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Middle-grade sci-fi review: Benjamin Franklinstein Meets the Fright Brothers

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Benjamin Franklinstein Meets the Fright Brothers, by Larry David Tuxbury and Matthew McElligott. Illustrations by Matthew McEllligott.

The Benjamin Franklinstein series:

Benjamin Franklin has been in suspended animation in his Philadelphia basement for the past two centuries, waiting to be awoken when the world faces a big emergency and needs its historical inventors. When lightning strikes the basement, Ben’s up and searching for the emergency. He’s also coping with advent of remote controls, bicycles, and Bermuda shorts. The only person who knows the founding father is alive is middle-school student Victor Godwin, Ben’s upstairs neighbor and guide to the modern world.

I have to admit that I meant to read the first book in this series, Benjamin Franklinstein Lives! but mistakenly ordered the second, Benjamin Franklinstein Meets the Fright Brothers, so I’ll be reviewing the second book here.  Both books—and the third in the series, Benjamin Franklinstein Meets Thomas Dedison—were written by Matthew McElligot and Larry Tuxbury and excellently illustrated by Matthew McElligott. They’re for kids aged 8 to 12.

Benjamin Franklinstein Meets the Fright Brothers:

The newly reanimated, electrically powered Benjamin Franklin and his guide to the modern world, middle-school student Victor Godwin, learn that an undead duo of famous inventors is under the control of a mysterious “emperor” with nefarious plans for taking over the city of Philadelphia. With the help of a local meteorologist, Ben, Victor, and Victor’s friend Scott use science and the weather to foil the emperor’s evil scheme.

This week I was feeling homesick for the United States in general and Pennsylvania in particular and wanted something light and fun to read, so I turned to the Benjamin Franklinstein series. My thought was that it would be harder to find a cooler premise than a reanimated Benjamin Franklin monster-hero loose in Philly hunting alleged vampires on the Fourth of July. By golly, I wasn’t disappointed, although I did wish for more Philly atmosphere.

One final caveat before moving on the kid-o-meter scales: although I ordered the book thinking it was fantasy, after reading it, I would classify it as science fiction. Nothing that happens is magic; it’s all explained by (admittedly fantastic) science.

Kid-o-meter scales

1. This book made me laugh out loud: 4. Benjamin Franklin just woke up from a really long sleep (like more than 200 years long), so he doesn’t quite have the hang of things like TV remotes and bicycles yet, but he does like cartoons and stickers. One of this book’s major strengths is its humor.

2. This book has good action: 3. Action abounds in this book, from vampire-like attacks on prominent city officials to zombie-like people chasing Victor and Scott, to a big final battle between Ben and early aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright.

3. This book is suspenseful: 3. There’s certainly enough suspense here to keep you reading. You’ll wonder what the huge bats flying around and terrifying Philly really are; what the evil emperor’s goal is; who the emperor is; and how Ben, Victor, and Scott will stop him—just to name a few things.

4. The ending does not disappoint: 4. Right up to the final page I thought I’d give this item on the scale a lower rating. I thought the ending was good, but I just couldn’t understand why the emperor was hatching evil plans for dominating the city. What was his motivation? However, a surprise revelation in the very last sentence explains it, and I’m pretty sure you’ll want to read the next book to find out what happens.

5. I cared a lot about what happened to these characters: 3. Ben is charming, Victor is a pleasant tech-type kid who learns a lesson about underestimating others, and Scott is a really nice kid and loyal friend to Victor—even when Victor’s being difficult. I think you’ll care what happens to them.

Kid’s questions

1. How old is the main character? Middle-school aged. I don’t remember that the writers gave his actual age, but my guess is 11 or 12.

2. Is there a group of friends I can imagine I’m part of? Yes. Ben and Victor are joined by Scott and, near the end, by Scott’s father, who I hope returns in later books.

3. Is this a series or just one book? A series.

4. Is there at least one nice grownup? All the grownups but the evil emperor are nice in this book: Ben, Scott’s father, Victor’s mother, the major, the chief of police, the local reporter. Even the Wright brothers would be nice if they weren’t under the control of the emperor.

5. Does it get mushy? Is there L-O-V-E? Nope. Not even the tiniest whiff of mush.

Adult’s questions

1. What’s the major source of suspense? Ben, Victor, and their friends have several mysteries to solve. First of all, was Ben awakened by accident or on purpose? In other words, is society facing a great emergency, or did a fluke bolt of lightning reanimate Ben? What’s the truth behind the sightings of huge bats in the skies over Philadelphia? Are vampires at large, or is there another explanation? Who are the mysterious brothers in black, owners of a new bicycle shop, and what are they really doing with all those bikes? Who is behind the evil plan connected with the bike shop?

2. Which classic fantasy elements does this book contain? Well . . . I thought this book was fantasy when I bought it, but after reading it, it’s clear to me that it’s science fiction. The reanimation of Franklin, the apparent vampire attacks, the huge bats spied in the sky over Philly, the evil emperor’s plan to take over the city and Ben’s plan to foil the attempt are all scientific, not magical, at their core.

3. What’s the book’s take on tolerance and empathy? Tolerance and empathy aren’t major themes in the book, but Victor does learn not to judge people so quickly: even unserious, silly-seeming people may be good scientists.

4. Is there profanity or violence? The book contains no profanity. Some of the scenes include chases and fights, but there’s no bloodshed, and no one dies. A number of “custodians”—people who watched over famous inventors while they were in suspended animation—have either died or disappeared mysteriously, but those events happened offstage before the action described in the book. I think the book is entirely appropriate for younger middle-grade readers.

5. How about mature themes or dark creatures? I did not notice any mature themes in this book. The giant bats, the vampire-like attacks on some of Philadelphia’s prominent citizens, and the pale and evil-seeming Wright brothers may seem to be dark creatures at first, but they are not. Instead, science lies at the heart of the plot.

This well-structured, nicely written, funny, imaginative, and well-illustrated book does not resonate with deep underlying themes, let alone deep underlying themes of darkness or evil, so my guess is that your kids will not find this book disturbing in the long run—just suspenseful, a little bit scary, and a lot of fun to read. After reading Benjamin Franklinstein Meets the Fright Brothers, your child might become interested in learning more about Benjamin Franklin, American history, famous inventors like the Wright Brothers, famous scientists like Nikola Tesla, and scientific facts about electricity and meteorology. I doubt the book will prompt a deep interest in dark creatures like vampires.

6. What’s the take on religion and/or God in the book? The subject doesn’t come up.

7. What about politics and government? This topic doesn’t come up directly, either. The mayor and police chief are portrayed as good people placed under mind control by the sinister evil emperor.

8. Any gender issues whack you in the eye? The main characters are all male, which didn’t bother me. The mayor and a reporter are strong women characters, although they play minor roles. Victor’s mom appears in a few scenes and makes food. It’s not clear if she works from home, outside the home, or is a homemaker. Perhaps the authors have left this information purposely vague or explained it in the first volume in the series. As an aside, Victor’s mom doesn’t worry that her son hangs around alone in the basement of an older and very odd downstairs neighbor for large parts of the day, which would really have concerned me if I were in her place, but this is fiction, and it’s necessary for the plot for Victor to spend a lot of time together with Ben. Victor’s father doesn’t appear in the story at all. Again, I don’t know why, but maybe his absence is explained in volume one. It’s not necessary to the plot for us to know, either, so maybe the writers left it out for this reason.

Perhaps in an attempt to rectify the absence of a main female character, a middle-school-aged girl appears about halfway through the book in the role of a “custodian,” one of the people who puts inventors in suspended animation and reanimates them when they’re needed. She’s taken over the role after the disappearance of her parents, the real custodians. I look forward to reading more about her and her missing parents in the volume 3 of the series.

9. Any other important themes or issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child? The writers engineer a disagreement between Victor and his friend Scott toward the end of the book; the argument comes about because Victor needs to learn not to judge a book by its cover. To summarize, Ben and the kids need a meteorologist to help them defeat the emperor, and Scott wants to turn to his father, the local TV weatherman known for his outrageous on-air shenanigans. Victor, however, can’t believe there’s a competent atmospheric scientist behind the joking exterior. He soon learns better and grows to respect Scott’s father. I would want to discuss this incident with my kids: Is our first impression of people always correct? Why or why not?

10. Is the book especially challenging to read, and if so, why? No, this is a good book for younger middle-grade readers.

11. How’s the writing? What’s the writer’s major strength? What’s the writer’s Achilles heel? There are two writers here, and the end product is a competently written, well-structured, fun, and humorous sci-fi adventure. I’m no great judge of illustrations, but I found the illustrations in this book very appealing, and think your kids will, too.

If the writers have an Achilles heel, it has to do with believability of characterization, but remember, they’re working with a limited word count. Additionally, as an adult I may notice things that their target audience would gloss over as unimportant or irrelevant to the plot and thus uninteresting. That said, I felt there were several instances in which characters reacted in questionably believable ways. I’ve already mentioned the first one, Victor’s mom’s reaction to her son spending a lot of time alone with the odd (e.g., always wears a scarf to hide the bolts in his neck) older man who lives downstairs.

The second is cursory treatment of the trauma of the middle-school-aged girl custodian’s loss of her parents. Ben, Victor, and Scott meet this girl in a local diner. When she divulges the information that her parents are missing and she’s presumably living with a group of other custodians, the group’s reaction—especially Ben’s—seems too lukewarm. Here’s a middle-school kid who’s lost her parents. Where’s she living? Is she eating right? Who’s taking care of her? Any reasonable adult would be concerned, and many reasonable kids, too.

Finally, Scott’s Dad reacts with great equanimity to learning that Benjamin Franklin is alive and well and has been in suspended animation for 200 years. He’s not torn about helping Ben or curious for proof. He’s not excited to tell the world about the ability of people to go into suspended animation. He just wants to help.

12. The Philly thing. As a Pennsylvanian and the daughter of a man who grew up just south of Philly, I just can’t let this review go without a comment on the setting. To my mind, the least realistic part of the story was not that Ben Franklin put himself in suspended animation and re-awoke, or that a mysterious Emperor is using mind control to turn the Wright Brothers into bad guys to take over the City of Brotherly Love. It’s not that a few character react to events and circumstances in ways I found a little hard to swallow. Nope. It’s that the city has been cleaned up and cooled down.

In the book, it’s summer in Philly, but no one dodges a bullet or dies of heat stroke, both of which are, I feel, equally likely. No hoagies are eaten, no cheese steaks, no soft pretzels with or without mustard, no whoopee pies. There no tasteful statues of Mary and Jesus in people’s yards (OK maybe that’s a south-of-Philly thing). So what gives? Well, maybe the writers toned down the wilder local pastimes and lowered the temperatures for the youthful readership, but what I really suspect is that they are in factuality from someplace else, like maybe New York.

How comes do I suspect this? The big giveaway is that one of the characters asks the other—twice—if there are swamps in Philly. Oh heck yeah there are. Out by the airport. Back in the day my dad and his brothers used to bike in there and trap & skin muskrats there and sell their corpses for food and their pelts for those Davy Crockett hats kids wore when it was Howdy Doody Time. Those were the days, huh? Can you believe stuff like that went on only half a lifetime ago? Now Philadelphians have advanced to the point where they don’t kill animals like that anymore (I think), just each other. I hope that changes soon, too, because it’s no joke.

Man, I’m STILL homesick.

