Ms Conception by Jen Cumming

Title: Ms Conception
Author: Jen Cumming
Publisher: Colborne Communications
Rating: WARTY!

This novel is not to be confused with Ms Conception by Pamela Power, which I have not read, although that name, wonderful as it is, I think is beaten by 'Jen Cumming', as the author of a novel about pregnancy! This story details (and I do mean details) a woman's desperate (and I do mean desperate) effort to get pregnant.

You would think, with all we hear from our religious overlords, that pregnancy is something that happens as soon as two people from complementary genders look at each other, and especially so if they're teenagers, but the truth is that even a fertile couple has only about a one in five chance of conceiving during any given month (assuming average sexual activity).

Infertility affects about one in ten couples, and it has been rising of late, but this may be due to the fact that more and more couples are choosing to have children later in life, whereas peak fertility occurs between about eighteen and twenty-five. Women over forty have about a one in ten chance of becoming pregnant even with assisted fertility treatments, whereas men are the scalawags who can successfully father children much later in life, but, as Woody Allen remarked, they're too old and frail by then to pick them up....

It turns out that about 40% of cases of infertility are due the male partner and the same for the female, with the final 20% due to both partners equally. It can be devastating, even marriage-wrecking, but that very much depends upon the individuals. The author evidently underwent these treatments, which in turn no doubt provided the raw material for this story, but this doesn't tell us how much of the story she tells is personal to her and her partner as opposed to being completely made-up from scratch.

I hope it wasn't too personal, because I have to say that I neither liked nor warmed-up to either main character in this novel - or to any of the other characters for that matter. I did not like Abigail Nichols or Jack, her husband (yes, another tedious novel with a main character named Jack!). The two of them bordered dangerously on alcoholism and were so one-dimensional that I almost couldn't see them at all. The entire novel is focused on getting pregnant and then being pregnant. It's like this is the only raison d'être for either of these people, and particularly for Abigail. Jack was notably neglectful and even dysfunctional at times. They literally had no life beyond conception, which makes them completely uninteresting as characters or people and rather scary as potential parents.

As I said, I don't know how autobiographical this novel was, if at all, so this may or may not have been what life was like, but it if was at all autobiographical, it's very sad. I don't doubt that there actually are people where the "need" to get pregnant overrides everything else in their life, but this doesn't mean it makes for either an engrossing or an edifying story.

What this actually felt like was the Bill Murray movie Groundhog day, where we kept going through the same things over and over again, with only minor changes, but unlike the movie, this was not amusing, it was simply boring. Instead of being moving or empathy-inducing, Abigail was merely irritating. I kept wanting someone to grab her by the shoulders, look her in the eye and say, "Abby, grow a pair before you fizzle out like a balloon farting around the room until it collapses, shriveled and flat."

It was pretty obvious that pregnancy was going to result sooner or later, so it's no spoiler to say it, but it means that this novel really had nothing new or different to offer, and the fact that Abigail was a chronic whiner was off-putting. I know that people in her position are entitled to some self-pity, but it seemed endless with Abigail, and it didn't help that it was told from her first person PoV, which magnified and amplified this and made it far worse than it could have been.

The book blurb assures us: "One thing she knows for sure: a healthy sense of humor (and the occasional glass of red wine) is the best coping strategy," but this was not true at all. There was nothing healthy about Abigail, and there certainly wasn't "the occasional glass of red wine." There was copious amounts of drink, and times when she and her husband got outright drunk. What is this couple, nineteen years old?The sense of humor was almost completely absent. Once in a while there would be a remark or observation that was actually funny, but for the most part any attempt at humor was washed out by the endless and tedious whining and self-pity. The funniest thing about it was, as another reviewer has pointed out, that the clichéd image on the front cover looks more like someone's butt than ever it does a pregnant abdomen! But random covers are what you get when you don't self publish.

One of the saddest things is that Abigail seriously needed some psychiatric treatment or therapy, and she wasn't getting it, and no one - not even the many medical personnel she encountered - noticed how bad her condition was. Her mental state and her drinking problem were not normal and not healthy. Her work was being affected, although god only knows why she persisted in working in such a hostile and genderist environment. Her place of employment was as politically incorrect and inappropriate as you can get, yet never once was it ever hinted that there was anything wrong here, or that serious change was called for.

In many ways Abigail was her own worst enemy. She never told her employers what she was up to, and so was seen as taking endless, 'frivolous' time off work. Her obsession with getting pregnant was actually interfering with her work because of her repeated absences, and then she has the hypocrisy to complain that the new hire is stealing all her resources? The new hire actually had all the hallmarks of a corporate spy, but since I didn't finish this novel, I can't say if she actually was.

The thing is that Abigail never actually seemed to work. She was all about delegation and the writing made it seem like she spent the bulk of her time doing activities related to getting pregnant and the hell with her work beyond a sporadic catch-up blitz. She tells us how much time she spends waiting around in medical clinics, but instead of taking her laptop and working from where-ever she was, she sat around doing nothing, or she took a book to read. Great work ethic, Abigail. This woman is neither smart nor organized, nor is she a responsible employee.

This wasn't even the worst part of Abigail's behavior. Before she even considered approaching reliable and scientifically-proven medical treatment, she ran around trying all manner of bullshit woo 'remedies', which of course failed. When she did return to reality, she didn't like the medical doctor she had - or at least not his abusive time-keeping, yet she was evidently too timid or lacking in motivation to change and find a better one.

She whined constantly about her mother in law, who was, I confess and royal pain in the ass, but then she also whined about her sister who accidentally became pregnant, and her husband's ex-girlfriend who also became pregnant. I don't know who raised Abigail to think it's all about Abigail, and that there's something wrong with other people having a life independently of hers, but it was really quite sickening to repeatedly read of the lavish pity parties to which she treated herself on these occasions. Abigail was not remotely likable at all.

