Archive for the ‘Fiction’ Category
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
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| Author: | Susan Cooper |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
After reading The Dark Is Rising, I never would have imagined that Susan Cooper was capable of writing a book in which all characters are not either entirely good or entirely evil. And yet, here we meet the Boggart, an Old Thing, whose purpose in the world is to play tricks on people. He never intentionally harms anyone, but he almost always acts impulsively and many of his actions result in chaos at best.
Accidentally exiled from his castle in Scotland, the poor Boggart discovers peanut butter and that playing around with electricity and streetcars in modern-day Toronto can lead to dire (unintended) consequences.
Even the gifts the Boggart bestows on his hosts, ten-year old computer nerd Jessup and his twelve-year old sister, Emily, cause terrific problems.
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The Boggart is the story of several families -- some are families by blood, others by community -- separated by miles and in some cases oceans, and by history -- who come to know and cherish each other. Parents, children, actors, friends, and one magical creature draw on prodigious, if often hidden, talents and work together to understand each other as awesome (and often dangerous) supernatural events nearly destroy them.
The depictions of:
- The rocky but eventually trusting relationship between the siblings,
- The Gang of Five who are obsessed with writing a computer game,
- The dilemma of parents who are concerned that perhaps their children are possessed (most parents must believe that sometimes) and that their children's friends might not be the most upstanding citizens,
- The life of an old-fashioned gentleman who lives on a remote island in a remote community in Scotland,
- The hard work of a regional acting company, and
- The interesting character of the Boggart, who really does love his humans, even as he schemes to come up with more annoying tricks to play on them,
are truly delightful.
Note: The limitations of the personal computers that existed when this book was written play a significant part in the story. And for that reason, the fact that the author's descriptions of how computer operating systems work are a bit off deflated the story a little for me. If I were to make a movie of this book (and I think it would make a fantastic one), a slight change in a couple of the nouns would resolve this issue.
Highly recommended. |
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Boggart, The |
Posted in Animals, Child-raising, Computers in society, Conceptual: 8 and up, Culture, 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
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
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| Author: | Margaret Atwood |
| 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: | 2003 |
Margaret Atwood's gift is to write entirely plausible nightmares that resonate to her readers' bones. Problem is, the nightmares she drags us into are so plausible that they do seem to be coming true.
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 must read.
A bit of a spoiler, below.
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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?
-- Emily Berk |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Oryx and Crake |
Posted in Conceptual: for grown ups, Dealing with bullies, Death is a central theme, Fiction, Gifted, Reading level: Grown up, Science, Science Fiction | Comments Closed
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
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| Author: | A. Manette Ansay |
| 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: | 1999 |
Romantic story with a spooky sub-plot, about the marriage day of a couple who know they are right for each other, despite the misgivings of the bride's family. If you want to validate someone who believes in love at first sight, then this is a book for them. |
One of those "can't sleep until I've finished reading it" books. Not terribly deep, but involving.
-- Emily Berk
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Midnight Champagne |
Posted in Child-raising, Conceptual: for grown ups, Culture, Female protagonist, Fiction, Reading level: Grown up | Comments Closed
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
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| Author: | Anne Tyler |
| 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: | 2006 |
How does Anne Tyler do it? When she describes a person in the context of his or her family, when she makes lips move and words emerge, we KNOW that person, everything about that person. And yet, we keep reading because we know that Tyler will continue to help us learn about not only each person in her story, but also about Life and about ourselves.
As Tyler helped us learn in The Amateur Marriage, most decisions made by anyone, especially in his or her personal life, are going to be made amateurly, and some better than others.
In Digging To America, we meet two families who adopt infants from Asia.
Betsy Donaldson, the aging, opinionated ex-hippie, is never as gentle or tactful as her wardrobe might lead one to expect. The Yazdans, a young Iranian-American couple, find themselves intimidated by Betsy's suggestions, but prove to be just as caring with their young child as Betsy is to her's.
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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 coaoverallst; that 's hair is always perfectly coiffed. In this way are decisions made and in this way are people known, both in Tyler's novels and in real life.
Tyler's descriptions of the extended communities we build to help ourselves live ours lives are touching and absolutely real.
-- Emily Berk
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Digging to America |
Posted in Child-raising, Conceptual: for grown ups, Culture, Female protagonist, Fiction, History, Reading level: Grown up | Comments Closed
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
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| Author: | Eleanor M. Jewett |
| Illustrator: | Frederick T. Chapman |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction, historical |
| Year of publication: | 1946 |
Gentle tale of Hugh, whose family is caught up terrible violence, and who is sheltered and healed in the monastery at Glastonbury during the reign of Henry II of England.
