 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Neil Gaiman |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2005 |
Fairy tale for us grumps about two sons of Anansi, the Spider God. | |
The upbeat moral: We all have all we need inside us. We just need to know that to be able to find it. -- Emily Berk | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Anansi Boys, The | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Robert Heinlein |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Sophisticated readers |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Sophisticated readers |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1961 |
Winner of the 1962 Hugo Award. Story of a human child, raised by Martians on Mars, who comes to Earth and starts a sexual revolution. I guess it was revolutionary for its time. But re-reading it 40+ years after its release, it strikes me as as preachy as anything by Asimov, with an attitude toward women that holds over from the fifties, and as sexually innocent (not) as The Harrad Experiment. | |
Of course, The Harrad Experiment was written more than 10 years later, so that is some proof that Stranger may have been ground-breaking.... Some have suggested that Valentine, the Martian-human Stranger is a metaphor for an Asperger-spectrum gifted learner, who groks nearly everything he studies better and faster than any other human, but who also lacks social skills and an understanding of how humans are expected to behave. | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Stranger in a Strange Land | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
My now-12 yr. old has loved the musical since she first saw it when she was around 9. But we (her parents and older sister) have suggested that she not read the book until she is older, although we agree that the book is much more wonderful than the musical.
— Emily
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Diana Wynne Jones |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1975 |
There are just a few authors that my 12 year old and I trust implicitly. After having raced through umpteen of her novels, we may have placed Diana Wynne Jones in that category. Sure, The Magicians of Caprona was kind of stupid.... But if you locked us in a library, with a short deadline in which to emerge with a book we were willing to read, it might very well be one by Diana Wynne Jones. Dogsbody pre-dates the Chrestomanci stories; it's a bit more science fiction than Jones' usual fantasy. The characters and plot -- Cinderella meets Puss (or, in this case, Dog) in Boots -- are very appealing. The story is told mostly from the point of view of a high Illuminancy, Sirius, who, because he lost his temper and (apparently) killed someone, is exiled to Earth in the body of a new-born puppy. As Sirius learns how to survive as a dog, while solving the mystery of how he was framed, we also learn a bit about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and about how controling our impulses can help us get what we need/want. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Dogsbody | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | H. M. Hoover |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 12 and up |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1988 |
De-mythologization (probably not a word, huh?) of the story of Medea, including the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, from Medea's point of view. | |
As in The King Must Die (the story of Theseus and the Minotaur), , in this story too, the ways of the patriarchal Greeks mostly triumph over the matriarchal societies that share their waters. Another theme is the unfortunate tendency of those who lack knowledge in science and healing to assume that those, especially women, who master those arts, are witches (evil). Despite its sympathetic portrayal of Media, in this account, as in the original, Medea's overwhelming love of Jason very badly clouds her judgment and causes her to act murderously. Recommended. | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Dawn Palace,The | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Mary Renault |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 12 and up |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1958 |
De-mythologization (probably not a word, huh) of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. In this version, Theseus expresses his wonder at the radically different ways of life in the patriarchal Greek world in which he grew up and the matriarchal Minoan lands he comes to rule. | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: King Must Die,The | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Rohinton Mistry |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Sophisticated readers |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Sophisticated readers |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2002 |
Poverty and religious fanaticism nearly destroy a Parsi family trying to care for a grandfather dying of Parkinson's disease in Bombay. Wrenching, but the characters are so endearing that I found myself alternately clutching the book, putting it down in horror and sadness, then grabbing it up again to find out how everyone was doing. | |
Highly recommended for very sophisticated young readers (teens, perhaps), especially those with an interest in the history and culture of modern India. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Family Matters | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Diane Duane |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
Fourteen year-old wizard Nita's parents are worried about her "relationship" with her wizarding partner (a boy), so they ship her off to Ireland, where she gets into much more harrowing situations (and a romantic one as well) than those she might have experienced if she'd just stayed put in the USA. My daughter and I loved the way the tiny Bard Cat interacts with her less gifted human allies. The seeming contradiction between the way wizards look -- ordinary -- and what they have to do -- extraordinary -- might be heartening to a child who feels that his or her specialness is not reflected in appearance or circumstances. And, the cameo appearances by Celtic mythological beings are fun. The discussions of Nita's romantic thoughts (nothing graphic, but probably not of great interest to younger children) and the responsibilities that go along with great power, and the excitement, mayhem, and death that inextricably mix with battle might make this book appealing to adolescent readers, rather than to younger readers. | |
My 12 year-old and I enjoyed reading this not very challenging, but plot-intensive story. We did feel that we might have liked it even more if we'd at least read the first book in this series first. One of my cynical thoughts on reading this book was that Duane almost certainly was able to deduct a summer's vacation or maybe even a home in Ireland and use this book to prove that it was business-related. Must be nice to be a successful author. -- Emily Berk | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Wizard Abroad, A | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Anne Tyler |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | fiction, historical |
| Year of publication: | 2004 |
Thing is, most marriages in the USA are "amateur", aren't they? In fact, most decisions made by anyone, especially in his or her personal life, are going to be made amateurly, and some better than others. And just because a decision is sudden, that does not always mean that it was wrong. | |
After reading one of Anne Tyler's novels, we know so much about the characters that we feel that, if the character walked past us in a shopping mall, we might recognize him or her. And Tyler doesn't have to tell us much about each character to work her magic. This one wears a red coat; that one has a limp. In this way are decisions made and in this way are people known, both in Tyler's novels and in real life. A heartbreaking occurrence in many Tyler novels is the sudden disappearance of a child or teenager, through death or other circumstance, and the repercussions of that disappearance on the parents. The disappearance described in this novel is cruel, believable, and utterly wrenching. -- Emily Berk | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Amateur Marriage, The | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Diana Wynne Jones |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2001 |
Many of the stories in Wynne Jone's Chrestomanci series explore the problems of gifted children who are made to feel inferior or taken advantage of because they are special. This happens to the protagonists of The Lives of Christopher Chant and Charmed Life, for example. But in the society evoked in Witch Week, anyone identified as a witch is burned at the stake. Which puts the students at the Larwood House School, all of whom are orphaned because of a family connection to witchcraft, in a desperate position. Many of them know they are witches. And although it's exhiliarating to know that one has great power, they know from experience that the penalty for getting caught, or worse, being turned in by one's peers, is death by fire. Spoilers below... | |
If my daughter and I had not already read several of the earlier Chrestomanci books, I don't know that we'd have enjoyed this Lord of the Flies meets The Fountainhead for the younger set as much as we did. When Chrestomanci, he of the perfectly-creased gray suit and impeccable hair, finally makes his appearance, our horror and dread turned to giggles, even while the poor, witchy students retained their mortal fear for quite a few more pages. But then, once again, there's that ending. In this case, the remedy is to make the gifted students accept that they need to make themselves just slightly less gifted, at witchcraft at least. So they do. Kind of like the protagonist in the movie, Pi, albeit not quite as bloody. Sigh. I'd vote for The Fountainhead instead, but that is more difficult to read. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Witch Week | |