Book #22: Quid Pro Quo & Zachary Zombie and the Lost Boy

I like to review the short stories that I read, particularly if they're good, but as you know, I don't like to count them as books. As always, I read two short stories/small books to count them as one, as is the case with this review.


First up is Quid Pro Quo, a short story by Dan Dillard. In this story, there are two families struggling with illness. Louis is a child who suddenly develops life-threatening flu-like symptoms, and Laura is a middle-aged married woman who has been riddled with cancer. The families do not know each other, but they share a common determination to be healthy. Hearsay leads both families to a mysterious man named Steven, who is said to be a healer. Louis and Laura are both "healed" by Steven, but they soon learn that healing comes at a high cost.


This was a jarring, strange little tale that will really make you think. Louis and Laura both thought that the ability to live was all they wanted or needed. As it turns out, quality of life becomes more important than how long they survive. Steven says there is no up without down, no back without front, no dark without light, and so on. There's a cost for everything, and it's interesting to see what Louis and Laura give up for their health, and whether cheating fate was worth it in the long run. This definitely isn't a feel-good story, so don't pick up for a quaint sunny afternoon read. That being said, I really enjoyed it, even though it was kind of disturbing. Those kinds of stories are nice every once in a while, especially when it's just a short story. You can get it for free on Kindle here. 


4/5 Stars


Read on June 23, 2011

Next is Zachary Zombie and the Lost Boy: A Story for Demented Children. This is a short story by John H. Carroll, which really is intended for children -- demented or not, I think. I like zombies, and I admittedly have had a bit of Halloween fever lately (I wish it came more than once a year...), so I thought I would use this as the second part of my short story review. I am sad to say I was disappointed.


The story is about a kid named Tobais who gets lost in the woods. He comes across Zachary, a zombie who has actually retained his soul thanks to a witch's spell... So he's kind of part-zombie, part-human. Tobais asks Zachary to help him find his way home, apparently unscathed by the fact that Zachary is a zombie. So, they set out to make it back to the village. Meanwhile, for about a page or so, there's a snobby girl named Anise who longs to be rescued her from her perfectly comfortable lifestyle. Not really sure why that's important, but it's there. 


There's really not much going on in this story. It's got some silly, zany descriptions of zombies and their creepy friends, and it's kind of funny in a children's book sort of way. Still, I don't think there was a point. Even kids' books need to have a point. The last couple of paragraphs (in which a prince is introduced), while they do tie in to a previous scene in the story, completely do not belong at all. It sounds like the beginning of an entirely different story.


Maybe I don't read enough children's books and was expecting too much from this. It just wasn't very well-crafted. My kids in the summer program I teach wrote children's stories a couple of weeks ago, and even they understood there needed to be a story arc and a finite ending. Oh, well. This was also free on Kindle, and you can see more about it here.


1/5 stars


Read from June 24, 2001 to June 25, 2011


--C

Book # 9.5: La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast)

Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorite Disney movies as a kid (although nothing could ever possibly beat Aladdin), and I recently got to see the Broadway version when the touring cast came through Huntsville. I saw it when I was browsing the classic Kindle books, so I thought I'd read it to see how it compared to the story I know so well.

As is generally the case with Disney movies, they seemed to have taken a very loose idea from the original work and crafted into something kids would like. I don't really have a problem with the way Disney does things, for the most part (see my post on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). I know they don't stick very closely to the literature or historical themes they choose, but at the very least, they might inspire kids to go back and read the originals just to compare them to the movies they love. Case in point: me.

In Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont's La Belle et la Bête, a formerly rich merchant who has become poor stumbles upon a beast's castle. The beast insists that the merchant offer one of his daughters (he has three) in return for his freedom and a trunk full of money. His daughter, nicknamed Beauty, goes to take her father's place in the castle, and she finds that the beast has graciously prepared for her arrival, setting up an apartment for her and coming to dine and chat with her daily. The Beast asks Beauty numerous times to marry him, but she refuses. She longs to see her father again, and the Beast allows her to leave when she promises to return in one week. When she goes home to visit her family, she finds that her sisters have each married handsome, yet dull and uncaring men. She realizes that she loves the Beast regardless of his appearance. She comes back to the castle to find the Beast dying, but when she tells him that she has returned because she wants to marry him, the Beast is revived and turns into a handsome and brilliant prince. Yay.

So... No crazy inventor father for Belle. No Gaston (my favorite character) fighting for Belle's affection. No household items brought to life. No rose quickly losing petals (though the Beast does mention his affinity for roses). No throng of townspeople storming the castle. No wonderfully choreographed showtunes... But all in all, still a nice story. A bit simple, but nice. Definitely worth the hour it will take you to read it.