Another issue was money. We were told so many things in this novel and shown very little, and one of the worst things was the money question. We were told time and time again how expensive these treatments would be, and how it would have to be put-off because of the cost, and yet suddenly we're doing all these supposedly expensive things and money isn't an object. Her husband magically gets yet another bonus whenever they need cash for something. It was farcical. Never once was any thought spared for the more than forty million Americans who live in poverty, some of whom are no doubt infertile and who have no access to the resources which Abigail did, and no resources to raise a child even if they had one.

Abigail and Jack were both high-end professionals, evidently paid handsomely for their "work" and yet they appeared to appreciate none of it. They had everything they wanted, never went asking for food or clothes (or anything), and yet Abigail still selfishly wallowed in how badly-done-to she was. Anyone is entitled to feel bad about their circumstances once in a while, but Abigail made an art-form out of it. Like I said, she was not a likable person.

Likewise there was hardly a word spoken about adoption. I don't recall seeing where this story was set, but I may have missed that. I assume it was Canada since the author is Canadian, and Canada has some 45,000 orphaned children. The US has over twice that number and a further 400,000 living without permanent families, yet adoption was barely mentioned in this novel. A really good educational opportunity as squandered there.

So, in short, I did not like this novel. I found it obnoxious at times and pitiful (in the wrong way) at other times. There was nothing to get me interested, let alone keep my interest, and it quickly became too tedious to read when there are other authors with better conceptions awaiting. Life's too short and too pregnant with opportunity to live there with your legs in the air waiting for the story to finish anesthetizing you.

Memories and Marco by Hollis Shiloh

Title: Memories and Marco
Author: Hollis Shiloh
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!
pub.

This novel sounded really interesting from the blurb (but then don't they all?!). The premise is quite odd. It's a retired boxer telling his story of his encounters with a younger man, Marco, who provides physical therapy, but who does it by magic, not by science. Clearly this is a premise ripe for erotica, and that would be fine if that's what you're into, but I was hoping for more than that, otherwise why introduce magic? The problem was that I didn't get more, I got less. And I'm not into erotica. Nor am I into first person PoV stories which present the narrator as any more self-obsessed than first person PoV already implies.

I should have known this was going south when I read the names of the two main characters: Jace and Marco. Honestly? Why not just name them Trope and Cliché? But you know I could have managed even that had there been something worth reading. There wasn't. The entire text, for the portion that I read, consisted of Jace's internal monologue as he went back and forth to his magical therapy with Marco. There was absolutely nothing whatsoever to build any atmosphere. There was no description of the surroundings - the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feel of the place. Even when Marco made physical contact while applying his magical remedy, there was nothing - no spark - nothing! It was just conversation and internalizing, and even that had problems.

Jace was constantly aware of everything which Marco did and said, almost to the point of monitoring his heartbeat, and the signals of Marco's interest in Jace were crystal clear to anyone who wasn't a moron, yet for no reason whatsoever (at least none that was made plain to this reader), this moron was dismissing it all, almost with a sense of desperate panic, like this interest would sully him somehow. Oh, look at his wide eyes when he looks at me. No he's not interested. Oh, he touched me again! No this could never happen. He's smiling at me in that special way. He must not like me at all. He's so very attentive to me. He obviously can't stand me. I am not kidding, it was like that all the way though and it was tedious reading.

Here's an example of the author striving for erotic content, describing the two of them sitting in the park eating soft pretzels they just bought:

I took one last bite slowly, and then looked down at my salty, sticky fingers and brushed them on the edges of my trousers. It would just be cruel to suck them one by one, in front of him.

Self-obsess much? You know, if it has been just the one thing, in a decent context, or said in fun or self-deprecatingly, it would have been fine, but it wasn't. This was one of many such comments very early in the story, and it makes no sense, since they had pretty much just met. How much self-adoration in a main character can a reader stand?! Whatever the limit is, it was exceeded astronomically here, and clearly what the author is telling us is that this isn't a romance at all - it's just lust and sex and there's nothing else to it. It was at that point, at the quote above, that I quit reading this.

Rather than take the road less traveled, the author went by mass transit, and I'm not interested in that. I'm not interested in the path most trampled, but that wasn't the worst offense believe it or not! Note that these are two adult guys, but there is a large age difference between them. That wouldn't have been a problem except that every time Jace thinks about Marco, it's in terms of Marco being a child: large eyes, soft lips, smooth skin, small buttocks. He's infantilizing this guy continually, and it's all physical.

There are homophobic morons out there who are so stupid that they cannot even begin to grasp the quantum gap between pedophilia and male homosexuality. Intriguingly, these same people never conflate pedophilia and lesbianism - that ought to tell you all you need to know about what ignorant bigots they are. That said though, I honestly don't think it's a good idea to risk handing these jerks any more ammunition - through writing poorly - than they've already invented for themselves, when it's just as easy to go the extra mile and produce original and inventive ways of describing love in fiction.

I can't recommend this.

How Far Will it Bounce My Blue Ball by DC Swain

Title: How Far Will it Bounce My Blue Ball
Author: DC Swain
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Iuliana Iordaschescu (no website found).

Well I'm not sure about the title of this story, but I can't argue with the quality of it and the brilliant colors of the absorbing illustrations conceived by the exotically and amazingly-named Iuliana Iordaschescu.

I did come across one error on page three of the book, where the term "it's" is used. That's a contraction of "it is", which is wrong in this case. It should be "its" with no apostrophe, indicating a beat which belongs to the blue ball. This is, unfortunately, a common error. People tend to add apostrophes where none are needed and omit them where they're required. It's easy to avoid if you 'uncontract' the word and see if it still fits when employed as "it is".

