The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, translated by Richard Howard
Mariner
Fiction, CH Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Stranded in the desert, a pilot meets an extraordinary young boy, a self-styled prince hailing from a world little bigger than a house. Piecing together odd bits of their conversations, he reconstructs the child's unusual, meaning-filled journey through the solar system and around Earth.
REVIEW: I suppose I've been neglectful, not reading this story thirty-odd years ago as a child. (But, then, I didn't read Alice in Wonderland until adulthood, either.) In any event, I tried to rate it with the target audience in mind, though even then it nearly lost a half-star. The author seems to be trying too hard to be Simply Profound, forcing flat constructs to be mouthpieces for Insights and Lessons. The prince drifts through various adventures and encounters, several of which only feel half-started before the boy departs, while the pilot reawakens to the wonders of the world through his encounter. It has a certain charm and whimsy, and the prose (at least, the translated prose) has some nice turns of phrase, though I suspect it's best read in childhood... and left in the mists of nostalgia.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum) - My Review
The Best of Lewis Carroll (Lewis Carroll) - My Review
The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles (Julie Andrews Edwards) - My Review
Monday, January 29, 2018
Sunday, January 28, 2018
I Kill Giants (Joe Kelly)
I Kill Giants
Joe Kelly, illustrations by JM Ken Niimura
Image Comics
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/General Fiction/Graphic Novel
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Barbara Thorson isn't your average girl. While others gab about fashions or dates or TV shows, she reads gaming manuals - but not just to play dungeonmaster with her brother and his gamer friends. No, she's looking for information on monsters. She sees them all around, from tiny winged people to great ghostly harbingers... and they all tell her that a giant is coming to town.
A giant Barbara alone can slay.
If she slays the giant, maybe she can save the one person who truly matters in her life, the one who's slipping away...
This anniversary edition contains all seven installments of the I Kill Giants miniseries, with bonus art.
REVIEW: I Kill Giants has a surreal concept, blurring lines between reality and fantasy. Barbara herself is drawn with animal ears, part of her growing delusions spurred by trauma and pain at home. She's an abrasive heroine, often crass and repellent, spending more time in detention or the principal's office (or with the school psychologist) than in class. The new girl Sophia reaches out to her with mixed results, becoming entangled with a vengeful school bully as Barbara's tendency to push others away creates mixed signals and pain all around. The story spends a little too much time dancing around what is reality in her world and what is Barbara's twisted view of it, not to mention what Barbara hopes to accomplish with her peculiar rituals (and the reason behind them), making the climax feel a little jarring. That dancing almost cost it a full fourth star in the ratings. Beyond that is a harrowing portrait of a girl in pain, struggling to fight against a world and a truth that's even more terrifying, and harder to face down, than giants - a truth she fears she's not strong enough to handle, little realizing that she doesn't have to do it alone.
You Might Also Enjoy:
City of the Beasts (Isabel Allende) - My Review
Skellig (David Almond) - My Review
The Tiger Rising (Kate DiCamillo) - My Review
Joe Kelly, illustrations by JM Ken Niimura
Image Comics
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/General Fiction/Graphic Novel
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Barbara Thorson isn't your average girl. While others gab about fashions or dates or TV shows, she reads gaming manuals - but not just to play dungeonmaster with her brother and his gamer friends. No, she's looking for information on monsters. She sees them all around, from tiny winged people to great ghostly harbingers... and they all tell her that a giant is coming to town.
A giant Barbara alone can slay.
If she slays the giant, maybe she can save the one person who truly matters in her life, the one who's slipping away...
This anniversary edition contains all seven installments of the I Kill Giants miniseries, with bonus art.
