The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the second time I've reviewed this! Normally I don't review books twice, not even when one is print and the other audio, but this was the audio version, it was one disk sitting on the library shelf looking at me like audio books do, and so I thought what the heck? I can tell you it was nicely read by Meryl Streep, but then she does have a lot of Streep cred....

The previous review was of the print book back in June of 2015, so you can visit that if you want the full take on it. For this review I'll just confine myself to one issue which is the use of music. There was no music sold with the original novel, and there is no music in the novel, so why the producers of this audio version felt the need to lard it up with music by George Winston (of whom I've never heard) is a mystery, but make a note: they did! And it was loud. And intrusive. And irritating. Maybe the age-range at whom this is aimed won't be bothered by it. They might even like it. For me it had no place on the disk.

That said I recommend the story. Meryl Streep does a fine job when she's not being interrupted and told to take a back seat to the music! George Winston? Not so much.

The Complete Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Leah Moore, John Reppion

Rating: WORTHY!

Originally published in 2005, this was adapted by Leah Moore and John Reppion, a writing team which has also adapted Dracula and at least one Sherlock Holmes story. I wondered what it means to title it "complete" if it's adapted in some way, but I don't know what adaptations were made. An interview in the back of the graphic novel suggests that there was some excision going on, but short of comparing this with the original novel, I can't say what or how much. The novel is complete in the sense that it incorporates Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (including the "lost" - at least until 1974 - chapter: "The Wasp in the Wig".

The original title for the first novel was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The novel is illustrated by Érica Awano, with colors by PC Siqueira, Ale Starling, and Jezreel Rojales. What a collection of fascinating names! The artwork here is very traditional, reminiscent of some of the original work, apart from a brief caesura between the two stories, which is illustrated in relatively drab colors and a different style. The colors are also appropriately muted in the main body of each story, each frame in a rigid box, old-style, and Alice is depicted in the now traditional blue frock with a white pinafore and Mary Janes on her feet. The dress seems to have originated in 1903 in Macmillan's "Little Folks" edition of the story.

The story follows the original faithfully, and appears to keep the important bits while dispensing with the chaff, but its been a while since I read the original (or rather, listened to). This compared favorably to Lewis Helfland's version, which I also read and liked back in September 2014. This version, however is much more traditional in style, so I'd recommend it for anyone who wants to read a graphic novel version, but also wants to feel like they're returning to the roots of the original.

I Hate Fairyland Vol 1 by Skottie Young, Jean-Francois Beaulieu

Rating: WORTHY!

This graphic novel was just nuts. I am so glad I managed to get an advance review copy! This is over-the-top done right. This little girl gets sucked into fairyland one night and to get out, she has to go on a quest to find this key. Well she's not particularly good at following instructions, so she ends up spending 27 years there, and she's not happy. Although she has the body of a young girl, she has the mind of a woman in her mid thirties and she's pissed-off, so she goes on a rampage with a short-handled, heavy duty halberd. Now where she came by that, I have no idea, but she's soon taking out trolls, and giants and fairies, and whatever she wants. It's hilarious. After she takes down a whole village of zombie fauns, she wise-cracks about Faun of the Dead.

The writer and illustrator was Scottie Young, although someone else did the coloring. The whole thing was absurd and hilarious and very entertaining. This was a kick-ass female character in the commonly-employed sense the word. That's not a sense that I typically employ it for, but it does have its uses!

I loved how wicked and irreverent the comic was, particularly how wicked the humor was. Let's face it, fairyland had it coming. I recommend this one.

Klaw The First Cycle by Antoine Ozanam, Joël Jurion, Yoann Guillé

Rating: WARTY!

This was an odd graphic novel and while I thought it was a good idea, I had too many issues with it and gave up reading it about two thirds the way through. This is what happens when I break my vow to never read any fiction with the word 'cycle' in the title! On another note, there are multiple stories titled "Klaw", believe it or not, and this isn't connected with any of the others as far as I know, so if you're looking for this particular one, make sure you get the creator's names memorized so you get the right book!

I was grateful for the chance of an early look at an advance review copy, especially one which had so much potential and with an amazing cover image, and while I recognize it was written for a younger age group than mine, I had some real problems with it nonetheless. One problem I didn't have was the artwork: it was beautifully done. Joël Jurion's drawing was decent - nothing spectacular, but nothing off-putting either, so that was a good start, but Yoann Guillé's coloring was magical. The plotting/writing left something to be desired however and that's a problem for me.

Angel Tomassini has a chronic bullying problem, but it's fantastical to the point of being ridiculous. He's chased in full view of everyone in the school and no one - not one single person, students or staff - does a thing about it. It's hardly surprising then, given how much fantasy we're already in, that he can turn into a huge tiger. He's not only bullied by the trope bullies, he's also bullied by the boyfriend of a girl he likes - a girl he was foolish enough to text. Her boyfriend Kurt saw the text and starts bullying him in full view of everyone at the pool, including the girlfriend upon whom Angel crushes. Again, no one does a thing about it, not even to raise a voice in protest, not even the girl in question. I sincerely hoped at this point that Angel was not going to end up with this lame, selectively blind, jerk of a girl, but that hope was forlorn.

The story gets interesting when Kurt is killed - by something with claws - even though it's obvious who's done it. It gets dumb again when the cops haul Angel down to the station without benefit of counsel or even his parents. Seriously? Angel is the son of a guy who owns the biggest fish wholesale business in the country. Yep, his dad sleeps with the fishes, and he also has major league mob connections, so Angel is freed pretty quickly. This begs the question as to why he's so freely bullied by all and sundry. Either he's a kid with ties to the mob and people are therefore in some fear of messing with him, or he's viewed as a no-import little guy who everyone (including some cops) feels free to bully. It doesn't work both ways. And Angel has to be truly stupid to have never figured out that his dad is shady at best.

As if this isn't improbable enough, Lisa, the girl who Angel is crushing on, and the now ex-girlfriend of dead Kurt, calls Angel up out of the blue and invites him to attend the same dinner she had planned on going to with Kurt. Seriously? But it gets worse. The next day at school she greets him by name, hugs him and kisses him on the cheek. More seriously? But it gets worse! This girl knows he has mob connections and despises them, yet she still asks him out and then later dumps him because of his mob connections! Even more seriously?! This girl has psychological problems, and none of these characters make any sense. Not that any of this bothers shallow Angel who is about as one-dimensional as you can get and still manage to exist in three dimensions. Supposedly Lisa was threatened in order to force her to go out with Angel, but if that was the case, how come she was so enthusiastic about it? How come she doesn't feel threatened when she summarily dumps him? Again, it makes no sense.

The story became too ridiculous for me when Angel starts donning a super-hero costume to fight crime. On the one hand he supposedly loves his father, but on the other, he's committed to putting him out of business. Okay, I'll give that the benefit of the doubt, but why does he need a super hero costume? He's already disguised as a tiger! I'm sorry, but I can't go with this. I wish the creators all the best because I like to support foreign efforts. This was a lot of work, but it didn't seem to me like it was well thought-through.

