Archive for the ‘Female protagonist’ Category
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007
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| 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 |
Posted in Animals, Child-raising, Conceptual: age 12 and up, Culture, Death is a central theme, Dragons and/or mythological beasts, Fairy tales, Female protagonist, Fiction, Gifted, History, Parenting gifted children, Reading level: age 8 and up, Science Fiction | Comments Closed
Saturday, December 30th, 2006
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| Author: | Diana Wynne Jones |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2001 |
A cheerful, easy to read, but very complicated, backwards fairy tale, in which the protagonist is the oldest of three stepsisters. Nearly every character in this story, major and minor, wears at least one or two disguises. In some cases, the disguise is of his or her own choosing, but not always. |
For example, our young heroine Sophie has fooled herself into believing that she'll never accomplish anything, since, in the world in which she grows up, eldest sisters never do. This belief keeps Sophie from realizing that she does magic nearly every time she does anything. Meanwhile, Sophie struggles through the story in the body of an old woman because of the misdirected curse of a witch.
Although the words of the story are not too challenging, and the ideas are gentle, the complications of the plot may keep even the most sophisticated minds engaged throughout.
-- Emily
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| Similar books |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Howl's Moving Castle |
Posted in Conceptual: 8 and up, Dragons and/or mythological beasts, Fairy tales, Female protagonist, Fiction, Gifted, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Monday, December 18th, 2006
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| 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...
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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.
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Witch Week |
Posted in Child-raising, Conceptual: 8 and up, Culture, Dealing with bullies, Death is a central theme, Dragons and/or mythological beasts, Fairy tales, Female protagonist, Fiction, Parenting gifted children, Reading level: age 8 and up, School | Comments Closed
Monday, December 18th, 2006
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| Author: | Ingri & Edgar Parin d'Aulaire |
| Illustrator: | Ingri & Edgar Parin d'Aulaire |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction, fairy tales |
| Year of publication: | 1939 |
Beautifully illustrated, interesting collection of Norwegian folk tales. |
Get the hardcover, because you'll want to re-read these stories again and again.
See also: East, for a novelistic treatment of the title story. |
| Similar books |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Twenty-One Norwegian Folk Tales |
Posted in Animals, Child-raising, Conceptual: 8 and up, Culture, Fairy tales, Female protagonist, Fiction, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Monday, December 18th, 2006
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| Author: | Edith Pattou |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction, myth |
| Year of publication: | 2003 |
When my daughter chose to read East, we did not know it was based on the story collection called East of the Sun, West of the Moon (EOTSWOTM) and we had not read any of the Norwegian fairy tales in that beautiful collection.
We loved East, which describes in great detail, the life of Rose (called Karen in EOTSWOTM), who, like Beauty in Beauty and the Beast, comes to love the beast (in this case a white bear) who forces her to leave her home and loved ones. |
If this sounds like what happens to young women who marry "A man shall leave his mother and a woman leave her home...", well, it is a fairy tale, and many do believe that fairy tales serve didactic purposes. And, as in the Norwegian tale, in East also, the abducted girl is required to allow the bear, unasked, to sleep next to her each night. When the girl cannot bring herself to do this, and instead lets her mother know of the conditions of her confinement with the beast, she puts in jeopardy the life of the beast and her future happiness.
At least, in East, unlike in the fairy tale, this particular girl is a special one, a person of great initiative and many talents. Her ability to weave, to teach, to learn languages and survival skills, and to endear herself to others, human and other-worldly, and her love of adventure, make it possible for Rose to save her family, herself, and her true love.
East mostly overcomes its origins in a tale in which subordination of women by men and the tearing of the bond between mother and daughter is implied to be necessary to the success of a marriage. It is one of those stories that we loved reading, although we did not necessarily buy its underlying message in its entirety. |
| Similar books |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: East |
Posted in Conceptual: 8 and up, Culture, Dragons and/or mythological beasts, Fairy tales, Female protagonist, Fiction, Gifted, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Monday, November 27th, 2006
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| Author: | Kathleen Tyau |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups
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| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups
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| Genre: | fiction, historical |
| Year of publication: | 2000 |
The Chinese-Hawaiian narrator tells, in her own (sometimes-pidgin) words, what it was like to come of age as an Oriental, but not Japanese, in Hawaii in the days just before and after Pearl Harbor. Eye opening. |
-- Emily Berk |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Makai |
Posted in Conceptual: for grown ups, Culture, Female protagonist, Fiction, History, Reading level: Grown up | Comments Closed
Friday, November 3rd, 2006
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| Author: | Sharyn McCrumb |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction, historical |
| Year of publication: | 2002 |
The book is actually the history of a song, rather than a story about a person who catches songs. And/or it's the story of how a song gets caught. |
In telling the tale of the song, McCrumb helps us learn the history of a special region of Appalachia -- the beautiful, remote, hilly part that straddles the border between North Carolina and Tennessee.