One thing I very much appreciated was the large and simple text. This is for young children, some of whom might be learning to read, and the large and simple text is invaluable. It's also, incidentally, useful for grandparents whose eyesight may be somewhat poorer than average, and who will, I'm sure, appreciate the ready legibility of the text when they come to read it to their grand kids. It's refreshing to find a writer like DC Swain who evidently thinks of these things, and it's especially nice if you're reading this on a so-called smartphone.

This children's story is interesting in that it features no children! All we see is the ball, determinedly and unstoppably bouncing its way into oblivion. That ball has ambition and has no business appearing blue. What's to be sad about? The ball, in my humble opinion, deserved to be red, just as this story deserves to be read.

I found that the highly whimsical nature of the story is what made it most appealing. Typically I look for educational content in children's books, and failing that, I look for something to stir the imagination of the child, some novelty, something of interest, some good fun, or something like those things, to make the story stand out.

This one managed it by how wild and crazy it was, by its uncluttered nature, and by that feisty ball, which to me had a character all of its own as it bounced its way confidently down the high street and out of town on its way to who knows where? Maybe we'll find out in the sequel: Spaceballs? Oh wait, wrong movie! I recommend this story for sheer fun and originality.

In terms of book presentation, I have to add a note about distortions in proportions - of the book layout in the so-called smart phone Kindle app. This is probably a technical issue, but when you read this things in ebook from, they tend to bear little relationship to the print form. Even when the page is an image, as it is in this case, there are issues. You will no doubt note from the images here how the ball is distorted? This was from trying to render the page in the square format of the original book! Clearly the images are differently proportioned on my phone, because when I make them square, the ball isn't a sphere (and neither is the sun in the other review. Of course the sun actually isn't a sphere anyway - not a pure one - but that's by-the-by). This is something which is worth keeping in mind both as a writer and as a reader.

How Far Will it Fly My Yellow Kite by DC Swain

Title: How Far Will it Fly My Yellow Kite
Author: DC Swain
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Iuliana Iordaschescu (no website found).

Today is evidently DC Swain day on my blog as I review two children's books both by the same author and artist. This is another fun story from DC Swain, and once again it's admirably-illustrated by the wonderfully-named Iuliana Iordaschescu, but this time the illustrations are in a different style, which I found refreshing. In this case they look like they're done with colorful crayons, which is a fun way to make the pictures look, for a kid's story. In the other book I review today, the images are all smooth colors with the look of fresh paint.

I think children's stories which ask a question in the title are some of the most stimulating because they immediately make a child think. What is the answer? How high will that kite fly? What happens if you let go of the string? In Austin, Texas, there's an annual kite-flying weekend in a park down town, and even if you're not into kites (and expensive bad food and watery sodas), it makes for an interesting and fun couple of hours. Kids delight in it, of course.

In this case, unlike in the blue ball story, we actually get children putting in an appearance. The girl flying the kite bravely lets it loose and it soars, flying over her school, over the bridge, over the mountains, and out to sea. Where will it end up? I think this is the kite which scared the people on the Mary Celeste so badly that they abandoned ship, thereby creating a mystery! What does your kid think happened to the kite?

The beauty of these books is that they really don't end when the book does, because the question goes on. That kite, just like that bouncing ball in the other story, is out there somewhere, and you can have a lot of fun with your kids in speculation over where it might have gone or what it's doing now. My guess is that it ultimately ended up in the rings around Saturn, blown there by solar winds along with odd socks and lost luggage, but it's only a guess, understand....

I recommend this book.

Galaxies: The Quaint and Quizzical Cosmos by Natalie J del Favero

Title: Galaxies: The Quaint and Quizzical Cosmos
Author: Natalie J del Favero (no website found)
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Orsolya Orbán.

I wasn't sure if I would like this book when I first began reading it, but it grew on me. It's written in poetic form, with dark images of space. The images are populated by fairy-like characters, which was perhaps the main reason I had doubts about it, but in the end I decided children would probably like this, and decided to let it go. If you like this, there's also one about planets, and one about the so-called Big Bang by the same creative team.

What impressed me was how scientific it was without going into any real scientific detail. It described how galaxies came to be, and then went further to talk about the massive black holes that all evidence shows are at the heart of galaxies. It didn't even stop there, but went further, to talk briefly about dark energy and dark matter, so this was a really pleasant surprise for me, and was what won me over to rating this positively.

Few people realize that the massive majority of the matter and energy in the universe is entirely invisible and almost undetectable. We can't see it directly, which is why it's called "dark". We can only discover it by observing the effect it has on the matter we can see. It's entirely possible that there is some other explanation for what scientists observe, but right now the best candidate is the dark twins - energy and matter.

Maybe you've been to an aquarium or a pet shop and seen those "glass" fish - the ones which have no pigmentation and you can see right through them apart from the occasional internal organ. You can find pictures of them online. Imagine trying to see one of those in the water in the wild, especially if the water is deep or murky. If you could measure currents in the water, you could track the fish even if you couldn't see it. Another way to track it would be to observe its predators - they would be drawn to it. In the same way, matter is drawn to, and bound together by, dark matter. This is how scientists 'see' it.

I think author Natalie del Favero, and artist Orsolya Orbán have done a worthy job here of finding a way to present fascinating, if sometimes counter-intuitive information in a form that children can appreciate, and I recommend this book.

Clockwork by Philip Pullman

Title: Clockwork
Author: Philip Pullman
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WARTY!

Clockwork is a very short-novel - about one hundred pages - and it's the first thing by Pullman that has interested me since I got done with his two trilogies: His Dark Materials, and The Ruby in the Smoke, both of which I loved. Unfortunately, his series seem to be the only things of his that I end-up liking, and this volume was no exception.

