Showing posts with label WORTHY!. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WORTHY!. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Algeria is Beautiful Like America by Olivia Burton, Mahi Grand


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This story had an interesting effect on me because I liked it even though it's not the normal sort of story I like. Most stories that involve people recounting a travelogue - finding their roots or worse, finding themselves, bore me to death, but this one sounded interesting and miraculously it actually was. I think the author can thank Michael Palin for preparing the way with his story of his adventures in the Sahara, which I enjoyed immensely. This story was well-told to begin with, and very competently illustrated by Mahi Grand with sweet, gray-scale drawings.

The one thing I really honestly neither got nor liked about the story was the last two words of the title. Why "Like America"? It seemed like shameless pandering to an American audience. Why not "Like France"? Why not just leave it at "Algeria is Beautiful" or better yet, "Algeria The Beautiful" which both makes a powerful statement and harks to the poem Pike's Peak by Katharine Lee Bates.

The author's family hailed from Algeria, but as French citizens, they had to flee during the civil war in the 1960s, when her grandparents literally flew across the Mediterranean and settled in France. Unlike most people, the author's grandparents did not view the South of France as a paradise. Instead they viewed it as a poor man's Algeria which amused me! After hearing so much, one way or another, about Algeria, the author decided she had to visit and check out her grandparent's roots. She gave up on her hope of collecting some friends to travel with her. She should have asked me! I would have loved to have gone had I been single.

So, alone, with only the name of a contact in Algeria, she traveled. It's no spoiler to say she made it there and back safely since she could not have written this had she not (this is why first person voice horror and thriller fiction doesn't work! But I digress!). Anyway, she has some great fun, some disturbing moments, some confusing ones, and some very happy ones, and a lot of other emotions in between. The story was well-told, was entertaining, and kept me reading. I recommend this as a worthy read.


Tuesday, April 24, 2018

This Is a Taco! by Andrew Cangelose, Josh Shipley


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This short, illustrated story was hilarious. Told as a children's story about a perky and rebellious (and it must be said, slightly corpulent) little squirrel, it starts out innocently enough, introducing us to the squirrel and its habitat and foods, but as the descriptions are trotted out, the squirrel becomes more and more disappointed in its own story. "Wait I eat bark?" (or words to that effect) it complains at one point. Its preferred food is, of course, tacos, and who can argue with that? I can say without fear of common diction that some of the best squirrels I know are partial to tacos. They don't like the soft ones, only the hard ones. This completely explains corpulent squirrels.

Now you know those redheads are feisty (at least that's what every YA writer, and not a few grown-up writers, would have us believe), so it's not surprising that the story deteriorates further (for the squirrel, not for the reader!) when we learn that the hawk likes to prey on squirrels. I won't go into any more details otherwise I'll start laughing and won't be able to finish this review. Oh! Too late! I feel the titters and giggles coming on! if you can't find a laugh on the Internet, then Giggle it! Let me finish quickly by saying: this is hilarious and the work thinks marvelously outside the book. I fully recommend this for a highly amusing read.


Saturday, April 21, 2018

Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan


Rating: WORTHY!

This is a simple story, simply, but cutely illustrated in color, of the very charming little owl who starts the night flying around the countryside and greeting fellow animals as little owls are wont to do. It was a sweet and a speedy read for sending a child off to noddy-land, perhaps with dreams of themselves flying around the forest. There's no better way to put a child down for the night than by reading (or just telling) them a story which may in turn give them fun, imaginative, and sweet dreams, and this one is a worthy read. There's no better way to stimulate a child's imagination than to read to them, and no better thing you can do for a child's mind than to make it think outside the box.


Malala's Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai, Kerascoët


Rating: WORTHY!

I favorably reviewed Malala Yousafzai's I Am Malala back in August of 2015, and also Raphaële Frier's book about her, aimed at young children, back in October of 2016. This is a book for younger children still, and was penned by Yousafzai and illustrated by Kerascoët, which is the joint nom de plume of artists Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset.

Beautifully written and gorgeously illustrated, it tells an autobiographical story of Malala's childhood fancy and dream, and of what she wished for in a world which was and still is extremely hostile to half the population. I think it makes a worthy read for anyone. I'm truly sorry that it may not reach those children who are most in need of hearing these words.


The Boy from Tomorrow by Camille DeAngelis


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I loved this novel! Josephine and Cassandra are sisters living in Edwardstown, New York State, in 1915. Their mother is a medium who may or may not be genuine, but she is also a cruel and vengeful schemer who thinks nothing of forcing her younger daughter, Cassie, to eat a whole pudding that she naughtily sampled, even if it makes her sick. She thinks nothing of confining the rebellious Cassie to a cupboard for an entire day for speaking back to her, not even lettign ehr out for a bathroom visit. The two daughters are kept cut-off from society and are essentially prisoners.

