, in my opinion. The Wish List was a funny example (pity poor Saint Peter, trying to tally souls' sins, when new sins like "mime artist" and "boy band member" keep being added!) but Elsewhere is what I hope really happens after we go.

Now, here's the book that made my weekend:

I

I just love this series so much. I love its universe. I love how unsparing it is, how it absolutely refuses to condescend to kids, how nasty-brutish-and-short everyone's lives are, how exciting their adventures are! This series is the first time I've been awakened to the allure of the life of a pirate. Seriously, what Johnny Depp couldn't do for me, this book does.Ahhhh.

Lastly, Carl Hiaasen. Why has everything he written not been made into a movie? They read like the most hysterical

visual comedies I can imagine. The blurbs compare him to Evelyn Waugh, but I think Tom Sharpe is a better comparison, in the utter ridiculousness of the situations and the sheer comic genius of the writing. I admit it, I'm a Carl Hiaasen Fan. I hope he's got a big ol' ranch in South Florida with alligators around it.

Enough about the damn books. Halloween was unendingly cute this year (last year we spent it in the emergency room, so it was nice to actually HAVE Halloween). Ainsley is big enough to get the point of everything, but small enough that The Candy is not a permanent motivator, and completely ambivalent about costumes. Behold:

"I am a dog. Mollie is a skunk. What is going on here? We trusted you people.  We need to break out."

It's like American Gothic Baby.

And yet, behold:

"It's Mommy's Birthday! I'm a Princess! I love my crown! Everyone must wear a crown!