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Fascinating meditations on the monastic life and the men and boys who lived in monasteries, King Arthur, the Holy Grail and its mythology, the value of the written word, and the tensions between State and Church.
As a scandalized observer of US missteps in the Middle East of the 21st century, I was interested to learn how carelessly the Knights Templar planned their military adventures to the Holy Land, and that they considered taking their children with them on their Crusades an honor.
There is SO much we can learn from history, even fictionalized history.
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Hidden Treasure of Glaston, The |
Posted in Conceptual: 8 and up, Culture, Fiction, Gifted, History, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Saturday, September 29th, 2007
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| Author: | Diana Wynne Jones |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
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.
Cart and Cwidder is a light-weight but enjoyable and typical Diana Wynne Jones offering. There is the standard DWJ mother -- self-involved and mostly oblivious to even the most obvious danger to her children. There are the children whose future depends on their learning to take advantage of their gifts, innate and physical. In this case, the gifts are their ability to entertain, spin tales, and play the musical instruments left to them by their murdered father.
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Cart and Cwidder |
Posted in Conceptual: 8 and up, Dealing with bullies, Fairy tales, Fiction, Gifted, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Sunday, September 16th, 2007
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| Author: | Lance Marcum |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2005 |
Because The Cottonmouth Club is written in the first person, you know from the start that Mitch Valentine does not actually succeed in killing himself, no matter what stupid thing he gets dared into by his misguided friends and foolish choices.
And yet, here is another "boy book" in which a boy wreaks near-disaster time and time again because of his own willfulness and yet seems unable to stop himself from succumbing to peer pressure. |
With its farting jokes and boy-on-boy meanness, this book will no doubt delight certain young readers. |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Cottonmouth Club, The |
Posted in Animals, Child-raising, Conceptual: 8 and up, Dealing with bullies, Fiction, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Sunday, September 9th, 2007
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| Author: | Susan Cooper |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1999 |
"I'm more patient with books that are pretty much just pure plot than you are," my 12 yr. old tells me.
Perhaps that's why she liked The Dark Is Rising more than I did.
The contest in The Dark Is Rising is simply good vs. evil. No one who is evil at the beginning of the book recants. No one who is (truly) good goes bad. In addition to the other gifts Will Stanton, seventh son of a seventh son, inherits comes the ability to tell, almost upon meeting someone, whether they are with the Light or with the Dark.
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This book is spooky and intense, but no real violence takes place.
A Newbery Honor Book. Note that this is the second book in the Dark Is Rising series. |
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Dark Is Rising, The |
Posted in Conceptual: 8 and up, Culture, Dragons and/or mythological beasts, Fairy tales, Fiction, Gifted, History, Reading level: age 8 and up, Science Fiction | Comments Closed
Thursday, September 6th, 2007
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| Author: | Karen Hesse |
| Illustrator: | Robert Andrew Parker |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction, historical |
| Year of publication: | 2000 |
"Read this book," my 12 yr. old ordered me. "I'm pretty sure you'll like it. I liked it a lot."
And I did indeed like it a lot. And, I learned a lot about sea voyaging in the late 1700's too.
Hesse based her tale on fact -- there was really a young boy named Nick Young who "appeared" on the roster of Captain Cook's ship Endeavour quite a few months after the ship had left England, but before it had put into any port. Hesse guessed that he had been a stowaway and was discovered once it was too late to put him ashore.
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.
In Hesse's imagination, but perhaps this is truly how it happened, once Nick is free to show himself, he makes himself useful as assistant to the ship's physician, writing tutor, and friend to the Goat and the dogs and many of the sailors.
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Captain Cook proves an adept leader and for many months of the three year journey; he kept nearly everyone on board alive and healthy. But seafaring was risky in those years. There was violence; the close quarters of the ship required stringent enforcement of rules -- punishment was by lashes with the cat-o'-nine-tails or worse -- and Nick does lose many shipboard friends to accidents and disease. My usually very sensitive daughter accepted these sad events because, she felt, they were the historical reality and also because Nick helped us experience them through his accepting (if sometimes tearful) eyes.
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.
-- Emily Berk |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Stowaway |
Posted in Animals, Biography, Conceptual: age 12 and up, Culture, Dealing with bullies, Death is a central theme, Dickensian, Fiction, Gifted, History, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Monday, September 3rd, 2007
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Posted in Child-raising, Conceptual: age 12 and up, Culture, Dealing with bullies, Death is a central theme, Dickensian, 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