Foiled by Jane Yolen, Mike Cavallaro

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the first volume in a joyous and nicely illustrated (by Mike Cavallaro) series. It's a small format graphic novel about a middle-grade girl named Aliera Carstairs who is the chosen one - chosen, that is, by the faerie world to protect them against the troll world, led by the Dark Lord. She meets a new guy in school named Avery castle, and despite the fact that he's hot-looking, he seems really uninterested in anyone but Aliera, although he doesn't say no to a kiss and a hug form whichever female wants to lay one on him.

Aliera is attracted to him but really not that interested. She'd rather go to her fencing lessons or enjoy an RPG with her cousin, who is sickly, but perky. This doesn't prevent her from accepting when Avery asks her out on a date - so it would seem. The venue is Grand Central Terminal, form which you rightly assume that Aliera lives in NYC. She;s late in arriving and wondering whether Avery is also late or has stood her up (her opinion of boys is lower than most). She has her fencing kit with her having just come from practice, and she puts on her fencing mask to protect her from a particularly bothersome bird (evidently the same bird which has been stalking her throughout the novel - something she would have noticed had she been more observant.

With the mask in place, color-blind Aliera, who sees more shades of grey than EL James, is suddenly aware of a second world superimposed over the first - a world of brilliant, rich color, which is focused entirely on fantastical creatures the like of which she'd only ever heard of in the more bizarre fairy tales. It turns out that Alierea is a defender of the Seelie - a faerie world which has chosen her as its champion. She can fight the bad guys with her épée, the one her mom scrounged up from a yard sale. That faceted blob of chromium infused aluminium oxide which Aliera had supposed was fake turns out to be, it would seem, a real ruby.

I really liked this story which I came to by way of volume two - so you can read them out of order without losing too much. I loved the story, I loved how feisty, relentless, and resourceful Aliera was, and I enjoyed the whole presentation. i recommend this and its sequel.

Curses Foiled Again by Jane Yolen, Mike Cavallaro

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a joyous and nicely illustrated (by Mike Cavallaro), small format graphic novel about a middle-grade girl who is the chosen one - chosen, that is, by the faerie world to protect them against the troll world, led by the Dark Lord. Yes, it's trope, but this is different enough and irreverent enough that I loved it. It's Seelie versus Unseelie here, and this is number 2 in the 'Foiled" series. While I am not a fan of series, this one might be one of the few exceptions I make, because I would like to read more of these adventures. I loved the way the chapters were titled after various fencing postures and strikes/defenses.

Foiled is a play on the fact that feisty and self-motivated main character Aliera Carstairs can fence something fierce, especially now she has a light saber. Actually it's a light foil. And the light is on the hilt, not the blade. So an anti-light foil is what she carries. Or something like that. Sorry, anti-light weapon! Never call it a foil! And especially don't refer to it as silver foil! (I added that bit!). Anyway, moving right along, in this adventure, she's trolled by a troll named Avery (he watches her like a clock?) who in daylight looks like a middle grader (or maybe a young, young adult), but in the dark, turns into a rather large troll-type dude with lower tusks rather like the Orcs in the upcoming Warcraft movie, and just like them, he turns out to be a good guy, who acknowledges that he's bound to Aliera, who he calls his liege lord.

Aliera doesn't trust him as far as she can throw him in his troll form, which is to say not at all. She rejects his every overture despite the fact that he seems desperate to impart important information to her. In the end they form a grudging (on her part) alliance to solve an problem, and she learns to trust him. A bit. I loved that she was so independent and not the least but fluffy instadore as we see far too often in stories like this. She was a strong character with a unique voice, who was self-sufficient and a go-getter and I was in love with her, disgusting as that is. Yes, I admit it. So seelie me!

This wasn't apparent to me form this volume, but evidently the main character is colorblind in our world and only sees color in the faerie world. Maybe I'm just slow, because now I think back on it, it seems obvious, but I'd thought this had nothing to do with the character's PoV! I thought it was simply an art trick to make our world look a drab gray, while the faeries looked almost psychedelic - which was a nice effect. Apparently not! Anyway, the immediate problem (in this volume) was nicely resolved with a sweet and satisfying ending, but the story remains open enough that more adventures could come, so it was a really good read with lots of promise and warmth and amusing bits and pieces. I recommend this as a worthy read.

Tank Girl Carioca by Mike McMahon, Alan Martin

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an amusingly irreverent graphic novel with decent, if rudimentary artwork, and indecent text. It has a nice look to it from the coloring. Tank Girl, aka Rebecca Buck, is the feisty, criminal owner of a tank. She was originally invented by artist Jamie Hewlett who illustrated the first Tank Girl comic. TG lives in a post-apocalyptic Australia, although the novel has a much more Brit feel than it does Aussie due to author Alan Martin's origins. TG's boyfriend is a mutant kangaroo named Booga. In this volume, she has three other girls in her "gang", which are Jet Girl (who flies a Harrier jump jet and who at one point early in the series was certifiably insane, although in this volume she seems like the only one who isn't insane), and Boat Girl. In this edition there's also a foul mouthed critter of indeterminate species who is randomly dismissed as a lemming (a bitter lemming, in fact!) and a rat, both of which are rudely dismissed by the critter himself.

In this story, Tank Girl and Booga are at a game show and they get a chance to compete. They get all the questions right, including the last prize-winning one, but the show's host, who has taken a distinct dislike to them, lies about the answer and they lose everything. TG, who cares less that she lost than she does about the host's whispered insults aimed at her, decides that nothing less than hanging, drawing, and quartering will deliver adequate justice for this. She concocts an elaborate Heath Robinson plan to achieve her aim, but afterwards, she's overcome by remorse, and starts her own religion, named after the Carioca bar she frequents. Her changed life is doomed to failure, though, as you might guess.

I thought this story was hilarious. It reminds me of the ridiculous ideas I came up with as a kid and the even more ridiculous ones I came up with as a teenager. If you like Monty Python you might like this one, but don't expect a soup to nuts story or even logic! I recommend this.

Cogling by Jordan Elizabeth Mierek

Rating: WARTY!

I was asked by the author if I would review this after I gave a favorable review to a previous novel by this author: Escape From Witchwood Hollow back in February 2016. Well be careful what you ask for! I would have liked to have recommended this one, too, but I cannot. I was very disappointed in Cogling because it was so disturbingly far from what the previous novel had been. This felt like a first draft of a first novel by a new writer, whereas 'Witchwood Hollow', which also felt like a first novel, was a lot better-crafted and a lot more credible in its world than this one was.