Middle-grade fantasy review: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente

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The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente

Twelve-year-old September hops a ride to Fairyland where she finds a cruel Marquess has forbidden mischief and chained up everyone who can fly. The Marquess manipulates September into acquiring a magical object that only September can use, then throws the girl’s two new Fairyland friends into jail. September sets out to rescue her friends, aware that her biggest challenge may be to resist the Marquess, who will surely try to trick, persuade, or force her into using the object for evil purposes during the rescue.

This week I read a complex story called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynn M. Valente—a book I would describe as a literary or possibly classic middle-grade fantasy. The book was thoroughly modern, yet reminded me of fantasies like Alice in Wonderland and the Chronicles of Narnia in that it is clearly the product of a highly imaginative original thinker. The plot has a slightly rambling, seat-of-the-pants, Charles Dickens quality that I found pleasant but that puzzled me until I learned the book originally appeared online as a serial.

I recommend this book for both kids and for grown-ups who enjoyed Alice in Wonderland; who are into philosophy, thinking, and the world of the mind; who like the original and experimental at least as much as the traditional and tried-and-true; who like to keep things open; and who don’t mind wandering off the beaten path into slightly (but not entirely) uncharted territory.

Kid-o-meter ratings (1 = lowest or least, 5 = highest or most)

1) This book made me laugh out loud: 3. I remember smiling, but I don’t remember laughing out loud.

2) This book has good action: 4. Really interesting, odd, and often unpredictable things happen in this book. You won’t find any epic battle scenes here, though.

3) This book is suspenseful: 4. This book has the kind of suspense that comes from knowing there is a surprise around every corner rather than the kind that comes from wondering if the hero or heroine will succeed in a quest and save the day (although you may wonder about that, too).

4) The ending does not disappoint: 4. Very good ending, but there are several loose threads at the end that I hope will be taken up in the sequel.

5) I cared a lot about what happened to these characters: 3.

Kids’ questions

1) How old is the main character? 12

2) Is there a group of friends I can imagine I’m part of? Yes–the main character, September, gathers friends during her travels in Fairyland.

3) Is this a series or just one book? It’s a series. At least, there’s another book, the The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There.

4) Does it get off to a fast start? I wouldn’t call the opening either super fast or super slow. It’s Alice in Wonderlandish–fast in a classic way.

5) Is there at least one nice grownup?  The main character has a memory of a nice grownup–her mother–but no nice grownup guides the heroine through the story.

6) Does it get mushy? Is there L-O-V-E? No mushy scenes, but there is a mention of children that one couple will have, and there’s talk of Fairytale creatures who have mating seasons.

Adult’s questions

1) What’s the major source of suspense? The major source of suspense is wondering what the writer will come up with next. You might also wonder how she’ll tie up the many, disparate plot threads and elements. Some of them are clearly explained/tied up at the end; others are not, or perhaps I should say that I didn’t understand how these threads tied up in a first reading. Examples include the significance of September’s lost shoe and the shoes given to her by the Marquess, the prediction of the broken heart, the reason it’s bad to lose your shadow, and the significance of starting off heartless but growing less so as you get older.

2) Which classic fantasy elements does the book contain? Fairyland and all its inhabitants. Magic, including magical items and creatures.

3) What’s the book’s take on tolerance and empathy? Not a big theme in the book, but the Marquess is intolerant of beings that break rules and do mischief, and you find out why in the end.

4) Is there profanity or violence? I don’t recall any profanity in the book, but note that the author also writes books for adults and there is some profanity on her website. Many of the distressing things that happen in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making are not scenes that I think of as particularly violent, at least not in comparison to similar events in other middle-grade fantasies. For instance, the main character chooses to let her shadow be cut from her body to pay a river-crossing fee. At one point she begins to turn into a tree (this entails a series of disturbing symptoms) and she meets her own death in the woods (not a violent scene, not even creepy, but a worrying scene nonetheless). The most violent scene is probably the one in which September is thrown down a well by Fairyland inhabitants who work for the Marquess. Her leg breaks when she hits bottom, and for a while, she’s in despair.

5) How about dark creatures? There are witches who can see into the future, and the inhabitants of one of the islands off the shore of Fairyland are quite cruel. The worst unpleasantness and darkest events are the result of the actions of one bitter human, but you don’t learn that until the end of the book.

6) What’s the take on religion and/or God in the book? Not a big theme. There’s magic in the book, and witches who can see into the future, but as far as I recall, God, religion, and spirituality don’t come up.

7) What about politics and government? Fairyland is a monarchy in this book, though apparently not a hereditary monarchy. I don’t think the author chose to make the government a monarchy to explore or comment on political issues, though. Instead, I suspect she chose monarchy because it’s a good metaphor for how each person rules his or her own internal world. In this book, what the Marquess does—the way she rules Fairyland—is an outward extension of what’s going on inside her. The same is true of September: everything she does in Fairyland, from the path she chooses to the shape taken by the magical object she finds during her adventure-ordeals is determined or at least influenced by what’s going on inside her, especially by the state of her heart (how heartless she is or is not). So you shouldn’t take monarchy literally in this book, but metaphorically.

8) Any gender issues whack you in the eye? No. September is good at mechanical stuff, so you could say the book works against gender stereotyping. The book takes place during the World War II era, and September’s mom is a kind of Rosie the Riveter. I really liked this aspect of the book.

9) Any other important issues or themes crop up that you might want to discuss with your child? Yes, the way that loss and exposure to unfairness of life can make us bitter and cruel . . . or not. I think that most of us who make it to adulthood have experienced an unfair life event of some kind; even the very lucky in the crapshoot of life have known someone who’s been randomly knocked upside the head by the apparent randomness of it all—who didn’t seem to reap what they sowed. If I could get my son to read this book, I would talk with him about the exceptionally well-done twist at the end of the novel involving the fate of Good Queen Mallow, who was charge of Fairyland before the bitter and cruel Marquess took over.

10) Is the book especially challenging to read, and if so, why? The book is extremely well-written, but the language is not always simple. For example, some of the Fairyland creatures have difficult names (e.g., Tsukumogami). If your middle-grade reader find this book hard to read, you might try reading it out loud. You can test-read a few pages on Amazon before buying the book to see what you think.

11) How’s the writing? What’s the writer’s major strength? What’s the writer’s Achilles heel? The writing is superb—imaginative, inventive, and technically excellent. The writer doesn’t have an Achilles heel that I can identify, but I can imagine that readers with open-ended, go-with-the-flow personalities might have an easier time loving the structure of this book than writers with “Gimme my checklist and scientific abstract and move that Barcelona chair one inch to the left because it needs to be centered on the carpet” personalities.

Middle-grade fantasy review: Savvy, by Ingrid Law

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Savvy, by Ingrid Law

Thirteen-year-old Mississippi “Mibs” Beaumont, two of her siblings, and two friends stow away on a Bible-delivery bus so Mibs can use a newly discovered secret talent—her savvy—to save her father, who lies critically injured in a hospital ninety miles away. The bus has to make a few stops en route, though, and Mibs, her fellow stowaways, and even the driver, find friendship, love, and understanding along the way.

Let me say it up front: Savvy is a fantastic book. Don’t miss it. It’s set in Bible-belt Nebraska and Kansas and loosely inspired by The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The characters are fantastic; they make the story.

Kid-o-meter ratings (1 = lowest or least, 5 = highest or most)

1. This book made me laugh out loud: 2. I didn’t laugh out loud, but there’s plenty of low-key humor in this wonderfully enjoyable book.

2. This book has good action: 4. The action in Savvy doesn’t consist of epic battles, but the splash-battle at the pool, the disagreements among friends, the fight at a diner, and several storms caused by one of the main characters will be more than enough to keep you reading long into the night.

3. This book is suspenseful: 5. You’ll be so busy wondering what will happen in the next scene that once in a while you might forget to worry about what will happen to the main character, her friends, and her family—especially her dad—in the long run. Then you’ll remember what’s at stake and start reading faster to get to the end. Once you’re finished with the book, you’ll read it all over again because it’s just so good.

4. The ending does not disappoint: 5. I won’t tell you more because I don’t want to give anything away.

5. I cared a lot about these characters: 5. I have never read a fantasy book with characters I cared about more than the ones in this book. If you are fan of Meg and Charles Wallace from A Wrinkle in Time or Claudia and Jamie Kinkaid From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, read this book. I think you’ll like Mibs, her brother Fish, and the other main characters as much as you liked Meg, Charles, Claudia, and Jamie.

Kids’ questions

1. How old is the main character? At the beginning of the book, she’s about to turn 13.

2. Is there a group of friends I can imagine I’m part of? Yes, a great group of friends.

3. Is this a series or just one book? This is a stand-alone book, but there’s another book, Scumble, about one of Mibs’ cousins. The events in that Scumble take place 9 years after the ones in Savvy.

4. Does it get off to a good start? Yes. The book doesn’t have big action on the first page, but it has  what writers call a hook—something that makes you want to keep reading to learn more. The hook in Savvy is first-class. If you’re not super-curious to keep reading after page one, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

5. Is there at least one nice grownup? Yes. There are many nice grownups, from Mibs’ mom, dad, and grandfather to Lester, a down-on-his luck Bible salesman, and Lill, a waitress who falls in love with Lester. There are also a few grownups you might call half-nice and two really unpleasant ones. There’s a sad homeless man, too.

6. Does is get mushy? Is there L-O-V-E? There is love, and when my son was ten I think he would have described it as a little mushy. Mibs gets her first kiss and Lester gives Lill a big kiss (the kids are embarrassed and look the other way). Sixteen-year-old Roberta has a crush on one of Mibs’ brothers and manages to touch his hand near the end of the book. None of these kisses or crushes is romance novel-y, though. In other words, they’re not the kind you’d find in a love story for teenagers or grownups. Parents, I don’t think any of these romantic moments are inappropriate for kids.

Adults’ questions

1. What’s the major source of suspense? The one that pulls the reader through from beginning to end is the fate of Mibs’ father. The day before Mibs’ 13th birthday—just a few pages into the book—Mibs’ father is in a serious car accident (offstage) and is taken to the intensive care unit of a Salina, Kansas, hospital, ninety miles away from the family home in Hebron, Nebraska.

All members of Mibs’ family have a special inherited ability, a savvy, which becomes apparent on their 13th birthday. An important source of suspense early in the book is what Mibs’ special power will be. Even after it appears, the nature of Mibs’ savvy isn’t clear-cut, so there’s more suspense while Mibs and the readers figure out what it actually is.

Your middle-grade reader will also wonder what on earth will happen to Mibs and the other main characters who stow away in a Bible-delivery bus so Mibs can go to Salina to save her father.

There are many other sources of suspense, too; for instance: will the kids, who are at loggerheads with each other in the beginning, learn to get along? Will Mibs and her 14-year-old brother Fish ever tell the other kids about their savvies? How will the other kids react if and when Mibs and Fish tell? Can the kids trick Lester and Lill into thinking they’ve called their parents? Should they try? Will Lill lose her job at the diner? Will Lester ever learn to sell Bibles? Will Lester and Lill get in trouble for helping the kids? Can Mibs help her father? If so, how?

2. Which classic fantasy elements does this book contain? Inherited special powers. Fish can cause storms, Grandpa can create new land, Mibs’ mom can do things perfectly on the first try, Mibs’ deceased grandmother could capture songs in glass jars, and so on.

3. What’s the book’s take on tolerance and empathy? Tolerance is not an overt theme, but the book is full of empathetic characters, especially Mibs, who is really a lovely, likable kid. Her friend and sort-of boyfriend-to-be, Will Junior, is no bad guy either. For instance, Mibs, backed up by Will, helps a homeless man, or at least tries. Will Junior sticks by Mibs through thick and thin, as does her older brother Fish. Samson, Mibs’ little brother, seems to be able to calm people with his touch, and he’s generous in giving this help.