REVIEW: I Kill Giants has a surreal concept, blurring lines between reality and fantasy. Barbara herself is drawn with animal ears, part of her growing delusions spurred by trauma and pain at home. She's an abrasive heroine, often crass and repellent, spending more time in detention or the principal's office (or with the school psychologist) than in class. The new girl Sophia reaches out to her with mixed results, becoming entangled with a vengeful school bully as Barbara's tendency to push others away creates mixed signals and pain all around. The story spends a little too much time dancing around what is reality in her world and what is Barbara's twisted view of it, not to mention what Barbara hopes to accomplish with her peculiar rituals (and the reason behind them), making the climax feel a little jarring. That dancing almost cost it a full fourth star in the ratings. Beyond that is a harrowing portrait of a girl in pain, struggling to fight against a world and a truth that's even more terrifying, and harder to face down, than giants - a truth she fears she's not strong enough to handle, little realizing that she doesn't have to do it alone.
You Might Also Enjoy:
City of the Beasts (Isabel Allende) - My Review
Skellig (David Almond) - My Review
The Tiger Rising (Kate DiCamillo) - My Review
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Midnight for Charlie Bone (Jenny Nimmo)
Midnight for Charlie Bone
The Children of the Red King series, Book 1
Jenny Nimmo
Scholastic
Fiction, MG Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: For ten years, Charlie Bone thought he was an ordinary boy - until he started hearing voices from photographs. Suddenly, his nasty grandmother and broody aunts take an interest in him, forcing him to attend the elite Bloor's Academy for "endowed" children: those who, like Charlie, have peculiar gifts or rare talent. Charlie doesn't want to be special, not if it means having to abandon his best friend Benjamin and rub shoulders with unpleasant people like the Bloors... but somehow he's become caught up in a decade-old mystery involving a missing girl, a mystery that itself ties into the centuries-old history of the Red King and his squabbling descendants.
REVIEW: Hidden mages in modern times, a special academy, a boy with perpetually unruly hair discovering a secret family legacy... The comparisons to Harry Potter are hard to avoid, though they are most likely creative coincidence. Charlie's not as dynamic a character as Harry, being almost agonizingly slow on the uptake at several points (his unendowed friend Benjamin's even a little quicker on the draw), and Nimmo's world feels darker, nastier, and less inviting than Rowling's invention in many respects. Not all "endowed" people are bad apples, but the majority seem to be, with cooperation and friendship seeming like rare exceptions. With most characters lining up about as one expects from the first meeting and relatively few twists, a strong sense of pulled punches and deliberately-blunted edges, plus a finale that (skirting spoilers) doesn't involve the main character as much as one might expect, the story overall didn't feel especially satisfying. That said, there are some nice ideas and images here, and younger readers will likely enjoy it more. I guess I'm just a little too old and jaded to succumb to Charlie's simpler charms.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
Mystics #1: The Seventh Sense (Kim Richardson) - My Review
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J. K. Rowling) - My Review
The Children of the Red King series, Book 1
Jenny Nimmo
Scholastic
Fiction, MG Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: For ten years, Charlie Bone thought he was an ordinary boy - until he started hearing voices from photographs. Suddenly, his nasty grandmother and broody aunts take an interest in him, forcing him to attend the elite Bloor's Academy for "endowed" children: those who, like Charlie, have peculiar gifts or rare talent. Charlie doesn't want to be special, not if it means having to abandon his best friend Benjamin and rub shoulders with unpleasant people like the Bloors... but somehow he's become caught up in a decade-old mystery involving a missing girl, a mystery that itself ties into the centuries-old history of the Red King and his squabbling descendants.
REVIEW: Hidden mages in modern times, a special academy, a boy with perpetually unruly hair discovering a secret family legacy... The comparisons to Harry Potter are hard to avoid, though they are most likely creative coincidence. Charlie's not as dynamic a character as Harry, being almost agonizingly slow on the uptake at several points (his unendowed friend Benjamin's even a little quicker on the draw), and Nimmo's world feels darker, nastier, and less inviting than Rowling's invention in many respects. Not all "endowed" people are bad apples, but the majority seem to be, with cooperation and friendship seeming like rare exceptions. With most characters lining up about as one expects from the first meeting and relatively few twists, a strong sense of pulled punches and deliberately-blunted edges, plus a finale that (skirting spoilers) doesn't involve the main character as much as one might expect, the story overall didn't feel especially satisfying. That said, there are some nice ideas and images here, and younger readers will likely enjoy it more. I guess I'm just a little too old and jaded to succumb to Charlie's simpler charms.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
Mystics #1: The Seventh Sense (Kim Richardson) - My Review
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J. K. Rowling) - My Review
The Dragon and the Stars (Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, editors)
The Dragon and the Stars
Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, editors
DAW
Fiction, Anthology/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: In an alternate America, a group of friends heads to exotic Anglotown for a celebratory dinner... the Man in the Moon comes to Earth in search of his future bride... an artist crafting clay sculptures for the emperor's tomb finds an unexpected love and more unexpected talent... a dying North Canadian town's future hinges on a methane-powered orbital craft... These and other stories appear in this anthology of Chinese-themed speculative fiction tales.
