Posts Tagged ‘Book Reviews’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Banned Books: Deal with It! -and- some amazing examples of webdesign that really put SWiggins to shame

October 12th, 2010 by pladd

Title: Deal with It! A whole new approach to your body, brain, and life as a gURL
Author: Esther Drill, Heather McDonald, Rebecca Odes, gURL.com
Challenged in: good old West Bend, Wisconsin Community Memorial Library
For: “being pornographic and worse than an R-rated movie”
Along with: Baby Be-Bop, Geography Club, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

So I know you’re bummed, but this is the last book on this year’s list that was challenged in West Bend. We’ve all grown really attached to the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries and their endearing little quirks, like their terrible webdesign skills and their desire to burn books about gay people. Ah, memories.

Incidentally, their awesome GoogleSites site appears just above my blog in a search for their own name, and is maybe one of the best websites I’ve seen since geocities died. Anything with that ratio of capitalized to uncapitalized words has got to be 100% legit. They also link pretty extensively to an organization called PABBIS or Parents Against Bad Books In Schools, which at least owns their own domain, but is not much better on the Only Knows the html For Bolding and Font Colors front. I love how they use the phrase “bad books” in a totally unironic way in their organization name. They try to provide an operational definition of “bad”, saying “Bad is not for us to determine. Bad is what you determine is bad. Bad is what you think is bad for your child. What each parent considers bad varies and depends on their unique situation, family and values. The main purpose of this webpage is to identify some books that might be considered bad and why someone might consider them bad. Another purpose of this webpage is to provide information related to bad books in schools.”

Adorable. In much the same way that Twilight is adorable. So deluded it is almost cute. Almost. Except for that whole trying to burn books about gay people thing or encouraging abusive relationships1. You know, little details.

Anyway, all of this is really tangential to what I actually wanted to talk about today, Deal with It! A whole new approach to your body, brain, and life as a gURL. Once again, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries is really bad at reviewing books for content and style. Anyone who picks up this book on their recommendation, expecting pornography or an R-rated movie will be sadly disappointed. This book is basically exactly like the many books on puberty/sex/relationships/health written for teen girls, except much more detailed. Most of these sorts of books don’t also contain sections on managing your money, coping with mood swings, or changing relationships to parents and siblings, for instance, along with all the usual bad skin, buying bras, dealing with periods, practicing safe sex aspects. Naturally anyone who takes issue with the fact that some teens will have sex will freak out about this book, because it covers a different sexual acts, usually not in any great detail, but to familiarize the teen with what they are. It struck me not so much as a step-by-step guide (at least in this section), but more as a “Here are some things that exist so you don’t have to feel stupid when people mention them”. To this end, it also includes some of the more pervasive slang terms for sex acts/body parts, although these will probably begin to date it over time.

And, yes, there are diagrams and some cartoon drawings of naked women, but it would be really hard to write a book about Your Changing Body without that. They clearly have not read my personal favorite book on this topic, Body Drama: Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers by Nancy Amanda Redd, which features an entire page of pictures of different breasts. For a demographic that spends a great deal of time worrying about if they’re “normal”, I think it’s important to show them that “normal” is a much wider, more diverse concept than they probably think. This is one of the issues I tend to be annoyingly vocal about, so I will quiet down for now.

1But am I trying to ban Twilight? No, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, I’m not. I’m educating my imaginary daughters about how to avoid abusive boyfriends and how to get help, and then letting them Twihard as much as they want, as long as they don’t get Edward’s face tattooed on their face or something.