4. Is there profanity or violence? There’s no profanity, but there is some mild violence. At one point, Fish gets mad and punches Will Junior, who remains calm and doesn’t punch back. Fish has a hard time controlling his savvy (causing storms), and wreaks havoc a couple of times in the book. There’s a cruel restaurant manager, the Great and Powerful Ozzie, who fires Lill in front of a group of people, brandishing a pie knife and saying really mean things about her. Near the end of the book, the kids hold down a bad guy—well, a really nasty woman—so Mibs can use her savvy to figure out where the woman has hidden the missing Samson.

5. How about mature themes or dark creatures? There are no dark creatures in this book. The savvies are described as genetic traits rather than supernatural powers, so there is no dark or light magic, either.

The two themes in the book that to my mind are “grown-up,” romantic love and homelessness, were handled in a way I think was fine for middle-grade readers. Lester and Lill fall in love and kiss, but the kiss is described in a way appropriate to a middle-grade book.

The meeting between Mibs, Will Junior, and a homeless, sleeping alcoholic outside a diner is moving. The writer takes pains to explain that it’s a potentially dangerous situation, so you needn’t worry that your kids will approach sleeping alcoholics without caution after reading this book. The writer handles the scene and its sequel well. The kids’ friends are never far away, should the kids need help, but help is very far away for the homeless man.

6. What’s the take on religion and/or God in this book? The characters in the book are Christians. One is the rebellious daughter of a minister and the other is grandson of that same minister. The kids stow away on the bus of a Bible salesman after he stops at the parish hall, where the haranguing minister and his officious wife are throwing a birthday party for the reluctant Mibs.

As far as I remember, God and religion are never explicit topics of discussion, but God comes up multiple times in Mibs’ internal thoughts. She says a quick silent thank-you to God in one scene, for instance, and in another, she hopes He’ll understand her choices better than the minister’s wife did.

The book doesn’t proselytize, so I don’t think it will be offensive to people who aren’t Christians. What’s more, I don’t think most readers will feel that the book portrays the Christian characters as unrealistically saintly. Although many of the characters are extremely kind-hearted and decent, they’re not angles. For example, the minister’s wife seems to think she’s intervening to help Mibs’ family in time of need, but she’s actually interfering in their lives in a high-handed and insensitive way. When Lill is fired, Lester commits petty larceny, snatching a banana cream pie from her boss and absconding with it. The children elaborately scam Lill into believing they phoned their parents from a motel and that it’s OK for Lester and Lill to give them a ride to the hospital in Kansas.

7. What about politics and government? No political issues in the book as far as I can tell.

8. Any gender issues whack you in the eye? No. On the positive side, I noticed that the female characters were strong and capable. On second thought, though, it’s possible that some readers will take umbrage at the perfection of Mibs’ mom. She’s a homemaker who is perfectly nurturing, perfectly patient, and perfectly tolerant, possibly because of her savvy, which is to be really good at things. She also seems to be perfectly balanced and content with her life until her husband is injured and her kids run away on the Bible bus, whereupon she becomes lovingly worried. But perhaps I only think that this character might get under people’s skin because I’m envious. I’d like to be perfectly good, perfectly balanced, and perfectly content, and perfectly loving, but I am most certainly am none of those things.

9. Any other important themes or issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child?
The hard road to friendship. You might want to talk about the trials and tribulations the kids face on their road to friendship with each other.

The homeless alcoholic. It would probably be good to talk about the homeless man, who is an alcoholic and has given up on life.

The family’s economic situation at the end of the book. I have to bring this up, even though it may not be something you want to talk about with your kids. It bothered me that at the end of the book, Mibs’ family had no apparent source of income and yet seemed to be doing just fine, economically. This fazed me, but for all I know, some or even most kids might accept it without a second thought. I guess you could explain it away by saying this is a fantasy. Or maybe grandpa, whose savvy is making land, made some extra acres and the family sold them off. Or maybe in her first draft, the writer mentioned how the family was getting by, but her editor told her to take it out because it wasn’t necessary to explain that kind of thing in a fantasy.

10. Is the book especially challenging to read? No, this is a well-written book by a writer with a distinctive and confident voice. I read the first two paragraphs critically, then relaxed and let the driving to the author because I trusted that she knew where she was going and how to get there.

11. How’s the writing? What’s the writer’s major strength? What’s the writer’s Achilles heel? The writing is excellent. This writer has a distinctive voice; she even makes up her own words. She’s confident and dexterous from the very first sentence, good at description and dialogue, and knows when to show and when to tell. What’s more, she deftly weaves a story of personal growth and changing from a child to a teen into a fantasy-adventure, and that must be anything but easy to do. Writing this book must have been hard work, but the writer makes it seem effortless.

If she has an Achilles’ heel, it’s not the writing, but rather a few choices that rendered it momentarily hard for me, as an adult, to suspend my disbelief. For example, no one in the book has a cell phone (perhaps the book is set in the past?), the family thrives at end of book without apparent income, Lill doesn’t seem angry after she learns the kids have played a very nasty trick on her, and Lester and Lill don’t get into hot water for driving runaway kids across Nebraska and Kansas.

12. Might some people be upset by the spelling or grammar? No, they were just fine.

Middle-grade fantasy review: A Tale Dark and Grimm, by Adam Gidwitz

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A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

Hansel and Gretel run away from the parents who have betrayed them, only to suffer and struggle through a series of dark and violent adventures that will later become Grimm’s fairy tales. As they live through the stories, the children grow up, coming to terms with the unfairness of the world and with the accidental and purposeful cruelty in themselves and in others.

Theme: “. . . in life, it is in the darkest zones one finds the brightest beauty and the most luminous wisdom.”

Kid-o-meter ratings (1 = lowest or least, 5 = highest or most)

1. This book made me laugh out loud: 1. No belly laughs here; this is serious stuff. It’s a fairytale for real. There are murdering parents, two serial killers (including a cannibal), many deaths, a soul sold to the Devil, and a trip to Hell. The writer warns you in the beginning about the violence, cruelty, blood, and gore. Throughout the book, he stops the story every now and then to tell you what’s coming, which should help you make it through if you’re a sensitive person. He tells you when you get to the sad part, for example, and explains that things will get better, although “not quite yet.”

The writer does have a sense of humor and a sense of irony, and some parts of some scenes may make you smile, so I have given it a 1 rather than a zero. Don’t expect to chuckle your way through this book, though.

2. This book has good action: 5. The story is a series of fairy tales, each one a chapter, stacked one after the other to make a novel. There’s violent action (and a message) in every chapter, and a larger story and message span the length of the book. Each individual tale matches or exceeds the original Grimm’s tale in darkness and violence, and if you’ve read the originals, you’ll know this is saying something. All the stories involve one or both of the siblings, and the unsettling effect of the book intensifies as story piles on story and the children’s circumstances go from bad to worse until one of them is literally in Hell.

3. This book is suspenseful: 5. It’s suspenseful even if you know the original fairytales, because the author retells a number of Grimm’s original fairy tales as the adventures of Hansel and Gretel, who have run away from home after their father tries to kill them. In fact, their father actually does kill them, but they come back to life. You’ll have to read the book to see how.

4. The ending does not disappoint: 5. Excellent, clever ending, that wraps the whole plot up neatly. This writer is one smart cookie. I am truly surprised that this book didn’t win a serious literary award. Or maybe it did. I will have to check the writer’s website after I finish writing this review. Anyway, if it didn’t, it should have.

5. I cared a lot about what happened to these characters: 4. It’s important for readers NOT to care about these characters one hundred percent flat out, because if we did, we might not make it through the book. Fortunately, the writer uses an old-fashioned fairy tale narrator’s voice to put some distance between us and Hansel and Gretel.  That way there’s a little insulation between us and the raw horror and heartbreak while reading, like the protection firefighters get when they wear those special suits in burning buildings.

Kid questions

1. How old is the main character? The writer never says how old these two characters are, but they’re not teenagers yet. My guess is somewhere between eight and twelve.

2. Is there a group of friends I can imagine I’m part of? No, but there is a brother-and-sister team.

3. Is this a series or just one book? Something in between a series and an individual book. I just checked Amazon.com and see that the author has written another book. It’s about Jack and Jill and I expect it’s just as bloody as this one.

4. Does it get off to a fast start? Fast enough. There’s a nice hook in the beginning to reel you in so you are patient through the next few pages of background information you have to read before the first heads are chopped off.

5. Is there at least one nice grownup? Gretel meets a nice widow at one point, who takes Gretel in and tries to protect her. However, even the nice widow can’t stop bad stuff from happening to Gretel, because Gretel disobeys the widow, goes straight into the dark wood, and lands smack dab in the trap of a serial killer. In this book, when the grownups don’t actually cause the kids trouble, the kids go out and find the trouble for themselves.

6. Does it get mushy? Is there L-O-V-E? There is no mush, but at one point, Gretel develops a crush. She doesn’t pick a nice guy, and when she goes to visit him, she barely escapes with her life.

Adult’s questions

1. What’s the major source of suspense? You’ll wonder how Hansel will come back to life after being killed a second time, whether and how Gretel will escape the serial killer who rips girl’s souls from their bodies and eats the corpses for supper, and how Hansel will escape from Hell. You’ll wonder a lot of other things, too, but most of all, you’ll wonder how the writer will bring it all to a satisfying conclusion. (I think he succeeds, and it’s a surprisingly happy ending, too.)

2. Which classic fantasy elements does the book contain? All the traditional fairytale elements, including the extreme bloody violence.

3. What’s the book’s take on tolerance and empathy? The book doesn’t deal with tolerance and empathy, exactly. It’s about Hansel and Gretel’s journey toward coming to terms with the gigantic imperfections of their parents, other grownups . . . and themselves. Don’t be misled into thinking the book is about a journey towards forgiveness, though. Instead, it’s about learning to living with what they and others have done and how they move on from there.

In a nutshell, you could say it’s about growing up the hard way, and I guess there really is no other way to grow up. No matter how gentle your upbringing or nice the circumstances, you’re always going to get smacked upside the head by life somehow. There’s just no stopping it.

4. Is there profanity or violence? I don’t remember any profanity, but there’s violence from the foundation to the attic in this story—everything from cannibalistic serial killers to sinners tortured by Demons in Hell, where the Devil has an easy chair made of human skin.

My suggestion is to read this book yourself before reading it to your kids. If my son were still a middle-grade reader, I would have read the book out loud to him or at least tested the beginning on him to see how he took it. That way, we could stop if he wanted and discuss stuff that bothered him or that he didn’t understand. One of the reasons I’d feel OK about reading this book to my son, though, is that he would have a context for the books because we read Andrew Lang’s fairy books together—well, I read them and he listened—from the time my son was about eight. Perhaps I should note that although he is now a teenager, my son was definitely affected by the stories in Andrew Lang’s books. He still shakes his head over the one in which everyone just died in the end.

Every child and every parent is different, though. The omniscient narrator point of view gives the readers some much-needed emotional distance from the story, but there are still some scenes in which the narrator drops into close third person, and these hit you in Technicolor and Dolby Surround. They might be tough for an impressionable person, especially a very young one. An example is the scene in which Gretel, in hiding, watches a handsome young man on whom she has a crush drag a girl down the stairs into his basement by her hair. As the girl struggles, he shoves his hand down her throat, rips out her soul and cages it, chops the girl’s corpse into pieces (the blade falls graphically), and order his mother (whom he has shackled to the stove) to cook the dead girl for dinner. You get the idea.