This novel had a prologue which I skipped, as I do all prologues without exception. Never once have I missed anything by doing this, which only goes to show how useless prologues are. If it's worth reading, put it in chapter one, or simply omit it! Don't sacrifice any more trees to prologues! That said, this story was not technically bad in terms of spelling, grammar, and so on. Even the overall story was, in very general terms, an interesting idea, but it fell far short in the details, and while it was not an awful read, it was not a satisfying one at all for me.

The issues I had were many and ranged from general to specific. A specific one, for example, would be the use of 'kohl'. At least this author didn't write it as 'coal', which I have seen in a novel, but the phrase used was 'dark kohl' Since kohl is black, that phrase made little sense. To write, 'Kohl darkened her silver eyes' is one thing, but to say "Dark kohl rimmed her silver eyes" is not well-phrased at all. There were many instances of such suspect wording, each of which took me out of the suspension of disbelief and reminded me that I was reading a novel and not immersed in a alternate world.

The story is about Edna, a fifteen year old girl who discovers that her brother has been replaced by a cogling - a clockwork life-like replica, and she embarks upon a quest into the world of hags to rescue him. The hags use the dreams of children to power their machinery. This was my first problem, because it seemed like all that was being done here is that hags stole children to power machines to make more coglings which were used to replace the children being stolen. What was the point? Obviously they were seeking to take over the human world in revenge for a sour past history, but the hags had powerful magical and could control and enchant humans so why were the coglings needed? It made no sense at all to me.

The sad thing is that Edna is not allowed to rescue her brother alone. So much for girl power! Instead, she needs the trope YA studly male to prop her up and give her validation. That was bad enough, but the happenstance that she fell into the sphere of influence of the sole male in the entire country who was best set-up to help her was too much to take seriously, especially given his original story, which would be too much of a spoiler to give away here. The bottom line was that his behavior and living circumstances were simply not credible given his origin, and we were offered nothing to explain why or how he'd ended up where he had.

In this world, there is a history of antagonism between the hags (and their male equivalents, the ogres) on one side, and the humans on the other, and this is a story of the hags' revenge. These were not the only 'magical' creatures; there were others, but none of them were really given any freedom to breathe, and so they were consistently lifeless. It felt like they were simply added as pure MacGuffins or dei ex machina for no other reason than to help out Edna's quest, and then they disappeared completely. Most of them appeared so briefly that it was impossible to get a decent handle on them. I liked the idea of the 'foxkins', but the 'nix' and the 'tomtars' left me unentertained. Sometimes it seemed like these were actually mutated humans, and other times not, and there was so little to go on, that it left me frustrated that they had appeared at all.

I think one serious problem was that the author tried to do too much in one story. There was literally everything in this but the kitchen sink - and there may well have been one of those. In fact, I think there was in one kitchen scene. But there was fantasy, and magic, and steam-punk, and romance, and Oliver Twist (not in person), and a quest, and a hot air balloon which was not steam-punk, but which was called an airship which is often associated with steam-punk, and it felt like lots of little bits rather than one whole. It was the difference between Thanksgiving dinner and the next day's jumbled and assorted leftovers.

This story evidently arose (according to the acknowledgements) at least in part from a 'Victorian' fare in Rome, New York. I think that was the first problem: that Americans tend not to do Renaissance or Victorian well, or to overdo it, and consequently this novel was sadly warped, dragged down by a lack of authenticity. Granted we're not told explicitly where it was set (if we are, I missed it), but it seemed like it was professing to be set in Britain, as steam punk and Victorian dramas typically are, but there were far too many Americanisms for me to take that idea seriously.

For example, there are no klutzes in Britain - or at least there were not in Victorian times. There are clots, which means largely the same thing, but 'klutz' is a very American term which came from Germany via Yiddish, I think. Of course, American influence being what it is in the world, for good or ill, people probably do use that term in Britain now, but they didn't in Victorian times. This was as out of place as the word 'jerky' was. This is very much an Americanism, taken from the South American term char qui. It's not British.

There are very few cities in Britain which actually have the word 'city' in their name. Manchester City, for example, is a football (soccer) club. The city itself is simply named Manchester. The same goes for Birmingham, Exeter, Bristol, Leicester Norwich, and so on. Every single city in this story was named -something- City. The Brits don't have this insecurity which forces them to title a city as -something- City lest it be mistaken - gods forbid! - for a town!

Britain has no venomous snakes except for the adder (and yes, it does come in black!), which no one in Britain takes very seriously (notwithstanding scare stories in newspapers last year), so this Indiana Jones scene where kids are dumped into a pit of snakes wasn't impressive. Why would hags even do this when they have magic and can simply kill the kids outright? The real problem here though, was that the snakes are described as poisonous. No snake, to my knowledge, is poisonous, and by that I mean that you can eat any snake and it won't poison you; however, if you get bitten by one (and you're not in Britain!) then you may well become ill or die from it. Those snakes are venomous, not poisonous, and writers should understand this. Strictly speaking the British adder can do damage, but it's so rare that anyone is bitten, it's not typically an issue.

Edna Mather is supposedly fifteen, yet she behaves much younger. The story read like a middle-grade novel rather than a young-adult one. Several other reviews I've seen mention this and while I agree, I'm not sure I arrived at the conclusion the same way. The thing you have to remember is that this is not set in modern times and you cannot expect a fifteen year old Victorian era girl to have the same outlook as a modern one.

By our standards, she would seem ridiculously naive and sheltered, even though she would (had she any privilege) be far better read (and in better-written literature too!) than most modern fifteen-year-olds. In Edna's case, she was one step away from living on the street, and was largely in charge of running her home and taking care of her kid brother, so she should be expected to have the maturity which inevitably comes with that circumstance, yet she really didn't. She was desperately intent upon rescuing her brother, but this was all she had going for her, and it made her seem more juvenile than he was!

Worse than this though, for me, was the fact that Edna had magic in her - a magic which she thought was evil - a fact of which we're re-apprised to a really annoying degree. The problem for me was not so much that though, as it was that she never employed this magic. I kept waiting for her to go bad-ass and unleash it, but she didn't except in very minor and largely unimportant ways, and even then it wasn't clear if it was her magic or the magic embedded in this enchanted brooch she carried. This was really annoying. Why give her this power if it's not going to be employed in the entire story, even in dire cases where any kid who had magic would have pulled it out regardless of how they felt about it. It made no sense and was a major disappointment for me. It also made her look even more helpless and ineffectual than she already appeared.

I noted the author makes mention in the acknowledgements of a steamy romance between Ike and Edna, but there was no such thing. There was almost no romance, thankfully, and certainly no steam (not even of the steam punk variety except in passing mentions). There was impetus for romance, either. Neither Ike nor Edna were likable, and he was such a jerk to begin with that it's hard to see how she would ever come around to finding him romantic. The 'romance' felt forced and not natural - like the author was putting it in there because she felt this was the way things had to be done, not because there was anything organic or necessary about it. It felt false to me and it didn't so much get in the way of the story, as it was an annoying distraction, like a fly buzzing around when you're trying to fall asleep.