It's set in a previous time - a time of the of skilled craftsmen and of creation of clockwork time-pieces. One of these is a man who is on the verge of finishing his apprenticeship and becoming a master, but in order to do this, he was supposed to have created a clockwork figure that would be added to the collection of figures in the town clock. The problem is that he's done no work and has nothing to exhibit. Now on the eve of his disgrace, he's in a bar with his friend, who happens to be a story-teller.

His friend tells the weird tale of the time the Prince went hunting in the mountains one snowy night with his young brother and a certain other gentleman. On page 77 we read the confusing description where "...two nights later..." - that is, two nights after the prince left "...three nights before..." he returns! This made zero sense to me. If he left three nights before, how can he return only two nights later?

But that's a minor problem. What returns is the sled with the prince mechanically driving the exhausted horses - mechanically because it turns out he's dead, and the only thing which kept his whip hand moving was a clockwork mechanism which someone had placed in his chest.

Right at the point where the story teller is revealing that the count never returned on the sled, the count himself comes into the bar, which precipitates everyone else leaving in panic. The only ones to remain were the about-to-be-disgraced clock-maker and the count himself.

Thus begins the tale, and it wasn't disastrous, but it was a bit boring with nothing of great import and certainly nothing engrossing happening. It's a very short novel, which is the only reason I bothered to finish it, but that does nothing to improve the overall quality. I can't recommend this one.

Cosmic Dancer by Paul Roland

Title: Cosmic Dancer
Author: Paul Roland
Publisher: Tomahawk Press
Rating: WARTY!

Had he lived, Marc Bolan would have looked at turning 68 in 2015, but he never saw his thirtieth birthday. The reason for that is that he and the woman he was sharing his life with at the time, drove straight into a tree in a Mini, at god knows what speed. The fact that none of this is covered in Paul Roland's book (beyond the bare fact that it happened) is what I find rather curious, and is really one of the main reasons that I'm rating this negatively.

No one in their right mind wants to drag-out every last gory detail from the accident, but the fact that scarcely any details are mentioned of the aftermath is an inexcusable omission. I think the book, for as much detail as it goes into in every aspect of his life (except this), needed to say a lot more than it did. As it is, it might have people asking why the author white-washed Gloria Jones as he apparently did. I think people want to know, as far as can be determined, what went wrong here to cut his life and his career short before it had a chance - assuming it was going - to take off again. What went wrong and how could it have been prevented so others do not make the same mistakes? It's one of the few things in this book which isn't given any depth or weight.

Marc Feld's (that was always his name - he never legally changed it) father was of Russian/Polish Jewish heritage, and drove a truck (or a 'lorry' as they call them in Britain). His mother was about as British as they come and of Christian heritage, but despite this background, Bolan never was religious - he kind of made up his own. Initially this was fashion, but he also got into fantasy, particularly of the Lord of the Rings and Narnia nature, and sometimes he had a hard time telling that from reality.

This book covers his life from birth to death, and provides quite a wealth of detail for everything in between, although there are omissions, or subjects which feel like they're skated over. The the author's style was not the best in the world. He alternately seemed like he was hero-worshiping Bolan, and at other times pillorying him. He was also inconsistent with his observations on the songs, seeming like he would run one into the ground for a trait it exhibited whereas when a previous song had exhibited that same trait, it wasn't even considered worthy of mention. There were a lot of times that it felt like the author wasn't actually giving his own opinion, but was instead going along with whatever popular or critical opinion was current of Bolan in the period being addressed. This was annoying.

In addition to his music, Bolan came to be known for two things - seriously exaggerating his life, and being powerfully driven to success and acceptance one way or another. The means to this end came through music, which he broke into almost be sheer force of will. He never was a very talented guitar player, but what he knew, he really knew what to do with it.

He success began with his own band - of which he was very much the boss - which was called Tyrannosaurus Rex. This he formed after a boy band he was in, called John's Children, broke up after a disastrous tour as opener for The Who in Germany. Tyrannosaurus Rex was a two-piece band which put out four albums and garnered themselves what Bolan considered to be a hippie following, playing a run of small acoustic gigs with a steady fan base, and releasing a couple of singles, until Bolan began to realize that he was going nowhere with this, and after marrying his girlfriend, June Child, he retooled, ditching the acoustic guitar for the electric.

He also changed the band's name, shortening it to T.Rex. The first single he released was Ride a White Swan, which, after a long slow climb, made it to the number two spot on the British charts. This is one of my favorite songs. His appearance, with some glitter on his face, effectively kick-started 'glam rock', although Bolan himself never considered his band to be a glam rock band. He followed this up with Hot Love, which went all the way to number one. T.Rex was in, and Marc Bolan had started to live his dream.

There came a string of top ten hits, many of which were number one or nearly so, and Bolan's popularity in Britain came to rival that of the Beatles in their heyday, with screaming fans fighting to get up the the stage and their noise drowning out the music. For all his success in Britain, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere though, he was never accepted in the USA, where "Get it On" was his only hit, and that had to be renamed to avoid confusion with an earlier song of the same name, so it became known as "Bang a Gong" in the US.

It was at this point that Bolan became his own worst enemy, drunk on what he considered to be his single-handed success and refusing to listen to anyone. His fame started to wane as did his hits, and he reacted by indulging in drugs - something which he had avoided like the plague to this point in his life. His wife eventually gave-up on him after he started an affair with Gloria Jones, evidently thinking he could have a wife and a mistress. It turns out he couldn't.

Bolan sunk into the depths and became more of a joke or a self-parody than anything, but then Gloria became pregnant, and Bolan started turning things around, and trying to reinvent himself. He was, it seemed, on the verge of doing just that, and finding his way back when around 4:00 am on Friday, September 16, 1977, Gloria Jones was driving him home (Bolan never learned to drive) after a night out when the car hit a tree. Neither was wearing a set belt. She survived, splayed across the hood of the Mini. Lying on the road beside it, Bolan didn't. As wikipedia reports it: "She was later due to appear in court in London on charges of being unfit to drive and driving a car in a dangerous condition. She never returned to face the charges and the Coroner's Court recorded a verdict of accidental death."