5. How about mature themes? The whole book has a mature theme: growing up and coming to terms with the unfairness of the world and the accidental and purposeful cruelties of strangers and those close to you, especially your parents. There is also a point about spotting evil like “where’s Waldo”: seeing things for what they really are, of seeing and dealing with the evil that sometimes lives beside us, and perhaps even inside those two whom we are closest.

Has the author handled these mature themes in a way appropriate to middle-grade readers? I’m not sure. If I got this book for my middle grader, I’d want to be along for the journey. I’d read it out loud to him or her. But that’s just me.

6. Dark creatures? They abound. Readers will meet demons and the Devil, sinners great and small, murderous parents, a cannibalistic warlock, and a slimy evil mini-dragon that lives inside a character, possessing him and turning him into a monster that murderers swathes of people.

7. What’s the take on religion and/or God in the book? God doesn’t manifest in the book, but his opposite number is present in force. Hell is a real place where sinners (and some relative innocents, like Hansel) are punished in vats of boiling something-or-other by demons.  Hansel must outwit the Devil to escape from Hell.

8. What about politics and government? Hansel and Gretel live in a monarchy, and their father is the king of one of the kingdoms. I don’t think the monarchy in this book is one you could discuss as a form of national government. On the other hand, you could talk about it as a symbol for the power structure in a family. And you could discuss how what happens in the Kingdom of Grimm’s monarchy mirrors what happens in families as children grow up and balances of power shift.

9. Any gender issues whack you in the eye? Well sort of. Hansel and Gretel fall victim to gender-specific kinds of foolish behavior they must overcome to continue on their journey through the world. Hansel becomes a terrible, monstrous, environmentally destructive hunter, and Gretel falls in love with the wrong man, to put it mildly. I liked these aspects of book, but some readers might think the writer is gender-stereotyping.

10. Any other important themes or issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child? I think you will want to discuss every single individual chapter in this book with your child, or even with your teenager. In other words, there are too many important themes in this book for me to take them up in this review:

  • abuse of the environment
  • children who rebel against authority figures
  • the flawed nature of every authority figure
  • the question of whether people can reform
  • the question of whether and how people who commit horrible offenses against other people are or are not punished for what they do
  • and more–at least one theme per chapter.

11. Is the book especially challenging to read, and if so, why? The language in the book isn’t especially challenging, but the content of the book is quite challenging.

12. How’s the writing? Solid. I think this writer will win awards, if he hasn’t already.

13. Might some people be upset by the spelling or grammar? No, but perhaps by the violence. It’s truthy violence, though: stuff that really happens but is taken to a fairy tale level to make it more easily readable, digestible, and discussable for those of us who prefer to handle the world’s burning hot awfulness with the allegorical oven mitts of Once Upon a Time.

Review: The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley

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The Sisters Grimm (The Fairy-Tale Detectives series) by Michael Buckley

Two parentless sisters move in with their grandmother and discover their family has a secret job: policing a rural New York town that’s really a ghetto-prison for fairy-tale creatures. When a giant climbs down a verboten beanstalk and kidnaps their grandmother, the sisters must figure out who’s behind the plot so they can save their grandmother . . . and the town.

Theme: Friends come in the most unexpected guises. So do foes. Be careful who you trust, but do trust.

Kid-o-meter ratings (1 = lowest or least, 5 = highest or most)

1. This book made me laugh out loud: 4. The book starts out seriously, but gets funnier as you read. I would have read this book for one character alone—a character called Puck who appears around the middle of the book. Once he horns in on the two-girl team, the slapstick really gets rolling and rounds out the other funny elements (like the names of some of the characters).

The only funnier middle-grade fantasies I’ve read are the ones by Terry Pratchett, and he came to middle-grade writing with a whole bunch of experience writing other books. I look forward to reading Michael Buckley’s next books, because I figure that with more experience, he’ll get even funnier.

2. This book has good action: 3. There is enough action, but the writer could have done a better job of showing action rather than telling you about it, especially early in the book. For example, a telling sentence such as “Tony leaped up and rushed at Mr. Canis again, only to feel the same painful results” would have been more effective as something like “Tony leaped up and rushed at Mr. Canis again, swinging his iron bar. Mr. Canis dodged left and the bar flew past, missing him. Tony crashed to pavement, dropping the bar and scraping his hands and knees on the hard concrete.”

3. This book is suspenseful: 3. If you have read a lot of fairy tales and are observant, you might figure out some of the mysteries before the girls do, although I don’t think you’ll guess what’s in the forbidden locked room on the second floor of Granny’s house.

There’s a neat detective-story twist toward the end of the book, and most readers will probably find it surprising . . . but surprising isn’t quite the same as suspenseful.

The town is menaced by a master criminal whose identity is not revealed, and it’s clear the girls are destined to tangle with this character later books. I am pretty darn sure I know the identity of this mysterious individual, but I’m a grownup and a writer, and I’ve have read a ton of fairy tales. See if you can guess, too.

4. The ending does not disappoint: 5. I enjoyed this ending. By the end of the book, the girls solve the mystery. They change as a result of their experiences during the story, their relationship with each other changes, and one of the major problems in their lives is resolved. Some loose ends are left hanging on purpose so the girls have plenty of stuff left to do in the next books. A great scene near the end makes it clear that one of my favorite characters will play a bigger role in future books in the series.

5. I cared a lot about what happened to these characters: 5. Yes. Really liked the Sisters Grimm. A lot.

Kids’ questions

1. How old is the main character? Sabrina Grimm is almost 12. Her sister, Daphne, is 7.

2. Is there a group of friends I can imagine I’m part of? Yes, the two sisters are a really good team and their Grandma’s dog Elvis, a Great Dane, is like a third member of the group. When Puck shows up, the trio becomes a foursome and the group gets even better.

3. Is this a series or just one book? I’m happy to say it’s a series.

4. Does it get off to a fast start? The author has used an old trick to get you hooked. He put an action scene from late in the book at the very beginning. I think the trick works well. The first chapter, which starts right after that action scene, isn’t action-packed, but it’s really interesting and will keep you reading. This is one of those books where the characters will grab you as much as the action.  For example, you will probably wish you had a little sister like Daphne. (I did.)

5. Is there at least one nice grownup? Yup. Several. There are several mean ones, too.

6. Does is get mushy? Is there L-O-V-E? Nope.

Adults’ questions

1. What’s the major source of suspense? This is a fairy-tale fantasy-mystery: a new genre that works really well in the hands of this writer. There are several sources of suspense in the book: Were the girls really abandoned by their parents? If not, what happened to Mom and Dad? Is the woman they meet at the beginning of the book really their grandmother? Who is the mysterious Mr. Canus? Who let the giant loose in Ferryport Landing and why? Will the girls save their grandmother from the giant?

Once your kids catch on to the fact that almost everyone the sisters meet in Ferryport Landing is a fairytale character in disguise who’s living under an assumed name, they’ll also have the fun of guessing who’s who.

As an adult, you’ll wonder why kindly Grandma Grimm left the kids to fend for themselves a year before coming forward to claim them. It’s hard to believe she’d do this, and the reason she waited is not explained in the book.

2. Which classic fairytale elements does this book contain? Missing parents, for one. Missing or dead parents—or perhaps it’s more accurate to say orphaned or abandoned children—are such a pervasive component of fantasies that I’ve decided my next non-review blog post will include a table showing the fate of parents in all the books I’ve reviewed so far.

Other people have written plenty of pages about why writers get parents out of the way in fantasies, so I don’t think I’ll go into that topic in depth, but I’ll go out on the Web and find some of the best analyses so I can give you those links.

The Sisters Grimm also contains tons of fairytale and fantasy creatures, from the Tin Woodsman to the magic mirror to the odious Prince Charming and all the wives who ever divorced him (Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and I forget who else). There are a zillion magical items—from beanstalk beans to silver slippers—and there’s a dark forest, classically located right smack behind Grandma’s house. There are monsters, or at least there’s one kind of monsters: giants.

3. What’s the book’s take on tolerance and empathy? The concepts of tolerance and intolerance are never discussed outright, but they underlie the book. If the Grimms ever figure out how to safely break the spell keeping the fairytale creatures imprisoned in the town, the world will have to tolerate the creatures, and the creatures will have to live in the midst of a majority population that’s very different from them in many ways. Perhaps the issues of tolerance and intolerance will come to the fore more in future books in this series.

4. Is there profanity or violence? There’s no profanity. There is violence. For example, you see a giant stomp on a house when three thugs are inside. It’s not clear, however, if the three thugs are magical creatures or not, and it’s also not clear whether or not magical creatures can be killed. On the one hand, all three little pigs are running around, alive and well. On the other, a major magical item gets pulverized in the course of the book. So can magical creatures be destroyed in the world of this series? Your guess is as good as mine at this point.

The only violence I thought an eight or nine-year-old reader might find disturbing was when the bad guy injures Elvis the Great Dane near the end of the book. You don’t witness the attack, though, and the writer makes sure the reader knows that the dog will be OK.

I would have let my son read this book from whenever he was capable of reading it, which in his case would have been about age nine. I would have read it out loud to him earlier than that.

5. How about mature themes or dark creatures?
a. Mean foster parents and a cruel case worker. At the beginning of the book, the children, whose parents have disappeared, have been shuttled from one awful foster family to another for about a year, and their case worker is real thus-and-so. Sabrina, the older sister, has spent the entire time protecting her younger sister, but also bossing Daphne around and not listening to her.

Sabrina has understandable problems with trust, and learns to trust her grandmother and respect her sister’s wishes and strengths over the course of the book. This is a mature theme, but it’s handled in a way I think is fine for middle-grade readers.

On the other hand, if you are a foster parent, someone who knows a foster family—or even if you are one of the thousands of decent, caring, respectful caseworkers out there—you might take offense at the stereotypical depictions of foster parents and caseworkers.

You might want to talk with your kids about foster families and case workers: are all of them as mean as the ones in the book?

b. Giants and witches. The giants in the book are unintelligent monsters. There are witches working in law enforcement. They are employed by Prince Charming, the mayor of the town.

6. What’s the take on religion and/or God in the book? There is no mention of religion or God in the book, and no such themes flowing around under the surface, either, as far as I could tell.

7. How about politics? Ferryport Landing, NY is a lovely little microcosm of early 21st century American politics, which makes this book awfully fun reading for a grownup. None of the characters represents an actual politician, but you could argue that they represent streams of political thought and/or caricatures of types of politicians/employers.

The narcissistic traditionalist Prince Charming is mayor of the town, and it’s clear he wants to make it into his own kingdom, but he’s an elected leader. He intimidates some fairytale creatures into doing his bidding—especially those he employs—but he doesn’t intimidate all of them, a situation that will probably be familiar to many adult readers from their own working lives. Charming has some law-and-order and taxation headaches, and his authority is questioned by a number of citizens, including the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland and the mysterious terrorist insurgency leader The Red Hand (note the color—I doubt it’s an accident). Others, such as Puck the trickster king, have apparently been sniffing libertarian pixie dust. They ignore the Prince and do their own thing.

You might want to talk with your children about the political agendas in Ferryport Landing. Which of the creatures do you/they sympathize with? What do you think of their various political plans, and why do you feel this way?