Tagged: ,

Posted in Banned Books |

Banned Books: The Perks of Being a Wallflower/I talk too much about myself

October 9th, 2010 by pladd

Title: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Author: Stephen Chbosky
Challenged at: West Bend, Wisconsin Community Memorial Library
At the same time as: Baby Be-Bop, Geography Club
For: “being obscene or child pornography” in the YA section
(Maybe Not So) Honorable Mention Challengings At: Portage, Indiana High Schools; Wyoming, Ohio High Schools; William Byrd and Hidden Valley Highschools of Roanoke, Virginia; probably others

You can read more about the school challenges here, and probably elsewhere, but since I am an Apprentice Librarian in a public library, I want to talk about West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries again. I feel like we bonded a little during my play-by-play notes from earlier this week. So here are some things I think probably upset them about this book:

1. Charlie’s best friend is gay
2. Charlie sometimes drinks
3. Charlie smokes (sometimes pot)
4. Charlie one time tried LSD, but decides never to do it again
5. Charlie’s friends have sex sometimes
6. Charlie gets halfway between second and third base

Which of these things would shock and appall a high school student? Which of them would they not have experience with, either personally or peripherally through just being in highschool? Maybe the LSD (maybe) depending on their highschool or group of friends.

I think this might be the first time I’ve read a young adult novel (especially one published by MTV!) that I honestly wish I had discovered while I was actually a young adult. And you know what? It has nothing to do with anything on that list up there, because that’s not what this book is about. Sorry, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, but I’m afraid you’re still looking at the forest and seeing only trees, or the book and seeing only drug-and-sex references. I’m a big believer in The Right Book for the Right Person at the Right Time; I think time is the part that gets left out or misunderstood. Since I did not have the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries to protect me, there were plenty of times when I was in elementary or middle school that I read books that were, I can freely admit now, way too old for me. Shockingly, I did not become a drug addict or a predator or suffer trauma. Most of the time, the things I weren’t ready for went right over my head. Or I stopped reading the book because it was boring since that didn’t interest me. Once you’re old enough to be curious, to ask questions, then you’re old enough to know some answers.

Anyway, with most YA novels, I recognize that high school Patricia would not have liked them, or thought they were beneath her (she was all about reading the collected works of Charles Dickens), but I think she would have gotten something out of this one (and, no, not the DL on LSD). The book is an epistolary novel of letters Charlie writes to an anonymous person he doesn’t really know chronicling his first year in high school. Charlie has an amazing insight into the world and is clearly incredibly intelligent, although he often is unsure of what to do in social situations. For most of the book, he leads a very passive existence, letting other people tell him how to act or what he should do or how to define his relationships. I think (despite her complaining that it’s not “real literature”) High School Patricia also really needed to learn that lesson. And, secretly, she knew it too, which is why she sometimes tried so hard to seem otherwise. I’m pretty sure I did not realize who I am AND decide to try to wear that unselfconsciously until freshmen or sophomore year of college. Maybe closer to sophomore year. I think that happens to a lot of teenagers, especially when they’re trying so hard to fit in with a certain group or be like some kind of mental image that they have a hard time figuring out who they actually are underneath, even when they want to. Which sucks, because people can be such jerks to you when you’re stuck being passive, like they’re allowed to take advantage of you or project whatever they want onto you since you appear to be almost blank, at least from the surface. Even sadder is that I bet some people never have a Summer-Before-Sophomore-Year fight with themselves and try to get over it. Some people are stuck in that blank, passive, fragile existence forever.</after-school special confessions time>

So, yeah, I kind of wish High School Patricia had read this book, although there’s no guarantee that she would recognize its message in herself, or if she was even ready to admit her own problems yet. I do know she would have scoffed at Charlie’s assessment of The Fountainhead which she hated, but probably agreed with him about To Kill a Mockingbird. It probably would have helped that both she and Charlie liked reading “serious” literature, though probably for different reasons.

In conclusion, this book made me think a lot, which is always good for anyone, even if it is about things that I would prefer to forget, like how I have not always been this awesome. Or at least, not as obviously.

Whenever I’m down on High School Patricia, though, I feel the need to also mention:

Published novel, what up?

