Middle-grade fantasy chick lit?

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I’ve been reviewing middle-grade fantasy for four weeks now, one book a week. Each new review is published on Sunday.

One of my goals has been to read as wide a variety of books as I can, and I’ve already been surprised by the number of subgenres out there. For instance, in addition to traditional middle-grade quests and adventures, there are comedy-adventures, steampunk fantasies, and more, including a genre that’s hard to name but is written mainly with an audience of girls in mind.

This week I ventured into girl territory, which the authors themselves seem to call “classic fantasy.” OK, maybe . . . but I think it’s a special kind of classic fantasy.

I don’t think this subgenre existed when I was a girl—at least I never found and read it. And I have only one child, a son. He hasn’t chosen to read this subgenre. Thus, until this week, all I knew about this subgenre was that the authors include Anna Staniszewski (writer of this week’s book, My Very UnFairy Tale Life) and Hélène Boudreau (author of the “Mermaids Don’t” series). I am sure there are others, and I’m looking forward to reading their books.

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

By admin Posted in Book reviews Tagged , ,

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.