We learn, in "their own voices", of the boy who was stolen from his home island in Scotland and so brought the song to the New World, of his hard life during the Revolutionary War, and of his journey to Appalachia. The song then leads us into the mind of a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, which in this part of the country, literally pitched neighbor against neighbor, few of whom cared all that much for the Northern OR Southern cause. Because the song continuously eludes capture by the songcatchers, we then follow its course through family of a young girl in the early twentieth century and then into the mind of another soldier in World War II and then into the later twentieth century.
In each historical period, the song's lyric "When she/he came home, she was a-change-ed, oh" proves true both for those who go to war and for those to whom the war comes home.
Highly recommended for advanced young readers.
Note: The violence, suffering, and death caused by wars are described in short, sharp, riveting, but horrifying bursts that punctuate many of the stories told by the song's custodians.
-- Emily |
| Similar books |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Songcatcher, The |
Posted in Biography, Child-raising, Conceptual: age 12 and up, Culture, Female protagonist, Fiction, Gifted, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Sunday, October 29th, 2006
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| Author: | Martha Sherrill |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups
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| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups
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| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2006 |
Not a travel book (Ruin can be taken to mean many things in the story, including the last name of the girl narrator), but a fairy tale about parenting in the maelstrom of drugs, sexual freedom, alcohol, style, and serial divorce that was California in the 1970's (and perhaps still today).
The moral of the story? Perhaps that teaching one's children to observe closely and act on their observations is more important than preaching a strict morality that is no longer adhered to by grown-ups, teenagers, or even those who preach it.
-- Emily Berk
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Ruins of California, The |
Posted in Child-raising, Conceptual: for grown ups, Culture, Female protagonist, Fiction, Gifted, History, Parenting gifted children, Reading level: Grown up | Comments Closed
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
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| Author: | Frances O'Roark Dowell |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2003 |
A group of children abandoned to a group home and an apparently Asperger's-spectrum, intellectually gifted child, are united by a love of architecture, or building, at least, scrap-booking, and the stories told by an overly-imaginative housemate.
Not hard to read, although the stories of how the children came to live in the home are sad. |
The book gets readers thinking about the fine line between imagination and lying, the need to escape mundane realities sometimes -- especially when one's life is nearly unbearable, and about the power of caring friends and adults.
-- Emily Berk |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Where I'd Like To Be |
Posted in Child-raising, Conceptual: age 12 and up, Female protagonist, Fiction, Gifted, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Saturday, October 14th, 2006
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| Author: | Dava Sobel |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 12 and up |
| Genre: | Non-fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1999 |
The story of Galileo's daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, is mostly peripheral to the story of Galileo himself, in this non-fictional biography. Along with interesting details about what life was like for the illegitimate daughter of a famous scientist in the late 16th century, the book also concentrates on the Catholic Church's determined and successful attempt to get Galileo to renounce his conclusion that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa. |
Reading about the Inquisition which forced Galileo to choose between his deep faith and what he knew to be scientific fact, I was reminded of the later, fictional, 1984 and Darkness At Noon, and the non-fictional Reading Lolita in Tehran and the recent efforts in the United States to ban the teaching of evolution. What is it about power that drives people in authority to force scientists to renounce what they know for what the powers-that-be think they should profess?
In Galileo's case, it seems to me, many of those who reviewed his writings understood that Galileo was correct. And yet, what was required was Obedience rather than Truth.
Why does this happen? Is it, as Ayn Rand seems to think, because those lacking in intellectual gifts resent those who are more intelligent than they are? Or, can it be that theologists and ideologists truly believe that what they believe is not only true, but also that anyone who disagrees must be destroyed? |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Galileo's Daughter |
Posted in Biography, Conceptual: age 12 and up, Culture, Death is a central theme, Female protagonist, Gifted, History, Reading level: age 12 and up, Science | Comments Closed