Tagged: , ,

Posted in Banned Books |

Banned Books: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

September 28th, 2010 by pladd

Title: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier
Author: Alan Moore; illustrated by Kevin O’Neill
Not to be Confused With: the movie spin off
Challenged At: Jessamine County Public Library, Nicolasville, Kentucky
Along with four other works for: “offend[ing] me in that they depict sexual acts and/or describe such acts in a way that in my opinion are contrary to the Jessamine County public opinion”

I saved this one for Banned Book Week because it definitely has the most dramatic challenging of any this year as evidenced by the fact that I knew all about it before I started this project. The ALA 2010 Banned Book List has this to say about it:

A petition with 950 signatures was presented to the board to overturn its collection policy. The petition specifically asked for the removal of four works on the grounds that “they offended me in that they depict sexual acts and/or describe such acts in a way that in my opinion are contrary to the Jessamine County public opinion” of what should be in a public, taxpayer-supported collection. The petition concluded the works constituted a public safety issue in that they encourage sexual predators… the graphic novel eventually got two employees fired for breaching library policies, the library director was threatened with physical harm, and the book was recataloged, along with other graphic novels with mature trends, to a separate but unrestricted graphic novels section of the library.

But the best part of the story, the part I knew about previously is that, “got two employees fired” part. Basically, about two years ago Sharon Cook, a library assistant, found League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier on the shelves and freaked out because there are drawings of naked ladies in it plus some strange 1984-propaganda-pornography that is supposed to be taken as a joke. After having her challenge denied, she decided to check it out and never return it for about six months, renewing it over and over so that it would never be on the shelves. Then someone put it on hold and, looking up the patron, Cook discovered it was an 11-year-old girl! After consulting with two colleagues, Beth Boisvert and Cook decided to cancel the girl’s hold and continue what they were doing. Nice. You can read a detailed article about the incident here and elsewhere, but here are my favorite parts of the Lexington Herald-Leader piece:
Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: , , , ,

Posted in Banned Books |

Banned Books: Only In Your Dreams, a Gossip Girl Novel

September 28th, 2010 by pladd

Title: Only In Your Dreams
Author: Cecily Von Ziegesar
Not to be Confused With: A-List Series, Luxe Series, The Clique Series, or any other series where rich bratty teenagers have rich bratty drama
Challenged In: Leesburg, Florida
At: the Leesburg Public Library
For: sexual innuendo, drug references, and other adult topics

I’m not ashamed to admit that I read almost the entire Gossip Girl series during the heady summer of 2007 when I was bored at the library. When you’re going to be frequently interrupted for questions on how to use the computers and where Clifford is, you need something where you can figure out the plot just from reading the chapter titles. By now most people have at least heard of the television series of the same name, although they took certain liberties with various characters (not that I care, I’m just noting). My personal favorite is Vanessa Abrams. In the books, you can tell she’s a funky alternative chick because she has a shaved head. In the TV series, you can tell she’s alternative because she’s vaguely Hispanic:

Really letting her freak flag fly

Only In Your Dreams is set in the middle of the summer after the main gang’s senior year in high school. Natch it is just as full of underage drinking, drug use, and extravagant shopping as the other books in the series. Along with twelve other “provocative” books for teens, Only in Your Dreams was challenged by “community and church leaders”, and the city commissioners decided to separate books based on age group. Only in Your Dreams and other books for high school students have been removed to a special section “in the library stairwell.”

The fact that they have been banished to a library stairwell is my favorite part of this story. I wonder if the twelve other provocative books were also in the Gossip Girl series, because I was surprised upon rereading this one that it didn’t have anything more scandalous than some underage drinking and some people who fail at getting laid. I was expecting it to at least be the one where Dan briefly thinks he’s gay because he drunkenly kissed another boy, or one of the ones where, you know, someone actually has sex. Oh well.

Since this week actually is National Banned Books Week, I’ve decided to take a more comprehensive approach in my analysis. Here follows a dramatic play-by-play of the book, containing spoilers. So if, for some reason, you ever want to read the entire Gossip Girl series in order, maybe quit halfway through.

Chapter 1: The Honeymooners
Blair is in London visiting her boyfriend, Lord Marcus, but he is making her stay in a fancy hotel instead of his mansion. She is depressed that he won’t have sex with her already. He claims to have a surprise for her, but it turns out to be his cousin. Blair is not amused.

Chapter 2: One is the Loneliest Number
Nate has to work for his lax coach doing manual labor because he was caught stealing his coach’s Viagra. He is whiny about it, but consoles himself with weed and ogling the coach’s questionably-hot wife.