A century away from this drama, Alec, who happens to be pretty much the same age as Josie, together with his divorced mother, moves into that same address, and through an antique Ouija board which Alec discovers in the house, he somehow miraculously makes contact with Josie, and they become friends. Unfortunately, Josie's mother learns of her Ouija board assignations and seeks to tap Alec's future information for her own ends, holding Josie hostage to force him to meet her demands.

The story is told in third person (thank you, Camille DeAngelis, you are a goddess amongst YA and middle-grade authors!), and it alternates from Alec's perspective to Josie's, and back again with each chapter and without losing moment or engagement. Despite its length, it makes for a fast and easy read, brings the reader in from the start, and holds them captive rather like poor Cassie and Josie are captive, but by a lot more pleasant means! I really enjoyed this book it was original entertaining, and a breath of fresh air. I highly recommend it.


The Heart and the Fist by Eric Greitens


Rating: WORTHY!

This was yet another audiobook I picked up on spec from my sterling local library, and while I confess to some disappointment in it, I have to recommend this as a worthy read overall.

The blurb makes much of the author's Navy Seal training and service, but that portion of this story occupied less than a third of the book! This disappointed me, because it was the part in which I was most interested. The rest of the book covers his time in college, which includes some interesting experiences in Rwanda and China, but he also rambled on and on...and on about boxing, which bored the pants off me (fortunately, not literally, which would have been embarrassing), but I skipped this part wholesale.

For me this was the biggest problem with what was otherwise a decent read: the author seemed not to know how to prioritize, which felt to me like an extraordinary flaw in a writer whose professional career must have consisted - as an officer in the Seals - in reliably and ably setting priorities! I guess he wrote about what made most impression on him without wondering if it would have that same impact on the reader.

While his entire story, taken as a whole, was worth listening to, I can't help but think that others might have wished for more about his military experiences too; however, what there was of them was educational and of real interest, and this is the part to which I listened most intently. Once again he reiterates what I've heard from other knowledgeable and competent sources: torture isn't the way to get information out of terrorism suspects. Who knew?!

The book is read by the author and he does a good job. I'm very much in favor of authors reading their own work in audiobooks although it seems to happen infrequently. I don't think anyone can feel their work better than the person who wrote it, and therefore cannot give it the life it deserves like the author can. There were times when this author's diction was less than crystal clear, and he had a habit of starting a sentence five by five (as a military person might say) and then tending somewhat to a wooden two by two as he finished which resulted in an incoherent mumble form time to time, but this was no big deal.

There was one section where he went on at length about a ceremony involved in crossing the equator for the first time, but while I am sure this was memorable and meaningful to him, it was completely lost on me as far as entertaining reading goes, and once again it went on interminably. I lost patience with that and skipped it as I did with his boxing stories. Other than that I found this book to be eminently listenable, moving, and satisfying, and I recommend it.


Friday, April 13, 2018

I Am Enough by Grace Byers, Keturah A Bobo


Rating: WORTHY!

This was an amazingly strong book aimed at encouraging inner-strength, confidence, and independence in young girls. It was sweetly worded by Grace Byers, and beautifully illustrated by Keturah Bobo, with a short text and a large, colorful drawing on every page. It showed a diverse cast of characters, all of them expressing themselves fearlessly, making friends, being nice, and being unafraid to be themselves and to explore everything they could, including themselves as friends, explorers, and human beings! I think this would make a great gift for any young girl, and I recommend it.


Friday, April 6, 2018

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo


Rating: WORTHY!

Read with gusto and love by Jenna Lamia, this was an adorable audiobook story. It was literally short and sweet and very amusing. The three main characters were brilliantly-drawn and admirably entertaining. The author's name was so familiar to me that I thought I'd read something by her before, but I can't find any record of it, so this is evidently my first encounter. I plan on it not being the last. This was a pleasant find. I tend to experiment a lot more with audiobooks than other formats, and many of them fail because of that. Once in a while a gem like this comes along and makes all of the unsatisfactory assaults on my ears bearable!

Raymie isn't a Nightingale, she's a Clarke. Nightingale is the book about Florence (of the lamp, not of Tuscany, which is really Firenza) which Raymie was taking to read to a resident of a retirement home (Raymie has to do good deeds). Raymie is missing her father, who ran off with a dental hygienist, and she figures if she wins the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition (which requires good deeds and baton-twirling), her father would see her picture in the paper and be so proud of her, and miss her so much that he would immediately return home and all would be well.

Raymie has a lot to learn about guys.