8. Any gender issues whack you in the eye? This book is full of strong and highly awesome female characters. Puck, a boy who has been 11 years old for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years, comes onstage about halfway through the book. He makes a number of idiotic sexist remarks to Sabrina when they first meet and she gives him the what-for. It quickly becomes clear that Puck has a sensitive ego, and Daphne, who has a great deal of emotional intelligence, tries to convince Sabrina to let Puck think he’s in charge. It’s hard to tell if the writer is trying to portray Puck as having a sensitive male ego or if Puck’s simply jealous of the girls for other reasons and is sensitive because of that. I lean toward the latter, but it might be both. These scenes would make a great topic for discussion with your kids.

9. Any other important themes or issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child? Yes, the ghettoization of minority populations, especially as perpetrated by Germans. The Sisters Grimm is in large part about the fairytale creatures that one of the (German) Grimm brothers persuaded to move to a small, rural town in New York during the 1700s. The idea was that the town would serve as a sanctuary from growing conflicts between fairytale creatures and the non-enchanted majority population in places such as . . .  wait for it . . . Germany (but also elsewhere). However, the town soon became a fairytale-ghetto/prison with the Grimm family as guards. A spell was cast, and no fairytale creature can leave the town until the last Grimm dies.

In a neat twist, very, very few of the fairytale creatures are dangerous, and some who were dangerous in their original stories have changed their ways. Even the giants pose no threat as long as the cops keep the magic beans out of circulation. In other words, there’s apparently no reason for the fairy tale creatures to be imprisoned . . . other than that some of them are powerful, and all of them are different from the majority population.

As you may have guessed, an eerie, Warsaw-Ghetto vibe lurks under the often-humorous surface of this book. The author recognizes this, although he never uses the word “ghetto” and never refers to the Second World War or 20th century European history. He does, however, let his two main characters feel the wrongness of the situation in the town and the awkwardness (to put it mildly) of their family’s role multiple times throughout the book.

This is not a heavy book in any obvious way, and your child will almost certainly breeze right by this theme without plumbing its depths. On the other hand, I think it’s a good idea to notice, and you might want to talk about it. Why are the fairyland creatures imprisoned in the town? Are they really dangerous? Was it OK to imprison the creatures? Is it OK to keep them in prison now that all the magic beans, fairy godmother wands and other magical items are locked way in protective custody?

10. Is the book especially challenging to read, and if so, why? No, I think an eight or nine-year-old should be able to read this book.

11. How’s the writing? Solid. The writer has a flair for comedy but needs to work on showing rather than telling in action sequences. He did a better job of “showing” in the final action sequences, which left me wondering if he used “telling” on purpose in the beginning to save words, or perhaps as a riff on traditional fairy-tale style.

12. Might some people be upset by the spelling or grammar? No, no odd spelling or bad grammar here.

Review: My Very UnFairy Tale Life by Anna Staniszewiski

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My Very UnFairy Tale Life by Anna Staniszewiski

Jenny, a burned-out twelve-year-old adventurer, must defeat the evil clown that put a spell of silence on an entire fairyland kingdom—and at the same time find a way to balance her secret life of adventure with the normal life of school and friends she desperately wants. 

Theme of the book: Platitudes contain real, helpful wisdom and laughter is the best medicine.

Kid-o-meter ratings (1 = lowest or least, 5 = highest or most)

1. This book made me laugh out loud: 1, but my sense of humor might be different from yours (I’m a grownup). I give it a 1 for the unicorns in the opening chapter and for the importance of laughter at the end of the book.

As an aside, I try not to read other reviews until after I’ve completed my own. However, I ordered this book from Amazon.com and saw that one review there describes this book as a comic romp that emphsaizes . . . comedy. Different reviewers, different senses of humor.

2. This book has good action: 3. There’s enough action here to keep you reading. It’s interwoven with drama about friendships, especially in the second half of the book.

3. This book is suspenseful: 2. Most of the book is mildly suspenseful. At first the suspense level and writing reminded me of the magic tree house books, but for older readers. Then the main bad guy appeared. He’s seriously creepy, and his presence in an otherwise mildly suspenseful book made me wonder what kind of readers will like this book. If you like creepy, scary stories, you might like the bad guy but not the rest of the book. If you like mild suspense and stories about friendships, you will probably like the rest of the book, but the bad guy may give you nightmares.

4. The ending does not disappoint: 5. The ending is good. I can almost guarantee that you’ll like the final battle and the way things wrap up.

5. I cared a lot about what happened to these characters: 2. In places, I cared, but in other places—especially the beginning—I did not. It took me a long time to understand why other characters kept telling the main character she was an exceptionally good adventurer because she (apparently) failed over and over again in her missions and did not show special skills or ingenuity until almost three-quarters of the way through the book. Her helper Anthony seemed like a real jerk at the beginning, and the aunt she lives with seemed nearly as bad. Later I got to like the characters better, but I had to be patient.

Kid questions

1. How old is the main character: 12

2. Is there a group of friends I can imagine I’m part of: No. The main character fights to get her two former best friends back throughout the book. She lost them when she became an adventurer several years before.

3. Is this a series or just one book? A series.

4. Does it get off to a fast start: Yes. The action starts immediately.

5. Is there at least one nice grownup: Yes, there is one—an older man called Dr. Bradley who is a neighbor of the main character.

6. Does it get mushy? (Is there L-O-V-E?): No.

Adult’s questions

1. What’s the major source of suspense? There are several sources of suspense in the book. Your child will wonder what happened to Jenny’s parents,  if and how Jenny will defeat the evil clown that rules the Kingdom of Speak, whether Jenny will get her two best friends back, and whether she will give up adventuring for a normal life.

2. Which classic fantasy elements does this book contain? Fairytale creatures, travel between worlds, and magic. Interestingly, it contains a classic horror element, a scary clown, who is the main bad guy.

3. What’s the book’s take on tolerance and empathy?  Not a major theme in the book.

4. Is there profanity or violence? There’s no profanity and there’s only mild violence during battle scenes. A unicorn pokes Jenny in the arm with its horn, drawing blood; an evil clown temporarily erases Jenny’s mouth; and magic knocks out a major character near the end of the book.

5. How about mature themes? You could argue that Jenny’s treatment at the hands of “The Committee” (a group that assigns adventures to adventurers) and the gnome Anthony verges on a mature theme. They trick her into signing an adventurer contract when she’s very young and try to hold her to it as if it were legally binding. The committee is generally unpleasant, refuses to restore Jenny’s erased mouth, and fails to help her when she’s in need. This theme is handled in a way that I consider appropriate for middle-grade readers, and I think it would make a good topic for discussion with your kids.

6. Dark creatures? The only dark creature is the evil clown. Dark clowns are not uncommon in horror or even adult fantasy (I’m counting Batman as fantasy here). On the up side, I thought the use of a clown as a bad guy in a children’s fantasy was pretty original. On the down side, I also thought the clown’s creepiness level was high, much higher than I would have expected from the rest of the book. It wasn’t quite as if Health Ledger’s Joker had popped up in The Princess Bride, but the clown did feel like an incongruously horror-like element in an otherwise mild fantasy book. The clown’s origin is never explained, although the origin of his badness is:  laughter hurts him, so has erased everyone’s mouths to prevent it.

7. What’s the take on religion and/or God in the book? None. Not mentioned.

8. What about politics and government? Monarchies loom large in this book, and although the book doesn’t question monarchy as a form of government, the monarchies only exist on worlds other than our own. At the end of the book, the citizens of the fairy-tale monarchy seem happy to have their regular ruling family back instead of the evil clown who took away their mouths.

9. Any gender issues whack you in the eye? No.

10. Any other important themes crop up that you might want to discuss with your child?
a. Truthfulness. Jenny lies about her family to her two former best friends. They are angry with her when they discover the truth.  After Jenny apologies and promises not to lie to them again, the friends forgive her. Right on the heels of that apology, though, Jenny explains away the sudden appearance of fairytale creatures in her school by telling everyone they’re part of a movie that’s being shot at the school. In other words, she tells another lie. I think this series of events provides a good topic of discussion for you and your kids: Was Jenny’s behavior OK? If not, what should she have done?

b. The responsibility of groups vs. the responsibility of children. Jenny is twelve. Her parents have disappeared and she lives with her aunt. Her aunt is not a bad person but shows little interest in Jenny and only seems interested in and good at communicating with animals. The onus of responsibility for opening up communication is placed on Jenny, who is advised by another character that she should meet her aunt halfway by trying to talk about something that interests the aunt.

I didn’t like the message sent by placing the responsibility for communication so one-sidedly on Jenny. On the other hand, I could see that it might inspire kids to try to communicate with their parents or other important adults in their lives. How do you and your children feel about this? How much responsibility should a child have to improve communication with adults in his or her life? How much responsibility lies with the adults?

11. Is this book especially challenging to read, and if so, why? No, this is a well-written middle grade book. The fluidity of the prose is a major strength of the book. Even younger middle-grade readers should be able to enjoy the writing without problems.

12. How is the writing? The writer has excellent mastery of the craft elements of writing—the words disappear into the background and the story takes center stage. You will not find irritating extraneous adverbs or poorly written dialogue tags here. The writer is particularly good at keeping the prose at a consistent reading level, and one that’s appropriate even for younger middle-grade readers. This might be why at the book reminded me of the magic tree house series until the creepy clown appeared.

On the other hand, to me this writer didn’t yet feel like a confident and mature master of story structure. As an adult reader, I guessed that I was in the presence of a story that had achieved its present level of structural quality via many revisions. However, I have the feeling that as this writer gains practice her mastery will increase and her stories will seem to flow without effort.

A final word about the clown: I have a feeling—and mind you, it’s just a gut hunch—that if she let her natural impulses flow without check, this writer might inhabit a space closer to Neil Gaiman than to the milder, gentler landscape where her tent is pitched at the moment. I found the clown the most interesting and gripping thing in the book. Compared with the other aspects of the novel, it felt strong, genuine, and real—so much so that to me it shone out from the rest of the book like a flash of color in a black and white photo.

13. Might some people be upset by the grammar? Absolutely not. The grammar is fine. The high quality of the prose is one of the major strengths of this book.

Review: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

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The Wee Free Men (A Story of Discworld), by Terry Pratchett

One week after nine-year-old Tiffany decides to become a witch, a parallel world in which dreams are true latches onto Tiffany’s world, and the queen of the parallel world kidnaps Tiffany’s little brother. Aided by a clan of six-inch-high warriors, Tiffany uses her wits (the real source of a witch’s power) and a little bit of magic to save her brother and her world from the evil queen.

Theme of the book:  “Them as can do has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.”

Kid-o-meter ratings (1 = lowest or least, 5 = highest or most)

1. This book made me laugh out loud: 5. This is one of the funniest fantasy books I have ever read. You’ll laugh out loud, and you may find yourself smiling at random times of the day whenever you happen to think of the Wee Free Men.

2. This book has good action: 3. Much of the action in this book is comedy-type action, but not all of it. The main character is armed with brains and a frying pan, and she’s not afraid to use either. Her six-inch helpers, the fearsome Wee Free Men of the book’s title, are armed with swords and hard skulls. They fight everything that stands in their way and many things that don’t.

3. This book is suspenseful: 4. This adventure book keeps you guessing about the answers to a number of questions, large and small. They include: Will Tiffany become a witch? Was her grandmother a witch or just a wise woman? What happened to the Baron’s son? Can Tiffany save her brother from the evil queen? Can she save her world from the queen’s world?  What will the Wee Free Men say and do next?

5. The ending does not disappoint: 4. The ending is excellent but lengthy. The whole last third of the book is long, with Tiffany and the Wee Free Men battling their way through an evil forest, at least three dreams, a painting, and a final confrontation in the real world.