Chapter 3: V’s Date with Destiny
Vanessa interviews for a job with Ken Mogul, a film director who is doing a Breakfast at Tiffany‘s remake this summer, even though the movie=Big Budget Teen RomCom and Vanessa=alternative indie auteur. Ken’s apartment is decorated with naked pictures of himself. He insists that he needs Vanessa’s “vision”. Vanessa says she’ll think about it, pretending that it is going to be some big dramatic choice.

Chapter 4: S moves Out
Serena is playing Holly Golightly in the movie remake and Ken has told her to move to a dingy, unairconditioned apartment to channel the spirit of Audrey Hepburn. Serena somehow gets lost walking from the sidewalk to the front door, but is saved by her neighbor, Jason, a “gorgeously tall” guy in a “dorky office ensemble”.

Chapter 5: D learns the art of Customer Service
Dan’s summer job is to be pretentious to customers at a bookstore. He pretends to be a tortured artist in his inner monologue.

Chapter 6: Helmets are almost as important as condoms
Nate is riding his bike while high and decides to swear off girls for the summer right before falling on his face in front of a townie named Tawny who the narration wants me to think is trashy, but who probably only looks/dresses like a normal person, rather than an insanely wealthy model.

Chapter 7: Love Don’t Live Here Anymore
Vanessa’s big sister is home from Europe where she was touring with her band. She’s brought back some guy named Piotr, which sounds like a perfume that would make me ill. She kicks Vanessa out of the apartment because Piotr needs her bedroom for a studio. Since that is what happens in real life.

Chapter 8: S is for Spirituality among other things
Vanessa calls Dan all weepy and Dan says she can move in with him (and his dad?). Dan feels manly at being able to help his normally tough girlfriend. Then a girl named Bree asks Dan to find some books her yogi recommended to her and Dan “watched her small, round butt, which closely resembled two scoops of French vanilla ice cream”. Dan pretends to have read Siddhartha to impress Ice Cream Butt Girl.

Chapter 9: the family that plays together stays together
Lord Marcus’ annoying cousin, Camilla, wins croquet a million times in a row and Blair is drunk and unhappy about it. Lord Marcus and Camilla are flirty, and Blair tries to kill her with her eyes.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: , , ,

Posted in Banned Books |

Banned Books 2010: Living Dead Girl

September 10th, 2010 by pladd

Definite points for cover design

Title: Living Dead Girl
Author: Elizabeth Scott
Not to be confused with: the Rob Zombie song of the same name.
Challenged in: Effingham, Illinois at the Helen Matthes Library, 2009
For: graphic content, unsatisfactory ending
Status: Retained despite challenges

I’d heard of this book before, from librarians talking on a YALSA listserv about how much it disturbed them, so I can’t say I’m surprised it’s on this list. If librarians have trouble with a book emotionally or psychologically, it’s probably that the general public also will. I think challenges aren’t always negative for the library, since it does show that people care and allows for a conversation about books and why books are chosen for the library. I’m happy that this book was retained even though I also found it very, very disturbing, the kind of book that puts images in your mind that will probably never be erased. And, yes, that’s not happy or enjoyable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth having in the library. Books aren’t just for entertainment. Here’s a brief plot description:

The story is told in a sparse, stream-of-consciousness from the point of view of Alice, or at least a girl who thinks of herself as Alice. Alice is not her real name, and there was at least one Alice before her. She was abducted at the age of 10 by Ray, a clever and abusive pedophile who claims that if she ever escapes or disobeys him, he will kill her parents. Now Alice is 15 and knows she is getting too old for Ray, that he’ll kill her soon and find another girl. And she can’t wait. Death is the only thing she looks forward to now. But then Ray recruits her to find her own replacement, which seems to shake her world view and her implacable desire to die.