Also competing in the contest is Louisiana Elefante, daughter of the Flying Elefantes, the famous trapeze artists, now deceased. Louisiana has 'swampy lungs', and is living with her kleptomaniac grandmother. They are so poor that Louisiana is counting on winning the contest to shore-up their finances.

Beverly Tapinski has no intention of winning the contest. She hates these contests so much that she's dedicated to sabotaging this one. The only reason these three girls meet is that they all show up for baton-twirling lessons as taught by the irascible Ida Knee who is the antithesis of long-suffering. The girls don't really get along too well to begin with, but inevitably they get into bizarre and amusing mishaps and scrapes, and are drawn into a tight trio who call themselves The Rancheros (it's Louisiana's idea). That's all I'm going to tell you. Like I said, the story is short and it's fun, so what have you to lose? Very little time if you don't like it. I loved it and I recommend it.


Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Graphix Goes to School by various authors


Rating: WORTHY!

This was a cute, small format, and amusing little graphic collection of stories related to school. It's mostly an advertising flyer (or a sampler, if you like) for full length comics, but that's not a bad thing when you get an amusing story (at least amusing if you're middle grade or thereabouts!), and it's a good way to find comics that might interest and entertain you. Graphix is an imprint of Scholastic, and I have no affiliation with either, fyi!

There is less than seventy pages and eleven stories all told (so to speak!), so they're very short:

  1. Dream Jumper: Permanent Detention by Greg Grunberg, Lucas Turnbloom, Guy Major is a poor kid trapped in a dreamworld (or maybe a nightmare world...) of detention until he's busted out by a friend. It has a certain element of gross-out, but it's not too bad. Graphics and color are nice.
  2. Amulet Stonekeeper School by Kazu Kiribuishi is semi serious fantasy tale about kids with magical amulets. Who can ask for more?! Nicely drawn
  3. Bird & Squirrel by James Burks is about bird and squirrel - what did you expect?! Very stylistic illustration which might be useful for young kids to copy.
  4. Sunny Side Up by Jennifer L Holm and Matthew Holm is how I spent my summer kind of a story and it's a doozy. Artwork scrappy but effective.
  5. Space Dumplins by Craig Thompson features kids and aliens in a satellite school. Nice art.
  6. Twist and Pout by Jimmy Gownley is about a shy kid at a school dance. Simplistically, but nicely drawn.
  7. Newsprints by Ru Xu is about a first day at a new school and has great art.
  8. Nnewts (yes I spelled it right!) by Doug TenNapel is not so well illustrated but tells a fun tale of a school for...yep, you guessed it - newts! Talking newts. We've all been there.
  9. Cleopatra in Space by Mike Maihack. What more is there to say? Maybe that the art is quite good?
  10. The King of Kazoo by Norm Feuti is am amusingly and startlingly illustrated story of a strange people. Really intriguing art.
  11. Ghosts! by Raina Telgemeier is an intro to a new comic (or at least new at the time this was published) about a new girl at school who seems to be quite pleased that it's not haunted. But she could be mistaken.... Art is simply but not awful.

So all in all I think this is a fun read, and a chance to maybe find something you might like to follow on a longer-length more permanent basis. As such, I recommend it.


Sunday, April 1, 2018

Poorcraft by C Spike Trotman, Diana Nock


Rating: WORTHY!

This book was awesome! It tells you how to survive economically with scores of practical ideas and a host of references, and it covers a huge variety of topics, and will be of particular interest to college students, but also to anyone who is living on very limited means. It's also humorous and beautifully drawn in very bold black and white line images by Diana Nock.

It covers housing, food, fashion, health, transportation, entertainment, education and emergencies, and it has an appendix of links and resources. It offers advice on how to take out a loan, how to avoid taking out a loan, and how to pay back loans even if you feel you're sinking rather than swimming. It offers tips on how to save on groceries, how to find a place to live, how to make sure your housemates are good ones, how to find cheap or free furniture, how to put together a collection of tools for do-it-yourself projects and fixing-up places. In short, it covers pretty much everything you need to know to live cheaply and successfully. I fully recommend this one as an entertaining read and a useful tool to have around in itself!


Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane, Christian de Metter


Rating: WORTHY!

I favorably reviewed the print version of this novel in November of 2017. This graphic novel version is also a worthy read, although I have to say I wasn't overly enamored of the artwork. It was mostly sepia-toned and was passable. Others may approve of it more than I, but to me it looked rather muddy and scrappy. These shortcomings - at least the scrappiness - became much more apparent in the full color images. However the story overall was well told and the art work was not disastrous. Please read my review from November for my full take on the novel. This version would make a decent substitute if you don't want to read the full-length story.


Wnaethom Ni Ddim Rhoi'r Gorau Iddi by Richard Carlson


Rating: WORTHY!