REVIEW: For many years, science fiction and fantasy have generally been dominated by white, often male voices, despite the great wealth of material and history to be explored around the world. More recently, the balance has been shifting, with a welcome spread of diverse settings, characters, and authors appearing on the shelves. This anthology turns to China and (generally) Chinese authors for its stories. Like many anthologies, I found the contents a mixed bag. A few lacked cultural context and left me a little lost. Some (and I find this in several anthologies) never quite came to a point, or felt either too long or too short. I didn't consider any outright terrible, though "Going Down to Anglotown" had an ugly darkness about it - which I suspect was quite deliberate, if rather heavy-handed, considering the stereotypes endured by Asian Americans. If you're looking to expand your cultural horizons and explore new authors, this is a decent choice.(The title and cover, though, have little to do with any of the stories presented - a minor enough irritant, but there it is. Plus, it's a "Western" dragon.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Magical Roads (Kia Zi Shiru) - My Review
The Dragon Keeper (Carole Wilkinson) - My Review
Serpent of Time (Eugene Woodbury) - My Review
Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, editors
DAW
Fiction, Anthology/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: In an alternate America, a group of friends heads to exotic Anglotown for a celebratory dinner... the Man in the Moon comes to Earth in search of his future bride... an artist crafting clay sculptures for the emperor's tomb finds an unexpected love and more unexpected talent... a dying North Canadian town's future hinges on a methane-powered orbital craft... These and other stories appear in this anthology of Chinese-themed speculative fiction tales.
REVIEW: For many years, science fiction and fantasy have generally been dominated by white, often male voices, despite the great wealth of material and history to be explored around the world. More recently, the balance has been shifting, with a welcome spread of diverse settings, characters, and authors appearing on the shelves. This anthology turns to China and (generally) Chinese authors for its stories. Like many anthologies, I found the contents a mixed bag. A few lacked cultural context and left me a little lost. Some (and I find this in several anthologies) never quite came to a point, or felt either too long or too short. I didn't consider any outright terrible, though "Going Down to Anglotown" had an ugly darkness about it - which I suspect was quite deliberate, if rather heavy-handed, considering the stereotypes endured by Asian Americans. If you're looking to expand your cultural horizons and explore new authors, this is a decent choice.(The title and cover, though, have little to do with any of the stories presented - a minor enough irritant, but there it is. Plus, it's a "Western" dragon.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Magical Roads (Kia Zi Shiru) - My Review
The Dragon Keeper (Carole Wilkinson) - My Review
Serpent of Time (Eugene Woodbury) - My Review
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Scat (Carl Hiaasen)
Scat
Carl Hiaasen
Knopf
Fiction, MG General Fiction/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The day Duane "Smoke" Scrod Jr and biology teacher Bunny Starch squared off in front of the entire classroom, Nick and his friend Marta knew it wouldn't end well. Starch was the harshest teacher in the school, rumored to keep pet snakes and a taxidermy collection at home, and Duane... well, any boy who insists on being called "Smoke" and talks back to someone like Starch, even biting her pencil in half and swallowing the pieces, is surely up to no good.
Smoke doesn't even show up the next day for the class trip to Black Vine Swamp, a wildlife preserve in the Florida swamps, where Nick hopes he might finally see the critically endangered Florida panther. But then a wildfire chases them out - and Starch, a teacher who has never missed a day of class in her entire teaching career, disappears.