Bolan's second wave of success did indeed come after his death as more and more people acknowledged his influence and contribution to rock, but he was no longer around to enjoy it. While I can definitely recommend some of his music, I can't recommend this book.

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

Title: The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Author: Alison Weir
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Rating: WORTHY!

This is one of a dozen books with the same or a similar title. I've read only this one and I can recommend it for its great detail and thorough coverage. Indeed, it may be a bit too detailed and too dense for some readers, but it worked for me. The only issue I had with it was with the Kindle ebook version, which I read on a smart phone. The formatting was questionable at times. Words which would normally be hyphenated were often missing the hyphen, but instead of sporting a space in its place, they were run together to make one word. A spell-checker would catch this, but what I suspect happened here was that the original typescript was fine - it was the conversion to kindle format which screwed it up. This is just my guess.

The other Kindle issue I had was that the location tracker, which monitors how much reading you have left to do and displays it as a percentage, was totally screwed-up. When it shows page 396 of 571 at the bottom of the screen on the left, it should then show 69% completed at bottom right. Instead, as you can see in the image on my blog, it shows only 50% completed! That's quite a discrepancy. Now there were end notes and a bibliography, but if this is included in the page count, then the percentage is still wrong. If it's not, then the percentage is reflecting the entire book, not what's left to read. It's misleading at best.

On top of that, sometimes I would start a chapter and the screen would tell me I had a minute left to the end of the chapter, then I swipe to the next screen, and it would adjust to show five minutes or fifteen or whatever. A couple of times I started a new chapter and it would tell me I had an hour's worth of reading, which was never the case, and the estimate would drop precipitously as I swiped the screens as I read. Clearly something was not working properly here!

There were a couple of other minor errors, too, such as misspelling 'curtsies' as "curtsys", and telling us (of Anne Boleyn watching workmen build her death scaffold): "On the green outside her window she could see workmen erecting a high scaffold, for which they would be paid £23. 65. 8d." Given that there were only twenty shillings to the pound, you can't have 65s in the middle like that! The most you could have is 19, and I'm wondering if it should have been either just the 6 or just the 5, but I can't find any on-line account which records this sum. Google doesn't help. It just ignores the pound symbol and returns any result containing 23, for instance, if I run a search for £23 connected with Anne Boleyn.

That said, I enjoyed the book immensely. It was very readable and painted a clear picture of these poor women who had to put up with this ruthless dick-head of a king. That said, a couple of the women were quite as ruthless as Henry himself was, and these were the ones he tended to behead. Katherine of Aragon, or to give her her much more beautiful Spanish name, Catalina de Aragón y Castilla was first in line, and her marriage was needed to cement a relationship with what we now call Spain, as a bulwark against the French. Of course at other times Henry would seek to marry into the French royal family to cement an alliance against Spain.

Katherine was rather aged (by fertile bride standards of the time), being in her mid twenties, and she failed to produce Henry a male heir (at least none that survived more than two months after birth), which of course, back then, was the only heir worth having. This made it quite ironic that Henry's sole male heir from all his marriages died young, and thereby brought two successive queens to the throne (three if you count Jane Grey), one of whom, Elizabeth, presided over what has come to be called England's golden age.

Since Katherine was initially married to Henry's older bother Arthur (until Arthur died young), Henry used this as an excuse to ditch her, claiming the marriage was not legal because the Bible says you can't marry your brother's wife. Throughout her life, Katherine resolutely maintained that the marriage to Arthur had never been consummated, but Henry was hypocritically religious (as far too many people seem to be even today), and though he dissolved the monasteries, this was for no other reason than to fill the royal coffers. He never abandoned the Catholic church and was dead-set against the protestants (although nowhere near as set against them as was his daughter by Katherine, who became known as Bloody Mary when she came to the throne). He had no qualms about using religious excuses to change wives. Katherine was lucky and got off lightly, although she felt robbed and was indeed badly treated both before and after the marriage.

Henry had become enamored of a scheming little vixen, one of the ladies-in-waiting, by the name of Anne Boleyn - who I used to feel sorry for, before I read this. Henry had already bedded Anne's sister Mary, but Anne was not about to be as free with her body as Mary evidently was. She schemed her way onto the throne very expertly, holding her virginity, if indeed she retained it, as a prize, but ironically, she didn't know when to be satisfied, and she continued scheming and running merciless vendettas even as queen. That and her failure to produce a male heir (like Katherine before her, she produced only one daughter, this one named Elizabeth) was what brought her down and meant that there was no one to speak in her favor. Anne was even more 'antique' than Catherine had been when she married Henry, but Henry was so blinded by her charm and enticement, and his own unbridled lust that he really didn't consider whether she could actually produce him an heir.

What I still feel sorry for is how Anne was rail-roaded by Henry before there even were rail-roads. She was sent to the chopping block with trumped-up charges of adultery (which was probably not true and certainly not a capital offense, even then) and treason, which was indeed a capital offense, and probably not true either in this case. Her ladies-in-waiting had to pick up her severed head and drop it and her lifeless body into a basket so it could be carted off like offal.

Henry had of course already set his eyes on his third bride before Anne ever climbed those stairs, and Jane Seymour, only a few years younger than Anne, actually did provide him with a male heir, who was named Edward before going on to have a great acting career (I might have made-up that last bit). The truth was that she died within a week or two of Edward's birth.