I noticed some reviewers had talked of there being a rape or near rape in this story, but there was nothing of the sort in the version I read. There was a case of highly inappropriate conduct of a doctor threatening to kiss a patient, followed by downright abusive conduct by that same doctor, but there was no sex involved. What bothered me about this scene and the events leading up to it was something I've seen no other reviewer mention, which is the absurd abduction of Lady Rachel.

Note that I do not believe for a second that celebrities and the wealthy should have any privileged treatment by law enforcement, but also note that this novel was set in Victorian times when nobility was highly respected (if perhaps derided in private), yet here we have Lady Rachel being forcibly taken from her aunt's home by two regular police constables, without a shred of respect or deference and based solely on this aunt's say-so. This was simply not credible in Victorian times, and especially not on the say-so of an aunt without any other reason. Never once was there any mention of contacting this woman's actual parents. Lady and Lord Waxman thought their daughter had been kidnapped, and yet instead of informing them she was safe and reuniting them, the cops haul Lady Rachel off for incarceration on her aunt's whim?! This robbed the story of all credibility for me, and frankly, I almost quit reading at that point because it was one straw dog too many.

The real killer was the ending. It's no spoiler to say it was a happily-ever-after one, but only for Edna and her crew. All her ideals and claims and vows to help the poor and downtrodden which she spouted regularly throughout this story were forgotten in the end. She did nothing to help anyone. This selfishness and self-serving attitude was brought into the light earlier, when she and Ike rescue a woman from a cruel psychiatric facility, which in itself is admirable, but they do it by kidnapping a homeless girl and substituting the one for the other in the blind assumption that this psycho doctor will simply toss the girl back out onto the street when he discovers the deception. I'm sorry, but no, heroic people do not do that. Good people do not do that. Jerks and villains do that. I already disliked the two protagonists before this, but after this behavior, I had no time for them at all. Frankly, this made me wonder if this neutered "dark magic' that Edna spent the entire story fretting over, had actually risen up and claimed her after all.

So, overall, this was not a worthy read by my standards. and I cannot in good faith recommend it. Read Jordan Mierek's previous story, escape From Witchwood Hollow instead. It's much better.

How To Catch a Bogle by Catherine Jinks

Rating: WORTHY!

I listened to this audio book some time ago and thought I'd already blogged it. I guess I was so blown away by it that I forgot to blog it! LOL! it was excellent and I recommend it highly. A large part of my enjoyment came from the narration by Mandy Williams which was beyond excellent. She was remarkable and I really enjoyed listening to her, especially to her renditions of the folk songs, which were really heart-rending, the way she sang them, and to her rendition of Birdie's voice, the main female character, which was a joy.

This is a middle-grade book with some dark content, so be warned it might be scary - and the scary parts aren't really anything to do with the bogles. The nasty life these poor children were forced to live back then (and which many endure even today) is the really horrific part. The kind of life that was your everyday lot for people is exemplified in the songs which Birdie sings. They're aren't anything sweet, but are about pirates and young women being hanged: The Female Smuggler, The Highway Robber, Rescued From the Gallows, Bonnie Susie Cleland, and Sovay, Sovay, and Three Black Ribbons.

Ten-year-old orphan Birdie McAdam sings to lure out bogles, monsters which hide in dark places and which feed off children who are unlucky enough to stray too close. They are attracted by tuneful singing, and this is where Birdie's canary-like voice comes in so handily. She stands in the open and lures out the bogle with her folk songs, and Alfred Bunce, her partner, stabs them with a special lance and they turn to dust.

The job is dangerous, but Birdie trusts Alfred and has worked with him quite a bit. She's proud of him in fact, and proud to be his assistant ("Am a Bogler's gel, ah yam!"). Poor as they are, everything is fine for this pair of monster-hunters until children begin disappearing, they're approached by the highly suspect Sarah Pickles, and on the other end of the social scale, a certain Miss Eames starts fearing for Birdie's safety and welfare and starts proposing scientific methods of attracting bogles which would put Birdie out of a living.

The real joy of this story was Mandy Williams's reading of it. Sometimes, an audio book can be fingernails on a chalkboard for one reason or another: poor writing, poor reading, a reader's interpretation of the story interfering with your own, but in this case, I was one hundred percent in love with Williams's interpretation, her vocalization, and above all, her singing. She was not a diva by any means, but she was very good and in this case, her voice, to me, was Birdie all through. I fell in love with the signing and the songs, and even had the story not been so engaging, I would still have rated it a worthy read just for the songs and the vocal performance! Highly recommended, guvna!

Infinitas by David N Sebastian

Rating: WARTY!

This advance review copy novel was a DNF for me. It started out promisingly, a fantasy romp and a quest, but there was a truly oddball mixture of modern English and medieval which kept tripping me up, and taking me out of suspension of disbelief. I'm not a fan of stories where the author tries to write them in Chaucerian English, so I don't mind a bit of modern idiom here and there, but when it's a mix of both ancient and too modern, it's really a jolt.

One minute they would be saying, 'tis (but without the apostrophe) and the next they would be saying 'butthole' which made me feel like I was reading a juvenile toilet-humor story for which I have no time. In short order I was reading terms like "All righty then" and "Crack of dawn" along with words like 'Busboy' (in a tavern!). It didn't work. I think the biggest problem was the level at which it was written - it felt to me like middle-grade whereas the characters felt like young adults, so it was mismatched there, too.

When the wood sprites showed up, my interest perked up a bit because I thought the story might be improving, but their humor began to grate, and they were gone pretty quickly. I didn't know whether to feel relieved that none of them joined the quest, so I didn't have to deal with their inane pranks anymore, or saddened because they had brought a spark to a story which badly needed one. It had already begun to set like drying clay.

There were moments of unintended humor like when one character says to another, "You're a Druid Harry" which made me feel like I was reading Harry Potter again, and not in a good way. This was a fantasy, yet there was a heavy coating of Christianity overlaid on it, which struck me as out of place for this particular story, as did a thumbscrew which "goes crackle snap pop." Seriously?

One of the characters but "Coal on her eyes" I doubt it. Kohl maybe, but coal? I had to quit reading this because it just wasn't working. I can't take a story seriously which doesn't even take itself seriously, and I can't recommend this one.

Baker's Magic by Diane Zahler

Rating: WORTHY!

This story grabbed me from the start and wouldn't let go. It's an amazing fairy tale about a young girl, Bee, who runs away from her obnoxious foster parents and heads for the big city. On her journey, she finds a new father, meets a princess, sails with pirates, and discovers two of the most interesting islands ever to appear above sea level. This story read like it was written for middle-grade, although the main characters were all in their mid-eens. That said, however, this is really a story for all ages, in the classic mold of fairy tale telling.