This is a book that's currently free on barnes and Noble. The English title is We Didn't Give Up. It's described as a "Children's Picture Book" although the pictures are few, and are simple black and white line drawings that look more like chickens than ducks! That aside, the text is in English and then Welsh. There are other versions, such as Dutch, Haitian Creole, Italian, Spanish, Thai, and so on. The author also has other books created along these same lines, but this is the only one of his I've read.

The story tells of a mom and her three ducklings heading to the pond for a swim, being repeatedly interrupted by a very strong wind, but the mom and her ducklings do not give up and of course eventually are blown into oblivion. April Fool! I'm kidding, Of course they make it to the pond. I think this is a great idea for kids who want to learn English - or a second language, but there's no pronunciation guide given to the lingo either for the English version or the foreign (to me!) language version interspersed with it.

That said I still think it's a fun simple story that can help learn a new language and so I recommend it. Learning another language - and it doesn't matter which, or even if it's a computer language or music, which is another language, or math, which is yet another language - can really improve a child's mind and help them to think outside the box, so it's worth the effort.


The Angry Chef's Guide to Spotting Bullsh*t in the World of Food by Anthony Warner


Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
“...repelling into your body...” I believe the author meant 'rappelling'.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

What better way to start out All Fool's Day than to review a book about idiotic diet fads? In a world where women in particular and especially in the west, are made to feel ugly and worthless if they do not conform to the fashion magazine, television, and Hollywood 'standard' of beauty (i.e. thin as a rake and endowed with hourglass curves and unnaturally flawless skin), you can't blame people for wanting to trim themselves a little, but there are far too many immoral rip-off artists willing to step up and offer snake-oil and quakery to women who have, their entire lives, been primed and weakened to buy into anything which will get them into conformity with the idiotic heights that society seeks to impose upon them.

While it does no-one harm to exercise appropriately and eat wisely, the diet business is a sixty billion dollar industry in the USA alone and yet people are fatter now than they've ever been. That should tell you how fraudulent the whole thing is. However heavy or light your body is, it has a natural weight that it likes to stay close to and it will fight you with some very effective hormones if you try to force it out of that zone. That's not to say it can't be done, but the road to that end is paved with misery, failure, and a constant struggle.

You know things are bad if even Walmart voluntarily steps-up and decides to remove one if its beauty and fashion magazines from the check-out aisle because it's been deemed too obsessed with women being sexualized. If you take a look at those magazines, they rarely have a cover which doesn't mention diet, looks, and/or sex. These magazines are known for air-brushing flaws out of women's skin and Photoshopping them to make them look even thinner than they may already be. Children are bombarded with these images every time they pass through the checkout. On the one side are the magazines essentially telling women how ugly and fat they are, and on the other side of the same aisle are the calorie-laden candy bars and potato chips. That ought to tell you something about how schizophrenic we are in this world of body image which we created for ourselves.

When I requested this from Net Galley I had never heard of the Angry Chef, but the idea of it amused me. I was really pleased to learn that not only does the Author have BSc degree in biochemistry from Manchester University, he's also very much a scientist in his approach to analyzing fad diets, and he gives no quarter in tackling them one after another in this volume, pointing out in no uncertain terms how idiotic and baseless they are.

In Part One 'Gateway Pseuodscience', he covers an important topic: the difference between causation and correlation. Just because something occurs at the same time as something else doesn't automatically mean one was caused by the other. He attacks so-called 'detox' diets and alkaline diets, and he covers the topics of regression to the mean, and 'the remembering self'.

In Part Two we learn about 'when science goes wrong' and meet Science Columbo, coconut oil, the paleo diet, antioxidants, and...sugar! (Its not as bad as you think!). Part Three brings 'the influence of pseudoscience', featuring a history of quacks, the power of ancient wisdom, processed foods, clean eating, and eating disorders. Part Four takes us into 'the dark heart of pseudoscience' and educates us on relative risk, the GAPS diet, and cancer. Not ethat some of his titles and opening paragraphs are laden with sarcasm, so beware that you may think you're having your bias confirmed as you seem to be led in one direction, only to discover that your destination is elsewhere.

If I had three complaints, the first would be that the print version is a tree-slaughtering device if it goes to a long print run, because it has unnecessarily wide margins and generous text-spacing, No-one wants to see a page that's literally black with text, but a wiser publisher - one which actually cared about trees and climate change, could have narrowed the margins and shorted the book considerably by doing so.

My second complaint - be warned - is that the language is a little on the blue side and unnecessarily so in my opinion. There are four-letter words distributed throughout the text, not commonly, but often enough. I thought that was entirely unnecessary. I have no problem with such words in say, a novel, but in a non-fiction book of this nature, I think that language can be dispensed with and thereby reach a wider audience in doing so. It amused me that the cover was so prim and proper that it included an asterisk in the title - like that really disguises what the word is? Seriously? I know an author has no control over the cover when they turn over their book to a regular publisher (which to me is a travesty), but they do have a lot of say over what's inside that cover.