The descriptions of Ray’s abuse, though brief and often described obliquely, are haunting. More so, Alice’s attitude towards her situation, the way she has all but given up her own identity, the way she has internalized many of Ray’s behaviors. This is not the way we want to see ourselves. We want to believe that, were we in that situation, we would fight back, orchestrate some kind of dramatic rescue, protect innocent children from being abused as we had. But Alice most often responds in the way we would actually act in such a situation: with only survival in mind. She willingly, almost eagerly accepts her role, coolly calculating which children will be the easiest to abduct, which will most satisfy Ray’s perverted desires. She acknowledges that it’s not the “right” thing to do, but admits that she will do anything to be free of Ray, even if that includes dying or hurting someone else.

So, yes, I wouldn’t recommend this book to younger teens or anyone so sensitive and impressionable that it would immobilize them through fear or depression. Some people really can’t take reading this kind of book, but I think it’s message is an important one for anyone who can stomach it. And, yes, the ending is not filled with hope. Though her situation changes, Alice doesn’t live happily ever after. And I think that’s important too.

Tagged: ,

Posted in Banned Books, Book Reviews |

Banned Books 2010: Baby Be-Bop

August 31st, 2010 by pladd

To kick off my exciting new hobby, I decided to read the book whose entry on the ALA Challenged Book List confused me the most. Here it is in full:

Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block
Harper Collins
Four Wisconsin men belonging to the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) sought $30,000 apiece for emotional distress they suffered from the West Bend, Wis. Community Memorial Library (2009) for displaying a copy of the book. The claim states that “specific words used in the book are derogatory and slanderous to all males” and “the words can permeate violence and put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.” The CCLU called for the public burning of this title. Four months later, the library board unanimously voted 9-0 to maintain, “without removing, relocating, labeling, or otherwise restricting access,” this and other books challenged in the young adult section at the West Bend Community Memorial Library.

Here were the two parts that stood out to me the first time I saw this:

$30,000 apiece
public burning

$30,000?? Because the book was on display?? I can hear what you’re thinking. “What ‘specific words’? What can be worth $30,000 just if you happen to glance at it??? This book has got to be straight smut. That deserves to be publicly burned, like a witch or a Beatles record.”

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you my friend. The words

$30,000 apiece

and

public burning

totally got my hopes up. This book did maybe not deserve either of these. Here is the basic plot, although, as a very lyrical novella, the word “plot” is used loosely:

Dirk McDonald knows that he’s gay. He’s known since he was young, when the carefree grandmother who raised him tells him it’s just a phase. He has a crush on his best friend Pup, but their relationship ends when Pup starts to date girls to hide his growing attraction to Dirk. “I love you, Dirk, but I can’t handle it.” Dirk lashes out, hiding his fear at himself and the seemingly cruel world around him by building himself an armor of punk rock persona and losing himself in music and violent dancing. Then one night after he tells some skinheads what he thinks about their swastika tattoos, he gets beaten up. Thus begins the much weirder second part of the book, where, in a weird dream/coma state Dirk’s great grandmother appears and tells him her story, and the story of his grandmother, and of his parents, two beat poets who “let go of life” one night in a car accident. Then at the end of the dream a genie appears and tells him about a man named Duck who, we’re supposed to presume, is his future love interest and reason to cling to life.

Aaaand that plot description was about five times racier than the book actually is. It’s only about 100 pages, and most of that is lyrical description. He doesn’t even say the word “gay” until he admits it to a ghost/hallucination of his father on page 86. There’s no sex, certainly nothing described graphically. Dirk mostly contents himself with yearningly thinking about kissing or just not being alone all the time. The word “faggot” is used a few times, mostly by the skinheads who beat him into unconsciousness. So I can’t really decide what “specific words” are “slanderous to all males”, especially if the people objecting and demanding $30,000 for emotional damage didn’t read the book carefully but only glanced through it since it was on display. Unless ladybugs and butterflies are slanderous to all men, because there WAS an awful lot of bug metaphors. Oh, and symbolic dancing. And beat poetry. So, yeah, public burning totes justified.