6. I cared a lot about what happened to these characters: 4. From Tiffany and the Wee Free Men to Tiffany’s sticky little brother Wentworth, I cared about everyone in the book—even some of the monsters.

Kid’s questions

1. How old is the main character? Nine.

2. Is there a group of friends I can imagine I’m part of? There’s a group of friends, but only one of them is a kid. It’s easy to imagine you’re along for the adventure with Tiffany and the Wee Free Men. It’s not quite the same, though, as imagining you’re part of a group of kids like the ones created by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, The Kane Chronicles), John Flanagan (The Ranger’s Apprentice, Brotherband), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter), or C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia). It’s more like being in Frank L. Baum’s world (Oz), on an adventure with Dorothy and her friends.

3. Is this a series or just one book? This book is part of a series. The other books in the series are A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, and I Shall Wear Midnight.

4. Does it get off to a fast start? I am not a patient reader—I like things to start with a bang—and I would say it gets off to a medium start. You need to be patient through the first chapter, which features a witch spying on Tiffany, and the first part of the second chapter, in which Tiffany lies on her stomach beside a stream, thinking. Then the Wee Free Men appear and things get going.

5. Is there at least one nice grownup? Yes, almost all the grownups are nice, although some of them are not all that smart.

6. Does it get mushy? (Is there L-O-V-E?). Nope, no mush. (But parents please see the section on mature themes below—there’s a brief section in here about making babies, seen from the perspective of a matter-of-fact farm kid.)

 Adult’s questions

1. What’s the major source of suspense? This is a comedy-adventure, and much of the suspense derives from wondering what the Wee Free Men, the Keystone Kops of Fairyland, are going to do or say next. OK, so they’re not exactly Keystone Kops, but they are very, very funny.

Your kids will also wonder whether Tiffany will achieve her goal of becoming a witch, whether her grandmother was a witch or just a wise woman, what happened to the Baron’s son, whether Tiffany will save her brother from the evil queen, and whether she’ll save her world from the queen’s world.

There’s also the larger question of whether and how Tiffany will come to terms with the death of her beloved grandmother, an event that occurred before the beginning of the book. This question runs subtly throughout the entire novel and is beautifully resolved in the end.

2. Which classic fantasy elements does the book contain? Parallel worlds, fairies of all kinds, witches with and without pointy hats, witches’ familiars (a talking toad), warlocks (mentioned in passing), monsters, an evil queen, and magic.

3. What’s the book’s take on tolerance and empathy? These were not major themes in the book. The book has other important themes, though. (Please the section below on “Any other important themes or issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child?”).

4. Is there profanity? There’s lots of profanity, all of it made up. If “Crivens!” counts as swearing, the Wee Free Men swear a blue streak (“Crivens, I’m as quiet as a wee moose!”).

5. Is there violence?  A lot. The violence involving the Wee Free Men is cartoonish; I didn’t think it was disturbing. There are, however, at least two events in the book I did find disturbing. First, Tiffany relates the story of how the locals killed an old woman they suspected of being a witch. The villagers also killed the old woman’s cat. The old woman was not a witch at all, and the cat was just a cat. This is what I think of as realistic violence—it could happen, and I’m sure it has—and I find it much more disturbing than the antics of the Wee Free Men.

The second scene I found heavy was the one in which several Wee Free Men are seen to be dead after a battle, although none we know by name. The blow is softened somewhat when the reader learns the Wee Free Men consider death to be a passport back into the world from which they came, and, although that world was not as nice as Discworld (the “real” world of the story), they are not bothered by the thought of going back.

Both these scenes of violence come in the first third of the book and serve to raise the stakes and the level of suspense throughout the rest of the book. Because of the death of the old woman and her cat, the reader realizes that Tiffany’s choice of occupation is a dangerous one, not to be made lightly, and that she will have to use her wits to stay alive. Because of the second, the reader realizes that the writer isn’t above killing off Wee Free Men, so you can’t be entirely sure all your favorites will survive to the end.

6. How about mature themes?
a. Deaths and coping with death. Mature themes include the death of the woman suspected of being a witch, her cat, and the anonymous Wee Free Men described above. And as noted above, one of the major threads that runs through the book is Tiffany coping with the death of her beloved grandmother, an event that took place before the book opens.

b. Making babies. There’s a scene in which the matriarch and leader of the Wee Free Men dies, making Tiffany swear to be her temporary successor. Minutes after, Tiffany discovers one of her duties as leader is to marry a Wee Free Man and have lots of babies. Neither Tiffany nor the Wee Free Men are happy about this. Tiffany quickly finds a way out of the conundrum, but not before the reader finds out Tiffany knows how babies are made: she’s been raised on a farm and has observed sheep mating. The description of mating sheep isn’t overly explicit, and I would certainly have let my son read this book as early as he was able—in his case, about the age of ten—but no two parents are the same, and people have different ideas about what’s appropriate for their kids to read at any given age.

c. Fightin’, stealin’, and drinkin’. The Wee Free Men are rowdy, six-inch drinkers covered with blue tattoos. They would steal the humps off a camel if they could. Here they are, introducing themselves to Tiffany:
“We are a famously stealin’ folk. Aren’t we, lads? What’s it we’re famous for?”
“Stealin’!” shouted the blue men.
“And what else, lads?”
“Fightin’!”
“And what else?”
“Drinkin’!”
“And what else?” There was a certain amount of thought about this, but they all reached the same conclusion.
“Drinkin’ and fightin’!”

I found them utterly charming and laugh-out-loud funny but realize there are some parents who might be put off by the idea of a book in which the lovable main characters are thieving, rowdy, kilt-wearing, sword-wielding drinkers with blue tattoos and poor personal hygiene. It’s possible the Wee Free Men will influence your kids, but I wouldn’t be so sure. In my experience the stuff that influences my son is almost never what I expect. Like the mushrooms in the hit-the-mushroom games at Chuck-E-Cheese, influences pop up from the most unforeseen places and leave me reeling with surprise. Go figure.

In a clever twist at the end of the book, Tiffany’s little brother Wentworth is influenced by his late-book encounter with the Wee Free Men: “Wentworth had taken to running through the house with a tablecloth around his waist shouting, ‘Weewee mens! I’ll scone you in the boot!’ but Mrs. Aching was still so glad to see him back, and so happy that he was talking about things other than sweets,  that she wasn’t paying too much attention to what he was talking about.”

7. What about dark creatures? There are plenty of dark creatures in the parallel world, and some of them slip into the real world and attack. Tiffany and the Wee Free men fight the headless horseman and grimhounds. They face down beings called dromes that manipulate people’s dreams, various kinds of stinging fairies, an army of nameless monsters from nightmares, and the evil queen herself—and those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. There may be more.

8. What’s the take on religion and/or God in the book?
a. Heaven. The characters discuss their beliefs about heaven at least once; the Wee Free Men think Discworld (the world in which the book is set) is heaven.

b. Churchgoing. There is a section in which the writer says the locals, most of whom are shepherds, don’t frequently attend church but rather spend their lives taking care of their sheep. They bury their dead with little tufts of wool so God will realize they were busy shepherds and hopefully cut them some slack.

c. Witches. The witches in Discworld are good guys (see the section on civic duty and moral courage below). They tend to use their heads and refrain from magic whenever possible, but they do occasionally use magic. This didn’t bother me at all, but everyone is different, and some people I know are particularly opposed to any positive portrayal of witches, no matter to what end. You will need to decide for yourself what you think about this aspect of Wee Free Men. Personally I think it would be a shame to miss such a good book because one dislikes the idea of a positive portrayal of witchcraft. A compromise would be to read the book with your child and discuss the issue together.

9. What about politics and government? The writer has what is to my mind a pleasantly beady-eyed view of the local baron and his rule. He presents the baron as neither entirely evil nor entirely good, and as much easier to live with after Tiffany’s grandmother puts him in his place. Nevertheless, the baron has countenanced some terrible things before the book opens, including the killing of an old lady suspected to be a witch, and the world needs someone to hold his power in check. What’s more, the baron remains believably none-too-smart right to the end of the book. The various scenes describing what Tiffany’s grandmother did to keep the Baron’s power in check and Tiffany’s takeover of her grandmother’s role are well worth discussing with your children.

10. Any gender issues whack you in the eye? Oh, yes, but in the best possible way. Tiffany is intelligent, logical, independent, and courageous. The writer acknowledges gender inequality in his world in several places. For instance, near the beginning, he writes that “Unlike wizards, witches learn to make due with a little.” There’s a hint near the end that witches and wizards don’t live in absolute harmony with each other, when a witch says to Tiffany, “It [magic] don’t take much intelligence, otherwise wizards wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Last but far from least, there’s a lovely plot thread in which Tiffany encounters the baron’s useless son, the baron glorifies his son’s role in Tiffany’s adventures, and Tiffany reacts in a way that’s perfect fodder for a conversation with your middle-grade reader—no matter how you feel about traditional gender roles or where your opinions fall on the political map.

11. Any other important themes or issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child? In addition to the many issues discussed above, the topic of civic duty and moral courage comes up. Tiffany has character, by which I mean she has moral courage and a deep sense civic duty. The theme here is embodied in a quote from Tiffany’s grandmother, which guides the grandmother’s, Tiffany’s, and the witches’ actions:  “Them as can do has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.” Thus Tiffany sets out to save her little brother even though she doesn’t love him in the classic definition of the word. She protects her people and her country because they’re hers, not because they deserve it—and she lets somebody else have the credit.

At the end of the book, one of the witches tells her that’s the role of witches in Discworld: “We look to . . . the edges . . . . There’s a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong . . . an’ they need watchin’. We watch ‘em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward.”

12. Is this book especially challenging to read, and if so, why? Yes, because the Wee Free Men speak a dialect I assume is based on Scottish but with scads of apparently made-up words. The dialect is one of the high points of the book, but you need to be pretty good with the phonics (phonetics?) to read it.

My son has dyslexia, and he’s not able to look at combinations of letters on the page and hear how they sound in his head. We’ve solved this problem of how to read books like this by using his Kindle’s read-out-loud function. He looks at the words on the page while listening to the Kindle’s machine voice read.

13. How’s the writing? What’s the author’s major strength and weakness? This is the most talented writer I have reviewed so far; he’s quite simply superb. I try to write—I’ve finished two books so far, one terrible and one OK—and let me tell you, this guy leaves me just about as far back in his dust as a person can get, and he’s not even breathing hard.

Terry Pratchett’s writing is at the front of the pack in every way I can judge: ear for language and dialogue, deft handling of a multi-layered plot, laugh-out-loud humor, irony, depth of characterization, hard work (where most writers would stop, he takes another step, gives it more thought, and polishes it so it shines), and sheer imagination. This is Master Yoda, and I’m in awe. Maybe after I’ve written a dozen more books I’ll be able to spot an Achilles heel, but not at my present level of ability and craftsmanship.

I would in fact recommend this book highly to adults. Your kids will enjoy it, but they will not get all the jokes or see all the themes. This is a rich book by a highly experienced, startlingly clever, hard-working, imaginative author, and there’s more here than meets the eye in a first or even a second reading. I’ll be reading it a third time soon to examine how the writer wove together his many plot threads, because it’s a tour de force, and he makes it look easy.

14. Might some people be upset by the spelling or grammar? Perhaps. I have a friend who is not a native speaker of English and who just became an American. She wants her kids to see proper spelling and good examples of grammar in books, and she gets irritated when books contain purposeful errors.

Many of the characters in this book use contractions and make grammatical mistakes, and the Wee Free Men speak a made-up dialect. I find this kind of dialogue a strength of the book, but some readers may not.