The third issue was that the book was a little long-winded for my taste (336 pages, of which - if you exclude the prologue and the epilogue which I always do), runs to some 286 pages of main text. The extra pages include end notes and two appendices, but the rest of the book was a bit rambling at times. Overall though, I enjoyed it. I loved the exposure of fads and quackery (Gwyneth Paltrow comes in for a well-deserved hammering) as well as a host of less well-known figures in the world of food faddism. The book contains a solid introduction to the scientific approach in which far too many of us are lacking, especially in the USA, land of fundamentalism, conspiracy and fad. The principles learned here can be applied outside the narrow field of diet and food, and I recommend this one as a worthy read.


Sunday, March 25, 2018

The Ghost The Owl by Franco, Sara Richard


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a different kind of story, beautifully illustrated by Sara Richard in almost day-glo colors, with a swirling impressionistic style reminiscent in some parts, of van Gogh's rather impressionistic The Starry Night. Not that Van Gogh ever liked that painting! But let's not get too pretentious: the images were lovely and had an inherent ghostliness in them and still carried the dark threat of a deep night. If that's what the artist was aiming for, she nailed it!

The story is short (less than fifty pages), but it would have dragged had it been longer. It's just long enough. The animals see this young ghost wandering aimlessly through their forested, swampy world and discuss her raison d'être. The owl decides to do more than this, and it leads to an interesting tale since both the ghost and the owl have a backstory, and it seems that each one crosses paths with the other in interesting ways.

I really enjoyed the simplicity of the story which couches a slightly more complex tale within, and the whole thing comes together in finely-wrought style. It has ups and down, and not predictable ones either, and it has some great story-telling. I liked it a lot and I recommend it as a worthy read.


Saturday, March 24, 2018

Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston


Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"Max opened ajar of honey-covered peanuts" should be "a jar"
"I don't have a million pounds just lying around to fix my father's fuckup." - The amount is a hundred million pounds, so I don't know if this is in error or just a character misspeaking.
"she wouldn't upset Stevie by killing him." - the phrase should, I believe, be precisely the opposite: she would upset Stevie by killing him.
"I'm going to crack his jackal bones like kindle." should read " I'm going to crack his jackal bones like kindling." Let's not give Amazon's crappy app any more due than it's worth, which isn't much! Now if it had read "I'm going to crack his jackal bones like a Kindle device," I would have found that funny!
There was a section that read (in part) "...last few months, but they’re already booked through the first of the year.” that was all in Italics. I think the first word of that section, 'is', was intended to be in italics, but the rest of it was not.
There was a merged paragraph where the second person's speech ran into the first person's without having a paragraph break between them so it read, “Out.” “Fine.”
There was also a sentence which began with Or, and which should have had a question mark after it but didn't. I was too tired to copy & paste it at the time and when I tried to find that in Amazon's crappy Kindle app, I discovered that their crappy search engine isn't case specific so when I searched for "Or" it found a bizillion of them including examples such as 'door', 'before', 'woodworking', 'disorder, and on and on. It should be easy to find it in a word processor.
One last one I noticed which may or may not be a mistake. At one point there was mentioned a "duffel Dbag." I have no idea what this is. I've never heard of a duffel Dbag before, so I wonder if it might be a mistake?

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

So this hilarious story is about the MacKilligan sisters: Charlie, Max, and Stevie. They all have the same father, but each a different mother. They're all honey badger hybrid shifters, and all are dangerous and violent, or at least paranoid when off their meds - which at least two of them are taking. I had the opportunity to read a sneak preview back in September 2017, which turned out to be the prologue of this book. Normally I don't read prologues because they're useless and antiquated, but that was all I got back then, so I read it and I really liked the idea and the story.

I'm not a fan of urban fantasy stories or of series and this was both - at least I assume it's volume one in a series - and this is the first such volume I've read in a long time where I'd actually welcome a volume two. That's very high praise from me! For me in general, it's tedious to read stories of endless werewolves and vampires all looking the same, behaving the same, doing the same things over and over. It goes completely against my grain to read a paranormal romance - which are beyond tedious and well into laughable. This book skillfully avoided that trap and instead went for the humor and the action, and especially for the out-of-left-field off-the-wall situations and it was right up my alley. I would love to see a movie of this.

