Armadillo’s Book Blog

If you have a gifted child, particularly a girl, who is about to enter high school, or who is already in high school, and who has not already read Jerry Spinelli's amazing novel about the glory and the pain of being orders of magnitude different from one's peers, go now and read Stargirl. And then hand it to the child.

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 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,

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.

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.

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.

Perhaps that's why she liked The Dark Is Rising more than I did.

A Newbery Honor Book. Note that this is the second book in the Dark Is Rising series.

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.

Diana Wynne Jones is one author who understands that many children have the potential to be great wizards, but they need guidance or they can go wrong. And although they are able to teach themselves many things, in order to reach their full potential, they often crave time with mentors.

Other books we've enjoyed by Diana Wynne Jones