3/5 stars

Read on February 28, 2011

--C

(BONUS) Book #41: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

And I thought I'd have trouble getting to forty.

Unlike my feelings for the Twilight series, I have never had anything against Harry Potter. It never particularly interested me, but as I mentioned in my very first post here, I will pretty much read just about anything. (Except Frankenstein, apparently.) Most of the reason I've never read the series so far is that I didn't have the books. I didn't want to read them when I was younger, so I had a lot of catching up to do. I am notoriously thrifty, yet for some reason don't frequent libraries, so asking me to invest in, like, eight giant books is pretty much like asking me to give you a kidney. Lo and behold, I happened to mention that I'd like to give the series a go, and my mother-in-law told me she bought the first five books for her classroom back when she was a 3rd grade teacher. She has no use for them now, so home with me they came. Merry Christmas to me!

Everyone knows that Harry Potter is a giant phenomenon, which, admittedly, does turn me off a little bit. Maybe that's the small portion of hipster in me, but when something is off-the-charts mainstream like that, I am immediately skeptical of the hype. I never understood the people waiting in line at midnight for copies of the books as they came out, or people dressed as Harry in line to see the movies, or those crazy folks who play Quidditch...

... But it is so easy to see how those people became crazy Potter addicts. It's horrible, and I am mostly ashamed to admit it, but... ohmyGod, where has this been all my life? I loved it. I read it in a matter of hours. I was grinning like a child when I finished it. I HATE MYSELF.

Really, I feel terrible for liking it so much, but I shouldn't! J.K. Rowling, unlike many over-hyped series authors, is actually extremely talented. She's clever and funny, and she does a really good job of not dumbing the plot down. It's obviously written for kids, and that often means (as was the case with The Secret of Platform 13) that I figure out plot twists early. Not this time. No, no, I was screaming, "WHAT?! What? WHAT?" at the end. Ask Derrick. It was embarrassing. It really was. But honestly, a couple chapters in and these people feel like your best friends. It's so good. Ugh.

Ugh!

5/5 Stars

Read from December 29, 2010 to December 30, 2010

--C

Book #39: The Secret of Platform 13

This is my second Eva Ibbotson book of the year. The first was The Star of Kazan, which I liked although I found the pacing a bit off. I found this book, The Secret of Platform 13, in a double-book special at my favorite used bookstore; it also includes Ibbotson's book Island of the Aunts. I decided to give it a try since I enjoyed the plot of Kazan so much. I'm happy to report that the pacing problem isn't an issue in this book.

The Secret of Platform 13 is about a mystical secret land called "The Island," which has creatures such as mermaids, hags, harpies, mistmakers, ogres, and wizards. The Island can be reached through Platform 13 in England. You can only pass between the two realms for the period of exactly nine days, which comes only once every nine years. When the story opens, the platform is open, and the infant prince of the Island is taken through the opening by his nannies who want to visit England. The prince is stolen by a snobby, vapid debutante who longs for a baby of her own. When the nine-day opening is over, the nannies have to return to the Island to report to the King and Queen that their son has been stolen and cannot be retrieved for at least the next nine years. The novel picks up again nine years later when the platform opens again, and a group of "rescuers" have been chosen to go through the opening to bring home the prince, who has lived his whole life having no idea he is a member of the royalty in a land he doesn't even know exists.

This is a great little story with wonderfully painted characters and a great setting. Judging from the two books I've read, Ibbotson is a master at creating whimsical atmospheres for her stories. Definitely perfect for kids, but completely enjoyable for adults, as well. As a half-way intelligent 23-year-old, I will admit that I figured out the plot twist by about the fifth chapter, but it really didn't take away from the story for me. I knew what was coming at the end, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the book. It's a great combination of reality and fantasy, since parts of the story take place in both worlds. There's a sense of familiarity when the "normal" people of England are discussed, but as soon as the book switches to the adventures of the rescuers and all of their powers and spells, you're immediately sucked into a great fantasy world.

I will say, though, that there are some striking similarities between this book and The Star of Kazan. Both involve infants being raised by people who are not their parents, and thus people not being who they say they are. Both involve an elaborate rescue plot. Both, for some reason, involve musical instruments playing a major role in the rescue mission (which I think is a completely random thing to have in common). There are a lot more, but I don't want to ruin any of the book. It was weird, but I suppose a lot of childrens' writers find a formula that works and they stick to it. I'm OK with it, but I did think some of them were a little eerie.