Seriously, I can’t even really find any “juicy parts” to quote. Unless you count this passage from the beginning, which is something he imagines while playing with his toy trains:

“He was on a train with the fathers–all naked and cookie-colored and laughing. There under the blasts of warm water spurting from the walls as the train moved slick through the land. All the bunching calf muscles dripping water and biceps full of power comforted Dirk. He tried to see his own father’s face but there was always too much steam.”

Later, he dreams of the same train, but instead of water coming out of the shower heads, it’s deadly, deadly gas. There’s a light sprinkling of anti-Nazism running through the book which seems slightly strange just because it remains unelaborated upon. I liked the language of this book. I was able to read it in about an hour, and it was almost like reading poetry. I was afraid it was going to be an angsty typical teen-problem novel, and, although the themes were similar, it had a very light touch, the exact opposite of the usual heavy-handed teen problem fare.

The worst I can say about it is the cover’s kind of blah:

Tagged: , ,

Posted in Banned Books, Book Reviews |

Weekend Book Roundup: The Lost Conspiracy and Skulduggery Pleasant

July 27th, 2010 by pladd

This weekend was pretty awesome as far as books go. First I read:

The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge

The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge

Which I decided to read since I liked Fly By Night so much. As always, Hardinge’s world-building is superb, this time bringing us to the island of Gullstruck, covered in jungles and slave to the whims of its many volcanoes. From many of the native tribes on the island come the peculiar Lost, a group of people whose senses are not tied to their bodies and who can therefore send their sight or hearing drifting miles away from them at will. Hathin thinks she occupies one of the lowliest places in this world in her starving village, one of the hated and feared Lace Tribe. It’s her job to make sure no one ever finds out that her sister, Arilou, famed as the only Lost among the Lace, is not really Lost at all, but “wander-witted”. Or is she? This point becomes especially murky when all of the other Lost mysteriously die at the same time one night, and everyone blames the Lace and Arilou in particular. Hathin and Arilou flee their village to trek all over Gullstruck fleeing their enemies (an evil traveling dentist; racial prejudice) and amassing allies (a group of revenge-seekers; an elephant bird; a governor who’s a little too obsessed with sacrificing ridiculous things to his ancestors, like soap; volcanoes). I don’t think I identified with the characters as much as in Fly By Night but the sense of place was well worth the read.

You should read this book if:
1) You sometimes feel totally invisible in favor of a sibling
2) You like your messages about racial prejudice in an exciting format
3) Sentient volcanoes!

Next up:

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy


I liked this, but I also felt like the book I was reading was three drafts away from being complete and I would like the final copy a lot better. This is the first in a series, so maybe I should read the sequel and see how I feel. Basically, Stephanie is a normal 12-year-old when her uncle dies suddenly and leaves her his house and fortune. It’s there that she meets some men who are trying to kill her for unclear reasons and one of her uncle’s old friends named Skulduggery Pleasant. He’s a mage, private detective, and skeleton. They end up on a quest through Dublin’s magical underbelly to save the world from an evil maniac sorcerer who wants to use your basic Magical Doomsday Device to bring back Evil Ancient Gods Who Want to Destroy Humanity. The Good Part: Skulduggery Pleasant is pretty bitchin. The Bad Part: Stephanie is the main character. It’s generally a good choice to not write a book from the point of view of your most kickass character, but you can tell that Landy really, really wants to, to the point where you have something I’m titling the “Watson-Holmes Effect”. Holmes is clearly the superstar of that pairing, until the point where Watson is hardly even a character anymore in terms of plot, but rather someone who can remark often about how great Holmes is. Also, Stephanie is annoying. I can’t tell if I would have thought so when I was in this book’s target age group or not, but I think so. She’s the particular kind of irritating that some people think makes them sound precocious and mature. Also, there is a point where you can have TOO MUCH banter (shocking, I know).