Did Smoke finally snap and live up to his nickname? Were his threats against Starch more than just bluff? And what was the strange, tannish shape Nick caught on video shortly before the suspicious fire broke out? As he and Marta investigate, they find themselves involved in a tale as tangled as the vines in the swamp, a tale of broken homes and mistaken assumptions and illegal prospecting and self-styled ecoterrorists... not to mention a critically endangered big cat.
REVIEW: I've previously read (and greatly enjoyed) Hiaasen's Chomp, another story set in the Florida wilderness, with a young boy and girl encountering many strange animals and stranger characters. Scat has a similar feel, with two young protagonists surrounded by quirky people and nasty villains and Florida's strange wildlife... a feel so similar I couldn't help sensing a formula behind the story, one that hampered my overall suspension of disbelief. Nick's also a less intelligent main character; with his father recently maimed in the Iraq War, he decides to bind his own right arm and develop left-handedness - an admirable act of solidarity with his one-armed father, but one that makes zero sense when he and Marta are in very dangerous situations, and he doesn't even think to increase the chances of survival by freeing his dominant hand. (But, then, the adults are a bit brainless now and again, too, more caricature than solid characters. Skirting spoilers, I'm also not sure I bought a later plot development involving a trained bloodhound.) Hiaasen writes with love and authenticity (and visible agony) about the highly endangered Florida wilderness, and the peculiar people could be amusing in small doses, but overall I didn't feel it came together quite as well as Chomp did.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Chomp (Carl Hiaasen) - My Review
This Side of Wild (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Let Them Eat Shrimp (Kennedy Warne) - My Review
Carl Hiaasen
Knopf
Fiction, MG General Fiction/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The day Duane "Smoke" Scrod Jr and biology teacher Bunny Starch squared off in front of the entire classroom, Nick and his friend Marta knew it wouldn't end well. Starch was the harshest teacher in the school, rumored to keep pet snakes and a taxidermy collection at home, and Duane... well, any boy who insists on being called "Smoke" and talks back to someone like Starch, even biting her pencil in half and swallowing the pieces, is surely up to no good.
Smoke doesn't even show up the next day for the class trip to Black Vine Swamp, a wildlife preserve in the Florida swamps, where Nick hopes he might finally see the critically endangered Florida panther. But then a wildfire chases them out - and Starch, a teacher who has never missed a day of class in her entire teaching career, disappears.
Did Smoke finally snap and live up to his nickname? Were his threats against Starch more than just bluff? And what was the strange, tannish shape Nick caught on video shortly before the suspicious fire broke out? As he and Marta investigate, they find themselves involved in a tale as tangled as the vines in the swamp, a tale of broken homes and mistaken assumptions and illegal prospecting and self-styled ecoterrorists... not to mention a critically endangered big cat.
REVIEW: I've previously read (and greatly enjoyed) Hiaasen's Chomp, another story set in the Florida wilderness, with a young boy and girl encountering many strange animals and stranger characters. Scat has a similar feel, with two young protagonists surrounded by quirky people and nasty villains and Florida's strange wildlife... a feel so similar I couldn't help sensing a formula behind the story, one that hampered my overall suspension of disbelief. Nick's also a less intelligent main character; with his father recently maimed in the Iraq War, he decides to bind his own right arm and develop left-handedness - an admirable act of solidarity with his one-armed father, but one that makes zero sense when he and Marta are in very dangerous situations, and he doesn't even think to increase the chances of survival by freeing his dominant hand. (But, then, the adults are a bit brainless now and again, too, more caricature than solid characters. Skirting spoilers, I'm also not sure I bought a later plot development involving a trained bloodhound.) Hiaasen writes with love and authenticity (and visible agony) about the highly endangered Florida wilderness, and the peculiar people could be amusing in small doses, but overall I didn't feel it came together quite as well as Chomp did.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Chomp (Carl Hiaasen) - My Review
This Side of Wild (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Let Them Eat Shrimp (Kennedy Warne) - My Review
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)