All this in a land where trees won't grow, a mage rules in place of a king, and something Bee does seems to put magic into everything she bakes. Not that that's always a good thing, but there is a recipe at the back for one good thing: the famous Bouts buns! I enjoyed this, and as important, I felt that the writer had a great time writing it, which all-too-often doesn't come out, even in stories I've enjoyed. In this novel though, the fun she had in the writing came through just as powerfully as anything which Bee baked into her breads and pastries.

As if the story so far wasn't quite wonderful enough, Bee is asked to deliver some of her pastries to the castle, wherein lives the reclusive mage, and a princess who hasn't been seen in years. What's going on here? Why is the princess an orphan just like Bee? Why is the only tree in the land sitting in the palace garden? And what's with the hedgehog?

The novel is set in a fantasy version of The Netherlands, which caused a couple of hiccups for me, since it was written from a very American point of view. At one point, johnnycakes put in an appearance, but they're known only in North America, not in Europe - at least not in medieval times. The same goes for pecans.

There were a couple of missteps like that, but nothing your typical American reader would notice. The primary focus of my blog isn't about books per se, but about writing books, so it would be remiss of me to pass over what I found to be a delightful trip into English - not England, English - and Dutch! Naturally since this is a well-baked story, there is mention of cookies, but this, again, is a North American term. Like soccer versus football, the rest of the world calls them biscuits, which is also the Dutch word for them (although they have more than one word). However, the Dutch also have a word for cake, which is koek, so it's not so bad to be caught in possession of koek in Holland! LOL! The diminutive of koek is koekie, from which we get cookie, so it's not such a leap as it seems. Note that it's pronounced more like cook than coke, so you can discount my cookie joke. Confused yet?! I know I am.

I really liked this story, and despite it being rather lengthy, I blitzed through it in short order. It's very, very readable, and I recommend it. In fact, I'm prepared to guarantee that it won't burn your biscuits...!

Shutter Vol 3 by Joe Keatinge, Leila del Duca, Owen Geini, John Workman

Rating: WORTHY!

This was one of those advance review copies Net Galley offers as a 'read now', evidently because it isn't getting much attention. Unfortunately most of those are not very good, which is why they get little attention, but once in a while you can find one that is a worthy read, and I struck lucky on this occasion, because out of four such graphic novels I requested, three turned out to be pretty darned good, and this was one of them.

I have to confess up front that I was a bit lost in this because it's part of a series and I haven't read any of the series prior to this one, but this looked interesting from the description, and it turned out to be so in the reading, even though ti took me a while to get up to speed. It would have been nice to have had a brief "story so far" at the start.

What really brought me on-board was the kick-ass female characters in it, who were also the main characters. I loved them. Note that when I describe a character as a strong female character, or as 'kick-ass' for short, this doesn't necessarily mean that she can literally kick ass, although the two here could. It simply means that I like her presence, and I like the way the story lights-up when she's involved, even if all she's doing is talking. It means she's interesting, passionate (in the broadest sense), has something to bring to the tale, has inner strength, and has depth and character.

The blurb on Goodreads describes this volume as "Kate Kristopher was a globally renowned explorer on an Earth fart more fantastic than our own." I can't imagine an Earth fart more fantastic than our own...! Obviously, someone mis-typed! In this volume, Kate Kristopher has lost her memory, but she has a lot of help regaining it.

My only real complaint is that the art work was very scrappy and didn't win my love (unlike the main character!). It was made worse in the advance review copy because it had been sent at low resolution, presumably to keep file size down. This was a mistake, because it looked grubby and blurry to an extent, with the lettering appearing rather muddy, although it was readable, and as I said, this was an ARC. I'm sure the actual published version is better, but the low quality of this copy prevented me from really being able to offer useful comments on the artwork, which isn't a good idea in a review copy for a graphic novel! Just sayin'!

This is a weird fantasy world which seems to be occupied by sentient cats, who behave exactly like humans (which is more of a weakness in the story than a strength IMO) and who share the word with humans. Of course, there is conflict, but not necessarily between humans and cats. I enjoyed how it was depicted, and I liked the cliffhanger ending. Overall, I liked this novel, and I recommend it as a worthy read.

Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Rating: WARTY!

Two households, both alike in dipshits,
In fair bird droppings, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break two new misfits,
Where uncivil blood makes love demeaned.
From forth the fatal wash of mortal enemas
A pair of snake-cross'd birders take their life;
One Zane Cobriana, in heart and soul an ass
Talks Danica Shardae into becoming his wife.
The fearful passage of their asinine love,
And the continuance of their friends' rage,
Which, buttheads that they were, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
Shall wish your very own life to end.

This was one of the sorriest novels I've ever not read. Nope, I listened to it, and the reader's voice was barely tolerable. It's a Romeo and Juliet redux, but instead of the couple dying, the story died.

The blurb, of course, made it sound like it might be interesting and there was a sequel, both of which I happily borrowed from the local library hoping for a treat. That hope died. I returned the second volume unheard. I got through fifty percent of the first volume before I could stand it no more. There was no performance, unless that word is a contraction of 'perfunctory dormancy', and if I had to listen to the reader Jennifer Ikeda say "Donnika" just one more time I would have lost it. Dahknicker Shardead and inZane Cobrie-cheese. he;s so inzane that he crawls out of his skin every year. Literally.

I've seen some reviewers, even negative ones, praise the world building, and I have to ask, what world-building? There was ZERO world building here! What 'story' we got made no sense. These two races, the Avians and the reptilians - no - they were not even reptilians, they were serpient! What is that? It's not the equivalent of a class like avian. It's a sub-order, serpentes, which I guess is what those people were, so maybe it's right after all, if their race is judged by the behavior of the leader, Zane, who happily skins people who piss him off, and evidently carpets the floor of his room with the skins. This is a civilized person? This is someone to fall in love with? He's a snake in the grass. A man who suggests that his intended bride wasn't been beaten too much? How much beating would be just enough, Zane? This is a man who cam make peace? No, it isn't. Snakes are not very much into making peace with birds. They'd rather eat them.

There was no real description of the world in which these people lived, or even how they came to be (= no world-building). They were supposed to be birds and snakes, yet they maintained human form most of the time. Why? No explanation. Apparently there were humans on this planet, but they played no role whatsoever in the events - not in the portion to which I listened, anyway - so why were these races mimicking humans? No explanation. Why were there humans at all? No explanation.

The races were supposed to have been at war for a thousand years or more, and no one had any idea why they were fighting, yet they continued. Not once during this millennium of mêlée was any technology developed. Why not? War produces huge and lethal advances in technology, yet neither of these two races achieved anything. Why not? How the birds had failed to beat the earth-bound snakes escapes me. The two races supposedly detested each other, yet completely out of the blue, two of them magically started to trust each other. Two alien races, neither of which could have had any attraction to the other, yet they agree to marry, believing, for no reason at all, that this would end the war. Seriously? Why would it? Why would they think it would?