Henry perhaps actually loved Jane, and pined for her, but nevertheless he felt compelled to marry again because he had only one male heir and the attrition rate for children (and indeed adults) back then was stupendous. Every year in the summer, Henry and his court absconded from London because of plague outbreaks. They also moved almost continually from one residence to another because each palace became so filthy and stinking after a while, that it had to be aired out and thoroughly cleaned before it was fit to occupy again.

Enter Anna von Kleve, better known as Anne of Cleves. She came from what is now Germany and was once again chosen to cement an alliance, but Henry, having received her sight unseen (apart from an evidently over-flattering portrait), rejected her from the off, although he could not be seen to openly reject her because of the alliance. He claimed she smelled funny, which is hypocritical at best, because by this time Henry was suffering a weeping wound in his leg which plagued him for the rest of his life, gave him a nasty temper at times, and smelled something awful by all accounts. Anna went easiest of all, the marriage being annulled and she being treated and addressed as the King's sister, and living in comfort the rest of her life. She was not the longest lived of Henry's wives (that being Catalina), but she was the last to die.

Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn were first cousins, which makes it darkly interesting that these were the two he accused of of adultery and treason, and beheaded. Catherine failed to produce an heir, and really was (more than likely) guilty of adultery. The treason charge was simple trumped-up so they could behead her. An act of parliament made it a treasonable offense for a new queen to fail to disclose to the king, within twenty days of the marriage, a previous affair, and evidently this was retroactive. Catherine was nineteen when she was beheaded.

Finally there arrived a queen who out-lived Henry while she was still queen. Catherine Parr was almost twice her predecessor's age and Henry was, at this point, perhaps marrying for comfort having given up on everything else. Catherine also married almost as many times as Henry did - four in all, including her last one in secret, just six months after Henry died. Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

After Henry's death, Edward 6th, his son by Jane Seymour, came to the throne at the age of nine, but he died in his mid-teens, the very kind of thing of which Henry had been afraid, having had only one male heir. Edward nominated Lady Jane Grey - the well known actor (just kidding again) as his heir. She was Henry 7th's granddaughter and was "queen" for nine days, but was overthrown by Mary, Henry 8th's daughter, and beheaded at the Tower of London. Mary became queen and slaughtered a protestant a week until she died, whereupon Elizabeth came to the throne, the third of Henry's children to rule England legitimately.

I recommend this book. it;s full of fascinating detail about Tudor life and court intrigue, and disturbing detail about how cheaply life was held five hundred years ago.

Marsh Mud and Mummichogs by Evelyn B Sherr

Title: Marsh Mud and Mummichogs
Author: Evelyn B Sherr
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Rating: WORTHY!

Evelyn Sherr has a BS in Biology and a PhD in Zoology. She's Professor Emeritus in the Oregon State University's Ocean Ecology and Biogeochemistry department. Judged from her writing in this book, she also has a sly sense of humor and her knowledge of salt marsh life is quite 'littorally' amazing. There is one thing on which I have her beat, though: I know that snakes are venomous, not poisonous! Although I guess some snakes might be poisonous if not cooked properly before eating...!

The book is pretty dense and strong on science, but it's not dry and unreadable. Obviously it isn't for everyone, but it is for anyone who has an interest in wildlife, especially if you live in Georgia, or plan on visiting and don't want to end up bitten or stung (or even eaten) by something nasty when all you wanted to do was enjoy the coastline.

So I know what you're wondering: what the heck is a mummichog? Well I didn't know either, and I'm not going to tell you because I have to admit the obscurity of the title was part of the attraction, as I'm sure the author planned. All I'm going to say is that it has nothing to do with killer fish.

The book is well organized and supported with a host of really nice quality gray-scale photographs. I found myself wishing for more, even so. So many animals and plants are mentioned that it would have been nice to see a few more of them. There were too many to show images of them all, but fortunately, if you're reading this on something like an iPad, you can have your browser open, and do an image search to keep up. I was doing this almost spastically. It's one of the major advantages that ebooks have over print books.

And this author really does cover everything. Here's a list of the chapter headers so you can gauge how thorough she is for yourself:

1. Marine habitats of the Georgia Coast
2. What You Don't See: Microscopic Life
3. Marsh Grass, Live Oaks, Sea Oats
4. Creatures of the Black Goo
5. Mud Dwellers of Marshes and Creeks
6. Creepy Crawlies: Insects and Spiders
7. Marsh Life: Scales
8. Marsh Life: Feathers and Fur
9. What Lies Beneath; Zooplankton
10. Attachment to Place: Settlers
11. Sound Swimmers: Nekton
12. On, and Under, the Beach: Living in the Sand
13. Loggerheads
14. Shore Birds
15. seasons in the Sun
16. The Once and Future Coast

There is also: three appendices, a bibliography, and an index. And there's a preface which I didn't read. I never read forewords, introductions, prefaces, prologues and whatever. Just a personal quirk.

I love the chapter titles that played on movie titles such as 'Creatures of the Black Goo', and 'What Lies Beneath', and the play on words in 'Sound Swimmers'. In the 'Feathers and Fur' chapter I learned of the rice rat - something I had never heard of before. That sounds so cute - and looks just as cute. Any budding animator needs to Disney-fy that before Disney does!

The chapters, as the list above indicates, covered everything from microscopic life to the megafauna of the area, which includes whales and squid. It covered pretty much every class of life there is, from invertebrates to vertebrates, and pretty much every group those two orders include, and it did not shy away from plant life either, which was really nice.

I don't normally pay attention to covers because the author typically has little or nothing to do with them unless they self publish, but in this case, and regardless of who chose the cover, I have to say it was part of the attraction for me. It reminded me of the time I visited a salt marsh (in Texas, not in Georgia, and I walked with my dogs along a raised boardwalk just like this one, hoping the gators wouldn't launch themselves up onto it and try to take one of the dogs! I have to say that Texas gators are pretty decent folk. I saw them in the marsh, their eyes just above the water, but they didn't try anything funny, which just goes to show why you never see a gator doing stand-up comedy. It was a bit scary, but great fun and quite bracing.