 

Review: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan

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The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger’s Apprentice, Book 1), by John Flanagan

Fifteen-year-old Will, who has always wanted to become a knight, is refused admittance to battle school but accepted as apprentice to the heroic Ranger, Halt. When danger threatens the Kingdom of Arluan, Halt and Will ride to the rescue, and Will gets the chance to prove his mettle and learn what he wants to do with his life.

Kid-o-meter ratings (1 = lowest or least, 5 = highest or most)

  1. This book made me laugh out loud: 2. There is a comic secretary at the beginning and there are a few scenes with the pony Tug that might make you smile, so I’ll give it a 2.
  2. This book has good action: 4. It takes a while to develop, but if you like bows, arrows, and swords, this is a book for you.
  3. This book is suspenseful: 3. The suspense grows toward the end of the book, but there’s enough suspense in the beginning to keep you going.
  4. The ending does not disappoint: 5. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll just say that this book is old-school. If you liked the award-ceremony end of the very first Star Wars movie (the one from 1977), you’ll like the way this book ends.
  5. I cared a lot about what happened to these characters: 4. You will care about these characters. The only reason I didn’t give the book a 5 on this scale is that I set my favorite, Huckleberry Finn, as the level-5 standard, which means it’s almost impossible to get a 5.

Kid questions

  1. How old is the main character? Fifteen.
  2. Is there a group of friends I can imagine I’m part of?Yes. Will is one of six orphans—three boys and two girls—who have grown up together in a castle as wards of a man called Baron Arald. You meet and get to know all six teenagers at the beginning of the book but spend most of the book with the main character, Will, and his teacher, Halt the Ranger. You also spend some time with Will’s friend Horace, who is going to battle school to become a knight.The girls pop up now and then. For instance, one of them bakes some pies for the friends to share. But the focus is on the boys and their teachers (all men). The bad guy is a man, too.
  3. Is this a series or just one book? Ranger’s Apprentice is the first book in a series.
  4. Does it get off to a fast start?No. The book begins with a four-page prologue that introduces you to the main bad guy, Morgarath, and his evil servants, the Wargals and the Kalkara. After the prologue, you spend several chapters getting to know Will, his four friends, and the adults in the book. This may sound boring, but I don’t think you’ll find it boring when you read it. Getting to know the characters well makes the action and battles in the rest of the book extra suspenseful. I wish more publishers would take a chance on books with slower, old-fashioned beginnings like this, because the better you know the characters, the more you care what happens to them later.
  5. Is there at least one nice grownup? Yes. Except for the evil Morgarath, all the grownups in this book are nice. I counted at least five kindly grownups.
  6. Does it get mushy? Is there L-O-V-E? Well, in the interest of truth, I have to admit there’s one quick kiss, but it’s not a mushy one, and it’s over fast.

Adults’ questions

1. What’ the major source of suspense? There are several source of suspense in this book. All of them provide rich material to discuss with your child:

  • Who is Will’s father and how did Will’s father die?
  • Does Will get to go to battle school or must he become a farmer? (Please see “Any other important themes or issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child?” below.)
  • How will the terrible bullying Horace experiences be resolved?
  • Can Will, Halt, and their allies stop the Kalkara before a main character dies?
  • In the next books, will the girls do more than bake pies like Jenny, kiss the main character like Alyss, and die in childbirth like Will’s mom?

2. Which classic fantasy elements does the book contain? The names! Morgarath, Wargals, the Mountains of Rain and Night, Baron Arald, Castle Redmont, the Kingdom of Arluan . . . need I say more? The book is set in a slightly fantastic version of the British Isles during a Camelot-ish era. There is an evil overlord in a castle in the mountains whose ambition is to take over the kingdom. This bad guy has enslaved monstrous, non-human creatures to do his bidding.

3. What is the book’s take on tolerance and empathy? The events in the book bring up the issue of whether we should have empathy for bullies.

Three older boys from the battle school get together and beat up Horace on a regular basis. The writer does a good job of showing how Horace reacts by bullying others. As a reader, you feel sympathy for Horace, even when he’s acting like a bully, but not for the kids who bully him. This may be because you never find out why they act like bullies. Hints in the book make it seem like they are just bad eggs. (One of them is described as a cornered rat.) This is something you could discuss with your child: is bullying the only thing that turns people into bullies? If not, what else might do it?

The adults in the battle school have vague suspicions that something’s not right, but don’t catch on to what’s happening. The writer tells us that if they knew about it, they wouldn’t tolerate it.

When an adult, Halt the Ranger, finally discovers what’s happening, he encourages Horace to give the bullies a licking in turn, but one-on-one so it’s “fair.” In what is probably a wish-fulfillment scene for many kids who have been bullied or witnessed bullying, the Ranger keeps the bullies from running away while Horace beats up each one in turn.

I think this is something really interesting to talk about with your children. What do you and your children think about giving bullies a taste of their own medicine? Maybe you think it’s an excellent idea—the only thing that works? Or maybe you think it’s counterproductive?

The battle school leaders then kick the sixteen-year-old bullies out of school, the castle, and the nearby area with a little bit of money and supplies that will last them a week. Counterproductive tactical error? Missed opportunity to help the bullies change their behavior? Good and just solution? What do you think?

I am eager to learn how the writer deals with the ostracized bullies in later books in the series. Do we meet them again? Have they been taught a lesson and gone home, duly chastened, to spend the rest of their lives as law-abiding citizens? Have they been angered and driven underground or into the fold of the evil Morgarath? Do they return as bad guys, festering with a sense of having been done an injustice? Do they come back with a worse case of whatever caused them to be bullies in the first place?

In a later scene, the writer explains that revenge is a bad thing: “To a twisted mind like Morgarath’s, revenge is a powerful motive,” says Halt. I was surprised, and wondered what the author thought the difference was between what Horace did, encouraged by Halt, and revenge. In other words, what’s the difference between punishment/justice of the kind meted out on the bullies and revenge? Is it a matter of degree? Is it justice when you beat up your foes but revenge when you kill them? Or is it OK to use force when you’re in the right (a victim) but not when you’re in the wrong (a perpetrator)? If it’s the latter, how are people supposed to be sure when they’re in the right and when they’re in the wrong? Does Morgarath think he’s a bad guy or does he consider he actions justified? Did the bullies know they were doing wrong or did they think Horace deserved what he got? These are definitely things you could discuss with your kids.

4. Is there profanity? Not that I recall.

5. Is there violence? Yes. There is a boar hunt and a battle against monsters. There is bullying and either justice or revenge (depending upon how you look at it). The apprentices are taught to use the bow and arrow, knives, and swords. Lances are also used.

6. How about mature themes and dark creatures? There is the theme of bullying, discussed above. Although there are monsters, there are no magical monsters. It seems that the monsters in the story are native to the world of the book. They do their evil not by magic, it seems, but by hypnotism and craftiness. During the book, the characters learn Morgarath is trying to hire Scandian (i.e., Viking-like) mercenaries to aid his cause.

7. What’s the take on religion and/or God in the book? There is no religion in the book; religion and spirituality are not mentioned. I’m told religion appears in later volumes in the series.

8. What about politics and government? All the grown-up authority figures in this book are good, kind, decent, reasonably intelligent, well-meaning people. I was pleased to find a book in which authority figures in children’s lives are not openly or secretly evil, but was surprised to find the book gave a middle-grader I know an extremely positive view of monarchy.

This middle-grader decided that a benevolent monarchy (he did not know it was called this, and kept using the word “dictatorship”) would be the best form of government if only the king were good and people followed rules. It took some discussion to figure out what this child meant by “dictatorship.” Finally he explained, using the Ranger’s Apprentice world as the example.  We had a nice discussion about democracy, and you may need to have a discussion with your child, too. Are there nice kings? Benevolent dictators? Does power inevitably corrupt? Are citizens in highly stratified class societies happy with their lot?

9. Any gender issues whack you in the eye? Yes. There are two fifteen-year-old girls and one woman in the book. They play minor, supporting roles. The adult woman, a diplomat, chooses one of the teenage girls as her apprentice. We are told that girls tend to be better than boys at that diplomacy stuff.

One of the two teenage girls bakes pies. The other gives the main character a kiss and later looks on proudly as he wins an award. If I had a daughter (I only have a son), I’d want her to support her friends and the one she loves, including with pies and kisses if she so desired. But I’d also want her to have many possible roles to pick from. This book won’t show your boys or your girls many possible gender roles. You get one picture here, and it’s traditional, though I bet the author would be irritated by this statement. After all, he put in a woman and girl diplomat, didn’t he? And isn’t diplomat a respectable occupation, and work outside the home, to boot?

Yes, except it’s portrayed as a good way for women to take their natural skills for soothing, comforting, mediating, and managing interpersonal conflicts (“No fair, Mommy! He got the big piece!”) into the public area.

There are no minorities in this book and no gay people.

Perhaps you will find the gender roles in the book disturbing, but maybe you’ll find them comforting. Anyway now you know what to expect, and this may be another aspect of the book you want to discuss with your middle-grade reader.

10. Any other important themes or issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child?

a. Farming. Farming is portrayed as boring occupation of last choice in this book—as neither as exciting nor rewarding as being a knight or a ranger. The author writes that becoming a farmer was “a fate he [Will] feared more than anything.” This bothered me, but you might see it as simply this character’s view of farming rather than as a condemnation of farming as a whole. You might also take the pragmatic view that the author had little choice but to portray farming as boring, because in a storybook-adventure world, you have to leave the farm to have adventures. I don’t know. I suspect there are adventures to be had on farms and in the farming life, and think E.B. White would agree.

So here’s another question you might like to discuss with your kids: Is farming boring? My answer is “Ixnay! Farming rocks! Go farmers, unsung heroes of the world!” Farming is not boring, and farmers are just as cool as knights in shining armor. I am now inspired to write a book or at least a story to prove it.

b. Stratification of society. In this book, society is divided into classes and into clear occupational categories. People do not often have the chance (as it says in Chapter 1) to “improve their station in life.” Will is an exception, as he’s an orphan who was raised by a Baron and thus has the chance to win a place as an apprentice rather than automatically become whatever his parents were.

Throughout the book, this highly stratified society is portrayed as working well and harmoniously. Everyone seems to be content in their given role, and I realize that this has enormous appeal to people who like structure and order and value tradition. Even the arch-bad guy doesn’t break the mold. He’s not a discontented farmer, denied entry to Battleschool because of his class, but a twisted former ruler from the southern part of the island.

[SPOILER ALERT – don’t read the next paragraph if you don’t want to know how the book ends.]

At the end of the book, I was pleased to see the writer make an effort to introduce some shading into the otherwise soundly positive portrayal of this highly stratified society. Halt the Ranger finally tells Will that his (Will’s) father was a sergeant who came from a farm, drafted into the army as the result of a war. At first Will is disappointed that his father wasn’t a knight, but then Ranger Halt says, “Don’t judge a man’s quality by his position in life, Will. Your father, Daniel, was a loyal and brave soldier. He didn’t have the opportunity to go to Battleschool because he began life as a farmer. But, if he had, he would have been the greatest of knights.”

This raises a question you might be able to discuss with your children; namely, what happens in a stratified society when you don’t fit the role you’re born into?

11. Is this book especially challenging to read? Nope. Clear and straightforward reading.

12. How’s the writing? What are writer’s major strengths and weaknesses? The writer’s strength lies in his ability to describe how you train to use certain kinds of weapons and in his portrayal of the development of friendships and respectful, decent relationships between young people and the authority figures in their lives. He also excels at building a highly structured world run by traditional values and inhabited by people who, once they have found their path, are content with their lives. (The exceptions are the bullies who torment Horace, and they get a traditional comeuppance.) This world will be comfortable, reassuring, and deeply comforting to many readers. It may worry others.