Dah-knicker became Zane's "Naga" - yet another snake word which made me laugh because it sounded so much like "nagger". Donni-kuh was his nagger. We had the Cobriana family, the Cobra race, the serpient people, the serpents? There was no logic to any of these amateur naming conventions, including the main character's names. The bird was named Danica Shardae, the guy Zane Cobriana? Seriously? So that's why he couldn't get into the dance club - it was mambas only! He drove an old battered car. It was a real rattler! He's so tired of people that he dreams of living alone on a coral island, watching Monty Python. And wearing a boa....

These critters were not human, yet they mimicked humans and took very pretentious human names. Why? No doubt for the same reason that they inhabited very human palaces, where they had servants, and where despite being at war for a thousand years, they Avians still haven't thought that it might be a good idea to guard the servants' stairs which lead directly to the princess's bedroom. These people are morons. No wonder they can't win. Again, zero world-building.

Danica was supposed to be a hawk, yet she possessed not a single hawk-like trait. She was more like a Dodo. Danica laid an egg. The same goes for Zane and his purported cobra-esque personality. The snakes could hypnotize people with a glance? Honestly? Could we not get a modicum of originality here? This story was sad, sad, sad. Yeah, it gave me a belly-laugh, but I give it the bird.

Infinity Ring a Mutiny in Time by James Dashner

Rating: WARTY!

The author of The Maze Runner fouls up again with this series aimed at middle graders. Not that I've actually read The Maze Runner series. I was interested after seeing the first movie, but then lost all interest after the disastrous second movie which was profoundly dumb and tedious. If it's anything like the novel I've lost all desire to read any of those books. I was curious to see if he might do better with something aimed at a younger audience. He didn't.

The cover designers showed their legendary ineptitude again by putting a compass on the front cover instead of the actual infinity ring. This is about time travel not geographic travel per se, so what's with the compass? I swear I get more laughs out of Big Publishing™ cover designers than I do from books which are actually intended to be humorous!

This is your standard middle-grade time travel novel where young kids save the world by visiting extremely famous points and/or people, and/or landmarks in history. I'm sure there's a novel (or maybe even a series) which gets it right, but this one isn't it. Set in an alternate reality (where the US capital is Philadelphia and Columbus didn't discover Cuba) - which we learn is really our reality gone awry, we soon discover that there are breaks in history, starting in Aristotle's time, which must be set right to put reality back on track. Who determined where these were, and how they figured out there were breaks in the first place is left unexplained.

That's just the problem with this novel: there's far too much unexplained. Why they cannot go back and fix the first (in Alexander and Aristotle's time) and have all the other breaks fall into place goes just as unexplained as why they start with Columbus instead of starting with the first, or even with the last and work backwards. My guess is that no matter how many they fix, and no matter where they start, every single volume in this series will be exactly the same - with Time Wardens seeking to thwart or to capture them no matter how much history they change, which makes zero sense, and it's why I didn't bother finishing this novel once I saw where it was stupidly determined to go. Worse than this, the two kids have a pad computer with them, yet instead of information, it delivers clues in cheap rhymes and in absurdly simple visual puzzles! Why? No reason at all! God forbid we should make our young readers actually think when we can serve everything up like it's fast food!

The idea is that there are good guys and bad guys (the Time Wardens) stationed throughout history. How that works goes unexplained, because they would either already have to know where the breaks were, in order to station guards there, or they would have to station people all over the entire planet throughout time, which is absurd. That was the major problem with this story: the sheer absurdity of it. I couldn't stand to finish it, especially since it was puffed up with so much fluff. The novel could have comfortably begun on page 80 or thereabouts, at the end of chapter twelve, about two fifths of the way into the story, and lost nothing in the telling!

Had anyone but an established author submitted this trash, any respectable publisher would have rejected it. This novel seemed to me to be nothing short of a cynical attempt to bilk the rubes (aka middle-graders) out of money by running a cheap series which retells the same story over and over with a few details changed here and there to make them superficially different. I mean why tell an intelligent and original story in one concise volume when you can stretch it to a dozen? I can't support that and I can't recommend this.

The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

Rating: WARTY!

While I've seen the Dolittle movies (both the Rex Harrison version, and the Eddie Murphy version) I've never read any of the books. You could argue that I still haven't since the one I review here is a Dalmatian Children's Classic (so-called), and as such is a condensed version (adapted by Kathryn R Knight) illustrated (by Nick Price) with many line drawings in which Dolittle is very much drawn in the mold of WC Fields!

As with many older books, there have been complaints of racism inherent in the book's pages, which I find rather disingenuous when applied retroactively. Yes, there are old books which are racist by today's standards, and the Dolittle books are among them. There are even old books (Mein Kampf comes to mind) which are racist by their own contemporary standards. I can't really speak to that since the version I read was an adaptation which has been washed clean of the original racism. I also find it interesting that Eddie Murphy agreed to act in this role given the book's history! Maybe they were aiming for some sort of redemption by making Dolittle black?

I have read various commentaries on this topic. It isn't a defense to say that this book isn't racist by its own contemporary standards. The original of this novel was racist by any standards. Is it a defense to say it isn't maliciously racist? By that i mean did it actively intend harm through the racism it contained? I don't think so, but that doesn't mean it wasn't harmful. In this version, the racism has been bleached (yes, that is a reference to the original!), but I think as long as I'm mentioning this, it's only fare to also mention that Lofting wrote other books in this series condemning of slavery, and that even in this book, he depicts an African king who is pissed-off with white men because of their depredations of his nation's natural resources. To me, this goes a little way towards mitigating against charges of overt or active, or outright malicious racism. That does not make the book lily white, so to speak.

My biggest complaint about this particular version of the novel isn't about racism or the fact that the doctor speaks to the animals or they to him - it's children's fantasy after all! - but that the author doesn't have a clue about animals. Hugh Lofting was a soldier (he originated the idea for these stories in the trenches in France in World War One), not a veterinarian or a biologist, but even so, it would not have taken much effort, even in 1920, to look up a little bit about Africa to discover that it isn't home to Orang-utans. Nor would it have taken much more effort to discover that gorillas, orang-utans, and chimpanzees are apes, and not monkeys, and eagles are not commonly found out on the open ocean! It was that kind of thing which annoyed me more than anything else, so for me, the story was sadly lacking in a decent foundation.

Given the premise - a doctor discovers he has more affinity with animals than with humans, and can understand them and therefore treat them expertly - it seems to me that a golden opportunity was wasted here to teach children something about animals, biology and evolution. The novel may well be be moderately entertaining for very young children who question little, but for my money (and note that the book is available free online) it really wasn't a worthy read at all (I skipped a lot of the second half), not when there are more modern and better written novels with these themes - animals and adventure. Besides, this novel is out of copyright now, and neither Hugh Lofting (who died in 1947) nor his estate are going to get anything for it if you buy it! Whether oyu think he ever deserved anything for it is up to you! Maybe it's time for someone to rewrite this in an intelligent, educational, and non-racist way?

