Armadillo’s Book Blog

This book also provides a great overview of the history of the theory of continental drift, which I think is currently thought to be the cause for volcanism in much of the world.

As you can tell, we here are huge fans of Diana Wynne Jones. We admire the magical worlds she creates and her characters -- human, wizard, and fantastical -- captivate us. We find the plots of her stories unpredictable but plausible, at least in the magical environments in which they take place.

I have a friend whose brilliant son graduated from college and then promptly enlisted in the military. "Maybe I won't get sent to Iraq," he told her. "Yeah, and why are they teaching you Arabic?" she asked him. There are young people who need to truly understand how terrible war can be. And maybe we should try to communicate this to them before they are old enough to sign on the dotted line of that enlistment contract.

Do I think our children ought to read books like this one? Even though they can hardly bring themselves to read on? Yes. In a country where our leaders feel comfortable cheerfully singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to the melody of a Beach Boys song, our children need to read about how a downtrodden society can pull itself together and say "No" to war.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret solves this problem. A Dickensian fairy tale, told in words and beautiful, complicated charcoal drawings, Hugo Cabret tells the story of the rediscovery of a silent film director and a young boy in Paris of the early 1930s.

A lovely celebration of train stations, automata, clock mechanisms, and film.

The nightmare we inhabit in Oryx and Crake is an ecological one. Intense, violent, horribly sad. Just what we expect from the best of Margaret Atwood.

A bit of a spoiler, below.

The germ of Oryx and Crake, and yes, in this context, that is a pun, is that at some point, pharmaceutical companies might worry if all disease were wiped out. After all, if no one ever gets sick, then, what would Big Pharma sell?

And I did indeed like it a lot. And, I learned a lot about sea voyaging in the late 1700's too.

Nick's story is told in the form of his journal entries for the entire voyage, each of which provides a date, a latitude and longitude (in measurements of Capt. Cook's time, which means that if a reader were to want to follow Nick's journey on a globe, one would have to do a little math), and an approximate location in words.

Because the tale is told in the voice of a boy, it is not challenging to read. However, Nick does have a strong grasp of sailing terminology and 18th century turns of speech. The glossary at the end of the book and the maps on the inside covers are useful additions.

The Last Dragon is the story of Yorsh, a young elf who is taken in by two humans when all the other elves have been exterminated by the humans of Daligar. (The elves, as everyone knows, were responsible for all evil and misfortune in the world, including the terrible rainy weather and resulting floods. After all, there must always be someone to blame.) The humans who shelter Yorsh despite the peril to their lives learn to love and appreciate his special gifts. And Yorsh comes to know that not all humans are murderers and thieves.

Worth reading, but very, very sad. May be a good way to start discussions of the Holocaust and about how people can go on with their lives, even after experiencing the awful suffering some inflict on innocents.

• When my younger daughter was around 3, she was obsessed with learning how Cinderella's mother had died. In this story, we learn within the first few pages that our heroine's mother died when she was struck by lightening.
• In many fairy tales, the heroine's name has to do with her physical appearance. In this story, the heroine's name has to do with her fate.
• Most fairy tales abound in generalities and their language is very simple, even bland. Some groups are pushing to ban this Newbery Award winner because the word "scrotum" appears on its first page.
• In many fairy tales, the stepmother serves as villain. In this story, the heroine's father's first wife comes to Lucky's rescue -- she raises her after her "real" mother has died.
• In many fairy tales, the protagonist leaves home to seek his (it IS usually his) fortune. In this story, Lucky runs away from home, only to realize that she belongs with her stepmother.

Winchester's explanations of the geology are clear and frank. The appendix about the Richter Scale is worth the price of admission.

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.

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.