Slight sidenote: There are a ton of people reviewing this on Amazon calling this book a Harry Potter wanna-be, and an equal number of people screaming about how this book was written way before Harry Potter. The latter is definitely a valid point. Not having read the first word of a Harry Potter book, I'm not at liberty to say what their similarities are, but I do know the basic premise of Harry Potter, and I have to say, I don't really see any reason for the comparison. But just in case you're thinking the same thing, it is important to know that this was written pre-Potter explosion. Just throwing that out there.

I would certainly recommend this to a reader of any age, and I would encourage you to put Eva Ibbotson on your list of authors to look for when you're perusing the bookstore.

4/5 Stars

Read from December 22, 2010 to December 26, 2010

--C

Book #33: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Believe it or not, I've never seen the animated 1951 Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. I've seen Tim Burton's 2010 re-imagining a few times, and I even did my own twist on a Mad Hatter costume for Halloween this year. (I would add that I won 3rd place in a costume contest for that, but that would be rather indulgent of me, wouldn't it?) I've been meaning to read Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for a while, so the final stretch of my 2010 reading list seemed like a great place to squeeze it in.

I have to say, I'm pretty surprised at how different it is from the movie. Granted, I haven't read Through the Looking Glass, which continues Alice's adventures, so I could be missing some elements there. I'm not sure how closely the animated version sticks to the book, but I really expected the general idea I had of the story to be more similar to what I read. Let me tell you, I'm fully aware of how sad it is that I'm comparing a book to a movie instead of the other way around. It's even sadder that there are a billion children in the world that probably don't even know the movie(s) are based on a book. The kids I teach love the 2010 version of the movie, and I guarantee you that if I walked in today and told them it was a book written over 100 years ago, they would all be floored.

That's unfortunate, because it's really a fabulous little tale. It's pretty short -- if you speak Kindle-ese, it's only about 1,100 "locations" long. If you don't speak Kindle-ese, too freakin' bad. Go pick up a hard copy and see how long it is.
My favorite thing about this book was Carroll's plays on words and the whimsical feeling of the story. It's no wonder this is a kids' classic. It's also no wonder he chose to call the world he created "wonderland." He paints some amazing pictures, and his characters are so entertaining. Weird, but entertaining.

It was, however, written in the 1800s, so it does have a different writing style than what most kids today are probably used to. It's kinda like trying to read Dickens... There are just some things that didn't seem to flow, but that's just modern writing messing with my head. I would certainly recommend picking up this classic when you get a chance, and for goodness' sake, make sure every child you know knows that the movie has some deep roots.

4/5 Stars

Read from December 3, 2010 to December 5, 2010

--C

Book #31: From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

With the exception of Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, this was my favorite book that I read as a child. Unlike Number the Stars, which I've read probably five or six times since then, I haven't read this book since the 4th grade at good ol' East Elementary. In fact, I forgot about it altogether until that movie, Night at the Museum came out. I guess the museum setting reminded me of this book, but I couldn't remember the name or the author. I remembered which teacher I had when I read it, and I remember that I loved it. It took a lot of Googling vague plotlines to figure out what the book was, and even longer to actually come across a copy. I finally did, at my favorite used bookstore in Cullman. The final stretch of my 40-book journey seemed a perfect time to re-visit From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, because, let's be honest -- I'm crunched for time, and it took me 3 hours to read this. There. I said it.

E.L. Konigsburg's book about two childhood runaways is every bit as awesome as my 10-year-old self remembers it, and certainly deserving of the Newbery it received in 1968. Twelve-year-old Claudia Kincaid feels trapped in her boring, controlled life as the oldest sibling in a middle-class Connecticut family. She carefully plans to run away as a way of making those around her appreciate her a little more, and she hopes to come back "different." She chooses a partner in crime -- her younger brother Jamie, who has conveniently saved every penny he's ever earned. The siblings leave home before school one day and wind up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There, they discover a mystery that leads them to the eccentric Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

I don't remember if I realized it then, but now I can see that Claudia reminds me an awful lot of myself as a kid. Not nearly as evil (seriously, you can ask my oldest nephew all about that), but dramatic, calculating, clever, and manipulative. Maybe that's why I liked it when I was a kid, even if it was subconscious. When I was ten, I thought running away and hiding out in a museum like they did would've been the coolest thing in the world. Re-reading this book today, I still want to run away to the Met. I bet the security is a bit more intricate these days, but still. Sleeping in the antique beds, bathing in the fountains... And then finding a centuries-old mystery to solve? Man, count me in.