Bob's Burgers by assorted writers and artists

Rating: WARTY!

This graphic novel combines issues one and two and is evidently based on a TV show which I have never seen. It looked interesting from the blurb, but failed dismally in the execution. The art work was cartoon-ish, which perhaps fits the TV show, but which wasn't very interesting to me. The main character, Tina, looked like she sported a mustache, which was interesting to me (how often do we get a female character with a mustache, even in cartoons?!) - interesting that is, until I discovered that there is no mustache - it's just the way her mouth is poorly drawn!

Tina herself proved to be a rather one-note and uninteresting. There were times when the humor was moderately amusing, and there were some interesting concepts which I felt deserved better treatment than they got, but for the most part the stories were boring and did not entertain me. There is, periodically, a story told in rhyme, but I took to skipping these after I'd read the first two because they were even more boring.

Note that this was an advance review copy so some of my comments here may be irrelevant depending upon what's done with the actual published version. That said, I do not recommend reading this on an iPad because the art work was a bit scrappy-looking. This is, perhaps, because of reduced image quality for the e-version, but this doesn't say much or the e-version, does it?! Worse than this, though, was the fact that the text was too small to read comfortably in some panels because it was so tiny. I don't think comic book creators should issue ebook versions of their comics unless the comic has been specifically designed as an ebook and the comic is written specifically for the ebook format. It simply doesn't work otherwise and exhibits a certain disrespect for e-formats.

In terms of the print version I was a bit shocked at the profligacy with which paper was wasted. Perhaps fans of the show might not consider it a waste, but even were I a fan I would still consider it wasteful when a comic book arrives with twenty or thirty pages of variant covers and so-called "pin-up" images. I have to wonder why the creators hate trees so much! Maybe this is intended to be printed on recycled paper? I would hope so.

As it is I cannot in good faith recommend this one for the reasons I've discussed: hum-drum stories, mediocre art work, and shameful waste of trees.

The Daughter Claus by D Thrush

Rating: WORTHY!

The author doesn't know a while heck of a lot about the North Pole, but she can tell a story and I recommend this one. This was an unusual, if slightly flawed novel, but charming and amusing nonetheless, and I consider it a very worthy read. Flaws? What do I mean by that? Well one example is the fact that this novel was published in 2013, yet this ambitious Gothic rock band featured in the story was obsessing over making and releasing their first CD. Who does that anymore? They would have been posting their singles on iTunes and Google Play, and elsewhere if their behavior had been consistent, but that's a quibble. I have one or two others I'll mention, but none of them interfered with my love of the story.

The tale told here is that Santa is getting old, and is looking at retiring to Florida where he and his wife Clara have a condo. The fly in the snow is Santa's son Nick. Santa expects him, as the firstborn son, to take over the family "business", but Nick has other ideas. He wants to pursue a career in Goth rock, with his band, "Black Ice" (and release a CD!). Poor daughter Santina isn’t even considered as a replacement - despite the fact that she's the one in college pursuing a business degree - because she's a girl.

This "business" thing was a bit weird, since there was no money being made in this operation, yet they were talking about elf wages, and union contracts, and the costs of modernization. Santa made enough to buy a condo. In Florida. It made no sense and nothing was offered to explain cash flow in Santa's Business! Again, a minor quibble, but definitely confusing.

On the day Santa is supposed to head back north, he has a heart attack, and while the injury is minimal, he requires surgery and is laid up for some time. The only person who can step in is Tina, who isn’t due back at college until the fall. Nick is on tour with his grudge band (that's a garage band which has a bad attitude, LOL!). Tina has her own ideas about how the business should be run, and she starts in making changes and improvements, and getting everyone to work together in harmony. Even the sleigh-pullers are reined in, dear! Her jerk of a father and jerkess of a mother are not supportive. Frankly, those two parents are intolerable and intolerant and need a serious lump of coal stuck somewhere the sun doesn't shine - which would be the North Pole in wintertime, of course....

How will this all pan out? Well, you'll have to read the novel to find out! I did and loved it! There were some issues, as I've indicated. The story gets a bit bogged down with day-to-day humdrum and with Tina having the hots for a guy in Nick's band, who is improbably named George. Her best friend Lisa has the hots for Nick until she discovers how self-centered, and career-focused he is. He can’t even remember her name. I'm not sure why all that was tossed in because the story was working fine without it. Not every main female character in a novel has to have a love interest, male or female. The majority of them tend to work better without. In this case the involvement is kept to a minimum, so it’s not awful, but it isn't necessary, either. If you were going to do something like that, why not really stir things up and have Santina and Lisa fall for each other?!

One interesting thing about this is that the Kindle version I read on my phone has page numbers! See? it can be done, Amazon! There are two hundred pages, but it’s a very fast and easy read. I do think the author didn't quite fully appreciate that this was taking place at the North Pole (when it wasn't set in Florida), however! This was not in Antarctica, nor was it on some land mass in the Arctic circle. It was actually at the North Pole, where the elevation above sea level is maybe ten feet! There are no mountains at the North Pole, so the assertion that Tina "...noticed the distant mountains draped with a smooth white blanket" is nonsensical! There are no mountains there - not even in the distance!

Also, it’s the North Pole! All directions from here go south, and there are no time zones, and therefore no meaningful time differences! So how do we explain this: "Tina called Lisa at lunchtime the next day. She had to take into account the time difference." What time difference? The time zones don’t go by latitude! And did I mention that they're at the North Pole! Are we to understand that Florida is on a different time zone to the North Pole? What does that even mean? Or is the author simply confused because the North Pole has only one sunset and one sunrise per year?! Yes, you can argue that they're on North Pole time which is aligned with some time zone other than the one in which Florida resides, but why would it be that way? Why wouldn't it be aligned to whichever time zone Santa is in?

If it’s aligned to a time zone other than Florida, then why not fully embrace Holland or England where this Christmas legend began? Why would Santa go to Florida? Why not vacation in Holland, or if he wanted somewhere warmer, an overseas territory like Aruba? The legend of Sinterklaas originated in the Netherlands, not in the US, although a lot of his modern trappings became accreted there. 'Father Christmas' originated in England, so why not vacation in England or one of the warm English overseas territories? Why Florida? This bland assumption that only the US is of any account at all is as arrogant as it is annoying, and no rationale is offered.

This bigoted US-centric approach is clearly delineated when we're told that "Most of the elves lived in the area and had gone home for Thanksgiving." Why would they? Are all the Elves American and Canadian? Not every nation celebrates thanksgiving! Things like this were real irritations. The US isn't the world, and behaving like it is doesn't win it any friends. Also, Geothermal energy not an option at the North Pole unless you're prepared to set your plant under 13000 feet of water! Again, North Pole is pure ice. There is no land there! Santina would know this so why would she even consider geothermal energy as a cost-saving measure?