The market is glutted with bad paranormal and urban fantasy stores, most of which are boring cookie-cutter vomit, and few writers seem to have the smarts or the ability to move on and write something different. This author is definitely not in that category. I don't usually have much interest in shifter stories, but the idea of reading about honey badgers was very appealing to me. I was thrilled to get a chance to read the whole novel (minus the prologue!) and I enjoyed this one thoroughly because it was so different from the run of the mill uninventive werewolf and vampire romances. This one actually had a story! it also had a romance but thankfully that was not the point of the story and it was well written.

I have to say I am not a fan of prologues or epilogues and this book had both. I honestly do not get why authors don't simply label them chapter one and Chapter whatever-the-last-chapter-number-is. The very word 'epilogue' puts me to sleep. But I read this one and it was, in effect, the prologue to volume two. Please no more epilogues and prologues! But please, volume two!

Anyway...the MacKilligan trio's father is a shiftless shifter, a worthless piece of non-human trash, and no one knows it better than the MacKilligans themselves. When they learn that he's dead, they're thrilled by the prospect of identifying the body, but you know how this is going to turn out, right? He's alive, he has absconded with a hundred millions pounds from his Scots relatives, and they are after him, and after the MacKilligan sisters to find their father. Other people are also after them, either to recruit them because they're so violent and deadly, or to kill them because...they're so violent and deadly.

This is the world we're in and oh my, there are lions, and tigers, and bears! The MacKilligans are semi-adopted by the bears who provide some protection, but this doesn't protect them from the machinations of their father, who is as sneaky as he is dishonest, and the kind of man who would be willing even to sell his children if he thought he could come out ahead on the deal. But to put that in perspective, the MacKilligan family is widespread and not altogether properly hinged. And that's the nicest thing you can say about many of them; then there's the wedding...and cousin Dutch.

Fortunately, theres also Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan, who is equal to any challenge. And her half-sister Max, who is barely shy of psychotic, and who regularly has knock-down-drag-out fights with kid half-sister Stevie, a bona-fide genius who is completely paranoid. Especially of bears. But they're sisters, and no one better try to mess with them.

This was a really beautifully-realized world, populated with interesting individuals. Even the bad guys were fascinating and nuanced. If I had any complaints, I have to say the story was a little bit on the long side and I was somewhat disappointed it wasn't nicely wrapped-up after this volume. Also there seemed to be far too many shifters for the human population not to be completely aware of them. And I won't get into the biological issues of inter-species mating (if two animals - or plants! - can successfully mate, they're the same species!). The definition of a species is that it can't mate outside it's own species. Since this is paranormal, pretty much anything goes, but I always think it would be nice to have some sort of rationale behind it, no matter how hazy!

Like I said, not a fan of series, but I'd read volume two and follow this series if it maintained (as opposed to tainted) the high standards set in this novel. I'd even buy this volume in hardback just to have it on my shelf, so hopefully I don't have to spell out that I fully recommend this. It's one of the best books I've ever read and unquestionably the best novel I've read this year.


Friday, March 9, 2018

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes


Rating: WORTHY!

Jewell Parker Rhodes is an award-winning author and this is my first reading of anything by her. Her novel Ninth Ward, the first book in her "Louisiana Girls" trilogy, won the Coretta Scott King Honor Award.

This novel walks lock-step with the Black Lives Matter movement by telling the story of a twelve year old black child who was shot by a white cop. The circumstances of the death are almost a re-telling of the shooting death of Tamir Rice in November 2014. That was the same year that Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald were also shot in August and October.

This is too many controversial shootings in so short a period of time and without question something needs desperately to change. This book, I believe, can constitute a first step in the right direction especially given that it appears to be aimed at a middle-grade readership.

Jerome is the kid shot in the back by a white police officer after he was playing with a toy gun from which the orange tip had been removed making it look much more like a real gun. The story is told from Jerome's perspective now that he has become one of the ghost boys: dead black kids who have suffered a similar fate to him. Among the membership of this ghostly group is Emmett Till. The book is a little disjointed and sometimes a bit hard to follow because it jumps back and forth too much between Jerome 'ghost' and Jerome 'alive and well' in flashbacks.

Sarah is the daughter of the cop who, let's face it, murdered Jerome. I guess technically it was 'involuntary manslaughter' since he didn’t go out there with malice aforethought, intent upon killing him, although the cop seemed to be arguing for 'voluntary manslaughter' because he was farcically claiming it was in self-defense.

I thought it was grossly unfair to show him 'getting away with it', but this seems to happen unsurprisingly, disturbingly often. The stark contrast between Jerome's impoverished life, his poorly-appointed school, and the bullying he suffers every day, and Sarah's privileged white kid existence is starkly drawn. He and Sarah bond (a little too quickly to be frank, but then this is a short novel!), and Sarah gets an education. Jerome does too.