So before I wax lyrical with an ocean of comments, let me beach this review by simply saying that I loved this book, loved the way it was written, the sweet sense of humor and the extensive detail of everything to be found in nature on the Georgia coast. I recommend this.

The Girl Who Wouldn't Die by Marnie Riches

Title: The Girl Who Wouldn't Die (unable to find this on B&N or Amazon)
Author: Marnie Riches
Publisher: Maze Books (website not found)
Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
Sgraffito should be graffito?

Note this is not to be confused with J Montecristo's The Girl That Wouldn't Die (which I haven't read).

I love an author who knows that it's chaise longue and not chaise Lounge. Same letters, different order, and Marnie Riches knows the difference! That said, I had some seriously mixed feelings about this as I read it. There were parts where it got really slow, with student conversations - boring conversations - being relayed in too much detail, but just as I was wondering if I really, honestly, wanted to read this, it would pick up again and some interesting material would play out, so I kept reading. In the end, however, the slow nothing happening pages far outweighed the action and I grew too bored to finish it.

It's split into two interleaved parts which initially seem to have little in common other than that the main character in each is a young female, but it becomes crystal clear later, what's going on. One part, set in Britain, features Ella, a girl in high school who is talked - by a cop - into joining a local drug gang as a narc, to help out her mother's criminal case which is pending. Ella puts her life on the line to infiltrate the gang and has a hard time doing it initially, and then another hard time keeping herself out of trouble as much as possible and avoiding the advances of the young drug lord, a hot guy whose girlfriend is downright mean. I was more of a fan of Ella than I was of George, the other female character. George really wasn't likeable at all.

One big issue I had with this is that we're tossed back and forth not only between those two story lines, but also between a score of characters, police officers, unsavory philandering college professors, and a whole bunch of interchangeable students, many of whom have their own story line. It was really hard to keep track of who is who and why I should care about them anyway, a lot of the time. Plus it seemed like the villain was one of two characters: one a main character who seemed to me to be a huge red herring, and the other a minor character who showed up just often enough to make me suspicious, but as I said, I didn't care in the end, so I never did find out if I was right, I'm usually not!

People are disappearing, and some of those who disappeared showed-up in the rubble of a bombed building the bomb still strapped to them. By around page one hundred it became pretty obvious what was happening, and the only mystery really, was how long it would take George to figure it out, but the MO was changing, so my interest was sustained for a while. The problem here was that George should never have been involved in any of this in the first place. There was no reason for her to be other than that the author simply wanted it this way, and the more I read of George, the less I liked her. She was really a jerk and a busybody, and I found nothing to either empathize or sympathize with.

Then there was the deus ex machina factor. At one point George was breaking into apartment. She opens door and alarm starts counting down. Just as she’s trying to guess what the four digit code is to silence it, she gets a text with the answer. That struck me as way too convenient and didn't make George look very smart. There was no reason for her to break in where she was breaking in. She was, once again, just being an annoying busybody.

There was a minor writing issue, too, which I like to raise since my blog is all about writing. One of the characters is named Ad. Chapter 20 begins like this: “Had Ad not had a stinking hangover…”. I think I would have reworded that. It sounds really awkward, which would be fine if you were going for comedy, but this novel is not intended to be a comedy. For me, I would have written something like “The beauty of the Church of the Holy Spirit was lost on Ad, condemned to hell as he was by the debilitating power of his hangover” or something along those lines. But that's just me.

In short, I can't recommend this. The writing itself wasn't too bad at all, in general terms, but the pace was agonizingly slow, and the character motivations were simply non-existent. It just wasn't realistic. The thing is that I might even have been willing to let this author get away with that, had it not been so damnably boring, and had her main character been remotely likeable.

How Andrew Got His Spots by Louise Lintvelt

Title: How Andrew Got His Spots
Author: Louise Lintvelt
Publisher: Amazon

Illustrated by Julie Sneeden.

Today is spotty day! I review two books by two authors, and I'm afraid I didn't find either of them worthy!

As I said in the other review, I hold children's books less accountable than I do those aimed at older readers - not in quality, but in what I'm willing let the author get away with. This doesn't mean that there's no limit to how generous I'm willing to be with praise and ratings. I like to support new authors, especially of children's books, but they need to do something for me in return, namely to create books which look like they're offering something worthy - preferably something educational or at least a lot of fun.

I can't say that this book offers that and moreover, for a book set in the wilds of Africa, it's illustrated tamely. Children deserve the very best we can give them whether it be attention, education, love, or books, and when I feel that they're being short-changed, I have to take a stand against it!

This is the story of Andrew the baby giraffe. Unlike Dalmatians, the subject of the other book I reviewed, Giraffes are born with their distinctive marking in place. You could also argue that, contrary to this book's title, they don't really have spots. They do have gorgeous patterned and dappled camouflage, which not only identifies their sub-species, and thereby from which corner of Africa they hale, but also, individual giraffe markings are as distinctive as fingerprints. The problem is that it's far too hard to get a giraffe to roll on an ink-pad, so I can't prove this to you....

Andrew seems to have dropped on his head at birth (which is perfectly normal for a giraffe, as it happens) without his markings, and he's now concerned about what happened to them. It's funny to me that the title of this book would have been more appropriately applied to the other book and the title of the other book better applied here.

One of the things which really bothered me about this story, aside from it once again being about a boy - like girls never have any adventures or problems to solve - is that it's set in one of the most attractive and exotic locales in the world, yet all we get here is the mundane. His name is Andrew, which is Greek, not African. it gets worse.