As to weaknesses . . . the writer is not a crafter of lyrical prose, not a composer of creative similes and metaphors. I know a number of writers and editors who would take exception to the adverb-filled dialog tags he favors. For example, “Jenny replied breathlessly,”  “he shrugged resignedly,” and “she told him earnestly” appear on the same page. However, I suspect this is another way in which the book is traditional. The dialog tags will not put off your average 12-year-old. I loved Nancy Drew despite them.

13. Might some people be upset by the spelling or grammar? No, they’re just fine. Anti-adverb writers will probably take issue with all the adverbs in the book, but the spelling and grammar are standard.

Review: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

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The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book 1), by Rick Riordan.

Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson, a boy with serious problems at home and in school, discovers his father is an ancient Greek god. To save his mother and friends and prevent a war between the gods, Percy must find and return a lightning bolt stolen from the ruler of the gods . . . who believes Percy and his father are the thieves.

Kid-o-meter ratings (1 = lowest or least, 5 = highest or most)

1. This book made me laugh out loud or at least smile: 3. There’s a particularly funny scene near the end. In it, the god Hades describes the bureaucratic headaches he has running the underworld.

2. This book has good action: 5. Percy and his friends face lots of danger and fight just the right amount of battles—not too many, not too few, and a really big one in the end.

3. This book is suspenseful: 4. There are at least five suspenseful questions in the story.

  • Which god is Percy’s father? If you’ve had Greek mythology in school, you’ll probably guess pretty quickly, but if you haven’t, the answer might surprise you. 2 points.
  • Will Percy mange to return the missing lightning bolt to Zeus? Of course he will. The real question is how. 5 points (for how).
  • If Percy and his father didn’t steal the lightning bolt, who did? This one will keep you guessing. 4 points.
  • Which friend will betray Percy? This is more suspenseful at the beginning than at the end. If you’re observant, you’ll probably figure it out before it happens. 3 points.
  • Will Percy free his mother from the underworld? Now this is a suspenseful one. For a long time, you really won’t know. 5 points

4. The ending does not disappoint: 4. I’m pretty sure you’ll like everything about the ending if you’re a kid. If you’re an adult, though, please see, “Any important issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child?” below.

5. I cared a lot about what happened to these characters: 3. If you’re a kid, you may get into these characters more than I did. I’m tough to please. To get a 5, the author would have to create someone I like as much as Huckleberry Finn, my favorite character ever.

Kids’ questions

1. Is there a group of friends I can imagine I’m part of? Yes, a group of three friends: one boy, one girl, and one male satyr (part goat, part human).

2.  Is this a series or just one book? It’s a series, so if you like the first one, you can read the rest. There’s even a movie.

3. Does it get off to a fast start? Pretty fast, but not as fast as the first book in the writer’s next series, The Kane Chronicles. Still, the writer uses a neat trick to hook you and reel you into The Lightning Thief. You won’t be bored.

4. Is there at least one nice grownup? Yes, Percy’s teacher, Mr. Brunner.

5. Does it get mushy? Is there L-O-V-E? It doesn’t get mushy, but Percy has a friend and ally called Annabeth, and you can tell they’ll probably like each other more as the series goes on.

Adults’ questions

1. How old is the main character? Twelve.

2. What’s the major source of mystery/suspense?  This is a classic quest tale, and the writer has built in multiple sources of suspense: Which god is Percy’s father?  How will Percy succeed in returning the missing lightning bolt to Zeus? Who really stole the lightning bolt? Which friend will betray Percy?  Will Percy free his mother from the underworld?

3. Which classic fantasy elements does this book contain? Mythical beings, magical items, a hero’s quest, and a hidden world (Olympus in Manhattan)

4. What’s the book’s take on tolerance and empathy? As far as I can see, tolerance and empathy are not major themes in the book. There is a scene in which the children empathize with and free captive and abused zoo animals.

5. Is there profanity? Not that I recall. When people swear they say things like, “Oh, Zeus!”

6. Is there violence? Plenty, including battles between a twelve-year-old and an ancient god, but none of it is realistic violence. The only violence that bothered me was some human-on-human violence at the very end.

I would have suggested this book to my son from about the age of ten, but kids differ.

7. Any mature themes or dark creatures? The issue of responsible vs. irresponsible parenting looms large in the book (see “Any important issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child?” below), but nothing is presented in a way I consider inappropriate for most kids ten and above.

There are plenty of dark creatures. All of them are clearly mythical.

The god of the underworld, Hades, is the uncle of the main character. Riordan’s Hades isn’t the traditional Evil One of Christianity, but he’s no sympathetic good guy, either. There are hints that he may turn out to be an ally in the next books. The author paints Hades as a tricky, multifaceted individual—definitely an extremely dangerous supernatural being. I liked the portrayal, but then I like multifaceted antagonists like Snape and Moriarty.

8. What’s the take on religion and God in the book? The book is about the ancient Greek gods and goddesses—Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Ares, and the rest of the crew you remember from middle school.

I don’t think you need to be concerned that your child will start building alters to Poseidon, Zeus, Hades, or Athena after reading this book. The Greek gods and goddesses do not come off looking rosy.  Your child will, however, learn about ancient Greek myths in a painless way, and that’s a good thing, in my opinion.

9. What about politics and government? As far as I could tell, politics and government aren’t drawn into the story in a major way. One intriguing exception is a scene near the middle of the book that features Ares, the god of war. In the middle of a diner, Ares pulls out a big knife and uses it to clean his fingernails. Percy objects to this intimidating use of a weapon in public. Ares responds, “Are you kidding? I love this country. Best place since Sparta. Don’t you carry a weapon, punk? You should. Dangerous world out there.” You could use this scene to start a discussion with your child on weapons, no matter where your views fall in the political spectrum.

10. Any important issues crop up that you might want to discuss with your child?

a. The parents in the book. If my child read this book (which he refuses to do because he already saw the movie) I would want to talk with him about the way the parents act throughout the novel, both with their children and toward each other. The mother, the stepfather, and the birth father all provide material for many conversations.

At the beginning of the book, for example, the mother is a study in contradictions. On the one hand, she’s sweeter than candy and willing to sacrifice anything for her son, yet she inexplicably stays in a marriage with the rotten and appropriately named Gabe Ugliano. Soon after the reader learns the reason for her apparent blind cruelty, she takes extreme revenge on the abusive Mr. Ugly. But get this: it’s her fault Mr. Ugly’s in their lives at all. For years, she’s been using him as a pawn in her plot to save her child. I think the writer intended for us to like her and approve of and feel satisfied by her actions, but I don’t. You’ll probably have your own take on this . . . and it’s something to talk about with your kids.

b. Violence as revenge. At the end of the novel, Percy has the chance to get rid of his evil stepfather—possibly even kill him—but he doesn’t.  Why not?

c. Weapons in America. What do you and your child think about Ares’ comment on weapons in America? Is it OK to carry weapons, either concealed or unconcealed?

d. The role of Greece and the Greek gods in the history of western civilization. I would be surprised if there is not a lesson plan or series of lesson plans to go along with this book. In fact, I just went online and checked, and there are lesson plans. The author himself has one here, and Scholastic provides one here. I will not read them until I’m finished with this review, as I don’t want to be swayed.

e. Dyslexia and ADHD. The main character has both diagnoses, and the author explains them in original ways. What do you and your kids think? My son has dyslexia, and I’d like to mention is that this book is available as a graphic novel (graphic novels appeal to my son) and on Kindle (my child uses his Kindle’s robotic voice to listen to books over and over again).

11. Is this book especially challenging to read, and if so, why? No. Nice, short sentences, no hard words, lots of action, no odd dialects or anything like that.

12. How’s the writing? What are the author’s strengths and weaknesses? This is the hardest question for me to answer, probably because I’m a writer, and the closer I focus on a topic, the more confusing I find it becomes. In my opinion, the author excels at the mechanics of writing, at action sequences, at maintaining suspense, and at weaving together plot and subplot. The chapter titles are fantastic (“I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher”), and provide the largest dose of humor that I remember from the book.

a. Quicker openings in later books. I found it instructive to compare this book with the writer’s later books for children. I’ve read two books in his later series, The Kane Chronicles. The Lightning Thief opens quickly, but the writer has polished this art to a high shine in The Kane Chronicles. The books in the later series grab readers and pull them in from sentence one. In The Kane Chronicles, the writer also widens his potential audience in myriad clever ways. For example, a sister and brother take turns narrating the second series.

b. Organic obstacles? In The Lightning Thief, only some of the obstacles seem to arise as a direct and natural (or even inevitable) result of the characters and events in the story. I love it when action feels inevitable. “Yes, of course,” you think. “That’s what would happen!”  But Percy’s encounter with the Medusa, his visit to Lotus Land, and to a certain extent, even his trip to the amusement park at Ares’ request felt contrived to me. Perhaps the author intentionally put Percy through a traditional list of obligatory obstacles because that’s how a hero was tested in ancient Greek stories. Or maybe the effect was unintended. Either way, I would have preferred if the obstacles feel inevitable—like Percy’s encounters with the Three Furies, which felt entirely organic to me.

After I read the next books in the Percy Jackson series, I hope I’ll have a better idea of whether the set-piece effect in The Lightning Thief was purposeful or not. The contrived feeling is absent from the author’s next series of middle-grade books, which focus on Egyptian mythology.

c. Teacher mode. The writer is a former teacher who’s exceptionally close to the subject of mythology, and it shows. He clearly knows his stuff, which is great, but a couple of times he veers perilously close to teacher mode. The clearest example was early in the book, when he needs to provide some background information and has a teacher say: “Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titian’s stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld.” Ouch. However, he doesn’t do this often, and he pulls back so fast that I don’t think the kids will notice.

d. Digging deeper. The Lightning Thief is probably not a book that grabbed a big adult readership.  I caught glimpses of Riordan’s engagement and convictions—his personal passions or ideas—but not enough to engage me deeply. I don’t see deeper waters lurking below the surface the way I did in some books that shall not be named. (I’m entirely sure every fantasy author hates have their books compared to that series.) But Mr. Riordan has tremendous technical skill. He’s nailed his craft. If he does write something more deeply reflective of his convictions of heart or mind, I suspect the book would be a hit with adults as well as their children.

13. Might some people be upset by the spelling or grammar? Nope. It’s fine.

Welcome to Kimberly’s reviews of middle-grade fantasy novels

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This site is devoted to middle-grade fantasy novels–in other words, fantasy books written for kids between the ages of eight and twelve. These are the kinds of books I write and the ones I’ll be reviewing in my blog.

My goal is to provide reviews that are useful to kids, parents, and maybe even others who help kids choose books. I’ll start off by reviewing some of the best-selling middle-grade fantasies from recent years, such as the work of Rick Riordan, and then move on to lesser-known books.

Each review includes a section for kids and a section for parents and others who pick books for children. The part for kids covers things like:

  • Does the book get off to a fast start?
  • Will it make me laugh out loud?
  • Does it have lots of action?
  • Does it get mushy? (Is there L-O-V-E?)

The section for grownups includes information on:

  • The book’s take on tolerance and empathy.
  • Presence of profanity, violence, and mature themes.
  • Important themes or issues in the book you might want to discuss with your child.
  • The quality of the writing.

Here’s a post that explains in more detail what to expect in each review.