This novel told such a good story and was so well written that I did not want to find fault with it, and I really couldn't except in two areas. The first of these is very minor: there was one quoted speech which was missing a closing quote mark at location 1788 in Amazon's crappy Kindle app where Sarah says 'He's got awards for bravery. Saving lives' The speech continues as a separate quote on the next line. Matching quotes is the bane of all writers' lives. Isn't there an app for that?!

The other complaint is a bit more involved. The author was (and rightly in my opinion) trying to strike a fine balance between the wrong of this child being killed and the right of trying to find a non-violent and understanding way to resolve this ongoing crisis. I felt that certain avenues went sadly unexplored though.

Later in the story, Sarah creates a website, and on it she lists certain facts about this inexcusable slaughter, such as "Did you know black people are shot by cops two and a half times more than white people? But they’re only twelve percent of the population." That to me was a somewhat misleading statistic not because it's not true, but because it's taken out of much larger and very important context. This story doesn't delve deep enough because the issue is far more complex than is depicted here but again this is middle-grade level, so we can't expect everything!

It’s the same problem when Jerome asks a little later if this disaster we see going on every day is because of slavery, and I think there was a missed teaching opportunity here. I think that keeping it this simple doesn't do justice to the middle-graders who are reading this, because while, yes, slavery was a tragic blunder that still echoes today, it’s not the proximate cause.

Black people are shot by cops more often because black people come into contact with cops in taut situations more often than whites, but this higher homicide rate in the black community isn't because they're black, it’s because black people are far more likely to come from impoverished and otherwise deprived backgrounds than are any other race. This in turn leads people into criminal - or at least questionable - activities and that in turn leads them into interactions with police.

Only a complete moron would make assumptions based on a person's skin color (or gender, or religion, and so on). Such assumptions are proven wrong over and over again as more unarmed black people are shot by whites, including by cops, but I don't believe this has to do with slavery.

I believe it has to do with fear induced by misunderstandings and to be frank, sometimes helped along by a certain amount of 'attitude' in the black community about entitlement and privilege, and misplaced notions of respect. The bottom line is that respect has to be earned! You don't get to have it simply because you're person A, or have religion X or skin color Y. And you sure don't deserve it if you have to demand it aggressively from people you don't even know and who certainly do not know you, nor would they want to if you have too much bad attitude! Racism cuts both ways

There was another issue which was unexplored here, which was the gun. This story exactly paralleled the Tamir Rice tragedy. Jerome was playing with a toy gun which had had the orange muzzle cover removed so that it looked real. In a side-by-side comparison, it's easy to tell the fake, but a cop doesn't have that privilege. In a tense situation, when their life may be at dire risk, taking time to accurately determine what you're dealing with could mean the difference between living and dying.

I was sorry the author didn't bring up that fraught issue and the utter stupidity of toy manufacturers in making toy guns look so much like the real thing, especially when the farcical orange barrel tip can be readily removed. Can we not make the whole gun fluorescent orange? Can parents not simply make the assertive decision never to buy realistic-looking weapons for their children? None of the issue of parental responsibility in raising kids to be smarter than Jerome was, or of Jerome's foolish behavior came into the picture and this was a sad omission.

People of all stripes need to be more restrained, more humble, more accommodating, and more forgiving. It would have been nice to have seen these issues explored in more depth in this book. I think the middle-grade reading community can handle complex issues, and I think it does just as much of a disservice to those who have lost their lives to fear and mistrust, and to misunderstanding, and yes, to outright racism, to take a view that's as shallow as skin-deep racism is.

All of that said, I really enjoyed this novel I considered it to be thoughtful and well-written, and to tell a worthy story. I recommend it as a great introduction for young readers to a badly-needed understanding and a long overdue calm and rational dialog.


Thursday, March 8, 2018

Reborn by Mark Millar, Greg Capullo, Jonathon Glapion, FCO Plascencia


Rating: WORTHY!

This was a graphic novel I got from my local library which has these days quite the selection. In amongst all the comics aimed at pleasing the Marvel and DC movie crowds as well as comic book aficionados, there are some gems that are not so mainstream even though they may have been penned by mainstream writers and artists. This is one of those.

The writer is a Scot named Mark Millar who has written quite a few graphic novels that I've enjoyed, many of which have been great successes, and some of which have been made into movies including one which starred Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy, and Morgan Freeman (Wanted) and another which starred Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Taron Egerton, and Michael Caine (Kingsman). Millar tends to lean towards writing of the fantastic and the so out there it's almost but not quite parody.

Reborn is a story relating that when people die in our world they're born again into a different fantasy world. Of course in this world there is a sharp divide between good and evil. Decent people are reborn into a world of light and friendship, whereas bad people are born to the dark side which is of course intent upon encroaching onto the light side.