Those minor annoyances aside (complaints which most people probably wouldn’t give a second thought to if they ever gave a first!), I really enjoyed this novel. The characters were interesting and endearing, particularly Tina and her friend Lisa. Tina's family were deliciously obnoxious. When it came to stepping up, for example, where was mom? Clara Claus was just as bad as her husband! She offered not a lick of help. It was all, "Let's dump on the kids, and make them carry our dreams for us!" Santa was a blinkered grouch and Nick was a selfish juvenile. How Tina ever put up with them is a mystery. But they were family, so they were stuck with each other!

This just goes to show that I can fully enjoy a novel despite having some grumpy issues with it, if the author tells me a good enough story. This one was original and refused to follow stereotypes even as it remained within the broad framework of traditional Christmas fare, and I think it was great. The reindeer were inspired. They were a riot, and the pub scene was in some ways reminiscent of the Chalmun's Cantina scene from Star Wars episode 4. The reindeer were a delight, and it was overall, and despite some annoyances, a really good Christmas story.

Kringle by Tony Abbott

Rating: WORTHY!

The blurb tells us this novel is set around 500AD, but Rome had abandoned Britain almost a century before that! If the novel had been set in, sat, 420AD, it would be more accurate. Anyway, set during the time the Romans were withdrawing, and the nation was falling into the dark ages, long before King Alfred started having fantasies of uniting the kingdoms, this fantasy story tells of increasing depredations not by Anglo-Saxons, Picts, and Irish, but by goblin hoards, who come up from underground during the night and pillage villages, and kidnap children. Why do they need the children? Well you'll have to wait until almost the end of the story to discover that!

This novel delivers a slightly different take on the traditional Christmas story, especially since it stops short of the Christmas story! It's more an origins and quest tale than a Santa Claus story as such. Kringle is just a boy, but one who matures rapidly after losing Merwen, his step mother, and who has to strike out on his own to avoid falling into the hands of the goblins. Instead, he falls into the hands of the friendly elves, and later makes friends with "pirates" who sound more like Viking raiders. In his quest to find Merwen, he discovers secrets about the rune stones, about the longest night, about the goblins, and about the elves, but he discovers most about himself, his strength, his power, and the strangely communicative flying reindeer.

Told well, and with the story continually moving along, both in narrative and in location, this novel borrows elements from Lord of the Rings (but which fantasy doesn't?!), yet makes a fresh and original read. I enjoyed it. The worst part, for me, was the author's misguided attempt to try to incorporate elements of the Christian winter solstice mythology into the tale, and it didn't work. It doesn't belong, it contributed nothing, and worse, it stalled the story. He should have stayed with the goblins and elves, which was fantasy enough.

That was a small element though, and overall, the story was excellent, well told, captivating, and nicely ended. I liked it and I recommend it.

Mr Getaway and the Christmas Elves by Sally Huss

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a nicely drawn and colored, and poetically told story about a school class which gets a substitute teacher. Mr Getaway loves to do field trips (and evidently doesn't worry too much about permission slips!), and this particular excursion spirits the children away to the snowy wilds, where Santa's elves are busily creating this year's crop of toys, games, books, musical instruments and other assorted joys.

Sally Huss books often carry a message, and this one is to the effect that taking pride and joy in your work is a good thing. This is actually a wonderful lesson to impart to children, as long as it's not all work and no play! These children find themselves impressed that the elves are a happy bunch even when at work. They're sad that the elves don't get to play with the toys they make, but they learn that an elf's happiness comes from a job well done, and from giving without thought of receiving. These are good ideals at any time of the year.

We learn what Santa does the rest of the year and it turns out that he's really the Greek god Apollo, riding with the sun, or maybe the Egyptian god Ra, whose blessings come down on the sunbeams. I had no problem with this, until I read this advice: "remember when you look at the sun, think of me." It's not a good idea to look directly at the sun! Maybe "When you enjoy the sun, think of me" would have been wiser? That aside, I liked this story and recommend it. Since my blog is about writing as well as reading, here's a writing issue to ponder: For whom the who tolls?!

When Santa showed up, I read, "And whom do you think appeared in that space?" I think this should be 'who', not whom. Note that I am far from expert on this! Indeed think it's time to ditch 'whom' from the language altogether. No one speaks like that! But which use is correct? The trick, apparently, is to see if you can substitute a 'he' or a 'she'. If you can, then it's 'who', not whom. If, instead, you can substitute 'her' or 'him, then it's 'whom' which should be employed. If that's right and I translated this reasonably, then it's really asking, "Do you think he appeared?" To use "Do you think him appeared?" is clearly ungrammatical, which is why I'm going with 'who' as opposed to 'whom'. Whom knows?! 'And who do you think appeared?' just seems right to me, even if it's technically wrong!

But that's a writing issue to wrestle with. I'm not too worried about it here, because I liked this story. It was perky and colorful, and promises a fun read to enjoy with your children.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians by Lou Harry

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a novelization of a movie from 1964, and it shows! I'm guessing the movie is at the level of a bad fifties or sixties Disney live action movie, but I can see for myself, since it’s included with the novel. It's on a DVD claiming it’s a 'Holiday cult classic' although I’d never heard of it before. It extols the appearance of Pia Zadora - hardly an 'A' list actor, and she's in a relatively minor role as one of the children. None of the other actors are known popularly.

I'm not big into novelizations of movies or TV shows, so maybe this is why I have not encountered this book-and-a-movie deal before. Although the book is dated 2005, almost no effort whatsoever has been expended in updating the novel version of the movie. It is still referencing antique TV shows, for example.

The novel is printed in green text, and the gray-scale pictures are actually green-scale, which is hardly enticing. The pictures are evidently taken directly from the movie and have the amateur look of Hollywood 'B' movies to them. The news caster featured in one picture looks more Martian than the Martians do! The Martians are, of course simply humans with a bad paint job on their faces and hats with antennas on them. Because it’s so old, there is some unintentional (I assume it's unintentional!) humor such as when one Martian, remarking upon a comment on how lively something is, says: "You should see the nightlife on Uranus." That was the only LOL moment I got out of this book.

The plot is that the Martians who are technologically advanced, but profoundly stupid - very much like Spock in the original Star Trek TV show - decide they need to come to Earth to kidnap Santa Claus and try to figure out what he's all about. The Martians have no sense of humor, we're told, and no childhood to speak of, but are inexplicably addicted to United States network TV sit-coms. This suggests to me that they never actually leave their childhood! LOL! They end up picking up two kids who tell them Santa lives at the North Pole, so they all head up there and kidnap him.

The story is dumb and childish (and not in a good way), and the plot and script are stupid. There are some amusing moments, but nowhere near enough. The adult characters are universally moronic. I honestly cannot recommend this at all. I saw the movie and it was every bit as crappy as I suspected it would be! I fell asleep half way through and have no intention of watching the rest!