I love the way E.L. Konigsburg laid this book out -- it's all written as a letter from Mrs. Frankweiler to her lawyer. She tells the story as Claudia and Jamie told it to her. She adds her little asides every now and then, and she's a very brassy character, indeed. There are some simple illustrations peppered here and there that add just enough without making it too juvenile. If you've got a kid, they have to read this book! They have to! And so do you!

4.5/5 stars

Read on November 28, 2010

--C

Book #18: Here Today

From about 3rd grade - 6th grade, I was all about some Babysitter's Club books. I had a zillion of them, including the "journals" from after Dawn moved away, and the BSC Super Specials, and The Complete Guide to the BSC, which was basically an encyclopedia about all things BSC. I even had a necklace and ring with BSC engraved on it that I got from a book order in the 4th grade.

I think it's safe to say I think Ann M. Martin is a genius. Imagine my joy when I found her award-winning book Here Today at Big Lots for $0.50. I told you, I love that Big Lots book sale. Since I'm on a young adult kick for some reason, I think this is appropriate.

Here Today is set in 1963, and the narrator is Ellie, whose full name is Eleanore Roosevelt Dingman. Her younger siblings' names are Albert Einstein Dingman and Marie Curie Dingman. As you might have guessed by their awesome names, the kids' mother (Doris) is a bit of a ditz. She's vain, domestically challenged, and flighty. The worst of Doris' problems, though, is that she has big, fat stars in her eyes. She's constantly looking for her "big break" into show business, which is hard to come by in the small town where the Dingmans live. Their father is a construction worker who is often away for days at a time, leaving Doris at home with children that she has very little interest in raising.

As the oldest child, Ellie has to pick up her mother's slack -- cooking, cleaning, taking care of Albert and Marie, and practically everything else that requires a person to be responsible. On top of that, she has to deal with ridicule from her classmates because of who she is and where she lives (the "outcast" neighborhood of Witch Tree Lane). A group of girls at school terrorizes Ellie and her friends daily. The book explains how Ellie copes with being forced to grow up too fast at home and feeling like she's two inches tall at school.

Here Today is written for grades 5-8, but I think there's something for everyone in this book. Ann M. Martin is fabulous (duh), and Ellie's strength is enough to hook anyone into the story. You just want to strangle her mother for doing this to her. Also, I adored the fact that it was set in 1963. What a year. I wrote an entire research paper on 1963 my junior year of college. Most notably, JFK was assassinated and MLK gave the famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The death of JFK is played out beautifully in the book. I loved reading about through the eyes of a 6th grader who had no idea how to deal with it. My mom was 13 years and 1 day old when it happened -- it made me think of how she must have felt.

This book is up there on my childrens/young adult recommendation list. I definitely think you should pick it up. Perhaps at Big Lots, for $0.50! Now maybe I should read something meant for, you know, a grown up.

Read from June 23, 2010 to June 24, 2010

5/5 stars

-- C

Book #16: How to Eat Fried Worms

Alright, so somehow this book escaped me during my elementary school career. I'm working in a summer program at an elementary school right now, and next week is "How to Eat Fried Worms Week." Naturally, I had to read the book to prepare. I know it's not quite the same caliber of the other books I've reviewed, but let me be completely straight with you: My goal for 2010 is 40 books. Technically that means I should have read half of that by the end of June to be on target. Most of the other books I've read this year have been over 400 pages long, so I think I deserve to count a 100-page children's book if I want to. So there.

The problem is that I'm not really sure how to review a children's book. I mean, what do you want me to say? It's cute? I don't know. In the book, four best friends make a bet that one of the boys, Billy, can't eat fifteen worms in fifteen days. If he does, he gets $50 from Alan, another boy in the group. It quickly becomes clear that Alan and Joe will do everything they can to make Billy lose the bet, while Tom will do anything to help him win. The book details each of the fifteen worms, how Alan and Joe try to trick Billy into losing, and how, eventually, Billy learns to enjoy eating worms.

It's cute. It's funny. Kids should like it. Um...? What else can I say? There's no undertone or social commentary to analyze, so I guess that's it. I will say that I think everyone should read a good children's book every now and then. I've read and review several young adult books this year (the Twilight "saga," the Hunger Games series, Stargirl, etc.), but this is my first children's book. It was a good one. Go for it. I knocked it out on the drive from Florence to Cullman.

Read on June 20, 2010

5/5 stars for a kids' book

--C