In the story, this really old woman named Bonnie dies and finds herself in this other world as her thirty-year-old younger self who is supposed to be some sort of savior of this new world. She meets her father, who had died on Earth when she herself was young. He is also quite young in this world. She learns of others who are reborn at the same age they died, and yet others who are born younger or older. None of it seems to make any sense. One of her dear friends is bitter because she died after her husband, but by the time she died and came to this world, her husband had grown old and died here as well.

Animals are also born into this world, and some of them seem to have appeared with the ability to speak, including this girl's cat which has gone over to the dark side because it's resentful of being neutered. Also present is her dog which cannot speak and which is the size of a small horse. The dog is reminiscent of the luck dragon in The Neverending Story movie, but it's not quite that awful. I am by no means a fan of having cute animals in stories, but here it wasn't so bad.

The savior girl has no powers and no knowledge of why she should be the chosen one, although she seems to grow powers as time passes. The problem is that when Bonnie discovers that her husband, who had died years before and whom she has long pined for, is also here, but has been taken prisoner by the dark side because they want to lure her into a trap, she abandons her world-saving role to go find him.

The story in some ways is most reminiscent of Lord of the Rings with the hobbit (in this case Bonnie) crossing from the shire to Mordor with her magic sword in hand. There's even a tower, but no eye glares balefully from its twin spires. The leader of the dark side is predictably a Lord - in this case Lord Golgotha. At first I thought he would turn out to be her husband, but later I decided Golgotha is probably her mother or maybe the sniper from the opening panels. Whether I was right or wrong (I'm usually wrong in these guesses!) you'll have to read this to find out! I recommend it as a worthy read.


Tuesday, February 27, 2018

The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf


Rating: WORTHY!

This book was a bunch of bull - young bulls growing up with the idea of fighting in the bullring in Spain - except for Ferdinand that is, who much preferred to sit in the shade under a tree, enjoying the flowers. I must confess I was truly curious to see where the author took this and so I read on!

When the ring managers showed up to pick fresh young bulls to go up against the toreadors and matadors, all the bulls except Ferdinand played their game and were ready to run and fight. Ferdinand was under his tree, that is until something seriously disturbed him, and then the managers were very interested in how feisty he was, and took them with him. But in the ring, all Ferdinand wanted to do was to sit and enjoy the flowers tossed down into the ring by the spectators.

This was a fun and colorful book with a great ending, and a positive message. It's okay not to ask "How high?" when someone orders you to jump! It's okay to stop and smell the roses! I recommend it.


Red Car Green Car by Mara van der Meer, Penny Worms, Amy Oliver, Adria Meserve


Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated in fine young-child fashion with bright primary colors, and beautifully created and worded, this book looked to me like a great and fun book for very young children. There are things to pull on that change the color of the car you're looking at, and lots of sturdy pages to chew on...er to turn happily. The book looked well-made and seems to me like it will occupy a kid for some time. It kept me occupied anyway! Certainly it will take long enough to grab a quick break and a soothing cup of tea. I recommend it!


Saturday, February 24, 2018

The Elephant's Child by Rudyard Kipling, Karen Baiker, Davin Cheng


Rating: WORTHY!

This is a Rudyard Kipling story adapted by Karen Baiker, and illustrated nicely by Davin Cheng. I reviewed Kipling's Just So Stories a long time ago on this blog, and this one was included in that book under the title How the Elephant Got His Trunk which is the subtitle of the present story. As this newer author and illustrator have shown here, there is probably a rich and free vein of children's stories to be mined there now that Kipling is out of copyright. I'm going to get on it right away. Kidding! I have too much on my plate as it is.

The story is that of an annoyingly curious young elephant who, as all elephants did back then of course, had a snub nose. He was constantly asking questions of his older relatives: the baboon (who is shown incongruously hanging from a tree for which baboons are not really well-known!), the giraffe, the hippo, but none of them can spare him any time, so he takes the advice of a very possibly maliciously-inclined bird, who advises him that his last question, 'what do crocodiles eat?', could best be answered by hiking over to the Limpopo river and asking a croc directly.

The elephant in his innocence thinks this is a brill idea and heads off forthwith. The croc advises him that he will not only be happy to tell him, he will show him what he's going to eat for dinner and snaps at the elephant. This was very probably the first sound bite. Or perhaps more likely, an unsound bite since the croc only manages to grab the elephant's nose. In the ensuing tug of war, the nose is stretched and stretched of course (you knew this was coming, didn't you?!).

Unlike his elders, the young elephant is happy to take the time to relate his story of how his nose grew so long. And there you have it! So while this isn't an original story, it is nicely told and beautifully illustrated, and it's in a nice child-sized...er...bite, so I recommend it.