You should read this book if:
1) Terry Pratchett’s books about Death are your favorite
2) You are all about unattributed dialogue
3) You have always dreamed of choosing your own name

OH RIGHT. That’s the other thing. So in this world, you have three names. The name you were born with, which you probably don’t know but would recognize on some unconscious level, the name you were given, what your parents named you, and the name you chose. A fake name you made up that protects your other two names from being used in spells against you. The name is also supposed to be some kind of reflection of who you are deep inside or something. Hence Skulduggery Pleasant, Nefarian Serpine, China Sorrows, Mr. Bliss, Ghastly Bespoke etc. Guess which one is the bad guy. And when dear Stephanie finally gets around to choosing one for herself: Valkyrie Cain. I bet there are real people out there named Valkyrie, but I also would be unable to take them seriously. Unless they were also a Warrior Mage Princess Sparklpire Unicorn-Riding French-Speaker. Who was a mermaid.

However, on the plus side, I cannot stop thinking about ridiculous things I should name myself. You know, if Pladd is out.

Tagged:

Posted in Book Reviews |

Book Review: Kids’ Letters to Harry Potter

July 27th, 2010 by pladd

I can’t decide how I feel about one of the books I checked out this weekend, Bill Adler’s Kids’ Letters to harry Potter from Around the World:
And yet there's not a "Kids' Letters to Lady Orville"

On the one hand, I think the idea of publishing random letters children write to anyone is awesome, double points for fictional characters, but I also think Bill Adler handled it sort of weirdly. My main gripe is that interspersed throughout the letters in the book were random black and white drawings of Random Fantasy Creatures 24-37 from Lisa Frank‘s An October of Orcs collection. Since they didn’t even remotely resemble Harry Potter characters/creatures, I began to suspect that someone deep in the production process of this book was only vaguely aware of what Harry Potter is actually about.

In all, there were about three kinds of letters in this book. Here are some examples I made up just now:

Letter Type 1: The Compulsive Questioner
Dear Harry,
How are you? How are Ron and Hermione? Tell them Hi from me. How is Professor Dumbledore? How is Hagrid? Are the Dursleys still being mean to you? Is Snape still taking points away from Gryffindor? Have you taught Neville to remember the common room passwords yet? Have you heard from Sirius? How are Fred and George? How did you feel when [insert plot of an entire Harry Potter book of your choice]? Please write back soon with the answers to my questions!
Sincerely,
Inquisitive Child

PS: Sorry I couldn’t send this by owl. My owl’s broken.

Letter Type 2: The Stalker
Dear Harry,
How has your summer been? I hope the Dursleys aren’t locking you in your room again and that you can spend time with Ron and his family. You don’t even know who I am!!! My name is Megan and I’m a muggle from America. You are probably wondering how I even know you! Don’t worry about it.
Were you scared when Professor Trelawney predicted your death? Why don’t you just quit like Hermione? I like Hermione best because she is smart and amazing, just like me. You are my second favorite, though. Are four poster beds comfortable? Does Neville snore? How annoying does that get? You are probably wondering how I know all this about you, but don’t worry, I don’t spy on you at school or anything.
Saving your toenail clippings,
Stalker Child

PS: Sorry I couldn’t send this by owl. I’ll just leave it on your pillow.

Letter Type 3: The Fanfiction Sorceress
Dear Harry,
How are you? I’m fine. My muggle name is Anne, but I am really a very powerful sorceress named Zenella Araminta Arabellanna. I have long silver hair and sparkling blue eyes. I always wear beautiful blue dresses and silver shoes to match my hair and my eyes change color when I have different emotions, or just to match my clothes. I go to school at a wizard academy you probably haven’t heard of. It flies around in the air, and we all ride dragons to class. I am Head Girl and also Captain of my Quidditch Team where I am a seeker just like you. I am part mermaid and also part veela! Do you have any pets? I have a pet unicorn and a pet phoenix. Their names are Midnight Shadows and Sky Dancer. Maybe I will be an exchange student to Hogwarts soon and I will meet you. We will have to play Quidditch against each other!! I will probably beat you, but then we can go on a date.
Perfectly Yours,
Mary Sue

PS: Sorry I couldn’t send this by owl. My owl died. I think Sky Dancer and Midnight Shadows ate it for being too normal.

Tagged: , ,

Posted in Book Reviews |

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Site and contents are © 2009-2024 Patricia Ladd, all rights reserved. | Admin Login | Design by Steven Wiggins.