Andrew sets off on a little quest to try and figure out where his spots are. He talks to a ladybug who tells him that Mary the Fairy handed out kisses which became the spots. My only problem with this is that Mary was white, so it's like we're being told that only the white folks can rescue the black ones. We all know from history where that lead, don't we? It's not called the missionary position for nothing. It means you're being screwed. Could we not have had a black fairy in Africa?

Andrew continues on and chats with a leopard (no Rudyard Kipling explanation here!), and an owl and ends up getting his "spots" in a way not entirely divorced from the true purpose of the markings, so that wasn't too bad. That said, however, I can't recommend this story because it really lacked inspiration and made too many faux pas on the way through the jungle out there, so while I have to mark it down for that, I can say it didn't make my skin crawl....

How Oakley Lost His Spots by DC Swain

Title: How Oakley Lost His Spots
Author: DC Swain
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

Today is spotty day! I review two books by two authors, and I'm afraid I didn't find either of them worthy!

I try to lower the bar with children's books - not in quality, but in what I'm willing let writers get away with. Even so, there is a limit to trying to be generous and understanding, and to support new authors. I like children's books to look like they're offering something - preferably something educational or at least a lot of fun. I can't claim any of that for this very short book which is indifferently illustrated. Children are precious and they deserve the very best we can give them whether it be attention, education, love, or books, and when I feel that they're being short-changed, I have to rebel against it!

The first problem was the complete disconnect between the book title and the book content! This was not a story about how Oakley lost his spots! It's about what he did when he realized they were missing. His spots never were actually lost: he never had them to begin with! Oakley is a Dalmatian. I don't think there's anyone who doesn't know what a Dalmatian looks like, but in Oakley's case, he's spotless - literally. He's all white without a hint of the usually patterning. It's not that the design effort was spotty - it's that there aren't any spots at all, unlike the rest of his kin.

Dalmatians, named after an historical region in Croatia, are actually born white and their spots appear around three weeks of age - a bit earlier than Oakley evidently gets his. They can be black or russet. These dogs, like all so-called pure-bred dogs, all-too-often have health problems. In the case of Dalmatians, it's Hyperuricemia, and they need a specially-controlled diet to avoid debilitating problems. About 30% of Dalmatians also suffer deafness, something the idiot breeders didn't realize to begin with - they just thought the dogs were stupid. Human arrogance strikes again! My advice is to get thee to a muttery and adopt something with a good mixed gene pool!

But I digress! There are so many ways this story could have gone from here. It's a crying shame that it went to the dogs. It could have turned out, for example, that Oakley's spots were actually there all along - but they were white! That would have been a riot and quite inventive. It could have turned out that they got stuck on something he'd rolled around in. He could have just dropped them while out playing, or shaken them off after a swim, which could have led to a treasure hunt for his own spots! He could have earned his spots like medals for some heroic act. None of this happens.

There is a token attempt, on one page, to address where I had been thinking this story would go: that of the misfit child, but after a brief mention on one page, it's forgotten. What a wasted opportunity! This book could have been aimed at helping children to fit in, and helping them to understand that they can help others with this, but that disintegrated. Another avenue: that of using this to talk about racism, failed to get unleashed.

Instead, all we got was some whining, three pages of Oakley looking in oddball places for his spots, like he'd lost them - which he hadn't and which doesn't speak well of his smarts (or his persistence for that matter). There are some pages where he tries to fake his spots, but he soon gives up and goes to bed. Magically, in the morning, the spots have appeared. I'm sorry. I know that this was someone's bright idea and effort, and I wish them all the best in their future efforts, but this was just barking up the wrong tree in my opinion, and while I can't claim it got my hackles up, I did feel rather dog-eared afterwards.

The Many Nibbles of Mister Gibbles by Laura Yirak

Title: The Many Nibbles of Mister Gibbles
Author: Laura Yirak
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Daren Challman.

Laura Yirak has the kind of last name that always makes me think it's written backwards. I think it's because it begins with a Y (and yes, I do get really confused by people named Yancy). Kariy does sound exactly like a name, but it's never actually spelled that way as far as I know!

But I digress! I thought this one might be fun to read because one of my sons had pet guinea pigs, and the title of this novel was amusingly playful. Daren Challman's artwork was really interesting, too. Some of it was drawn, but the drawings were then combined with photographs, and the effect was really quite diverting. I found the grass representing the bottom of the cage quite distracting because it kept drawing my eyes away from everything else. The overall technique definitely worked, though. It's worth keeping in mind that there are many ways to create compelling images for children's books.

My son's guinea pigs showed interest in quite a variety of foods, and would call out as soon as they heard the refrigerator door open, expecting to get rewarded with a stack of lettuce leaves. They would also eat olives, apples, potatoes, yams, dandelions from the yard, and a host of other things, including things they may never have encountered in the wild (had they been wild) as well as their regular packaged guinea pig food, which is essential to be sure they're getting all their nutritional needs.

The colors were gorgeous in this story and it was very poetic and playful, so I have no problem recommending it, although I would have liked it better if it had offered some advice about caring for these pets. There was this one fun thing which unintentionally came free with the ebook. Two successive pages at the beginning had text in the middle of a bright orange sunburst, and if I put my finger down to slide the screen, but instead of swiping once, moved it quickly back and forth, it produced an almost animated shimmer effect which was quite fun, and which no doubt will amuse your kids.

Please note that while guinea pigs - in my opinion - are not as fun as some other pets such as hamsters, mice, and especially rats (which are a riot), they are quiet and readily pet-able, very much like rabbits. They do get noisy when they think that there's food in the offing, and start what's called wheaking (I call it bubble and squeak, borrowing from an English term for a kind of meal). They will stand up on their back legs almost like Meerkats to reach for the food you bring them.

Guinea pigs, like all pets, are living things which have feelings and needs and which can feel discomfort, fear and pain. They're not toys and they do require attention, care, and ugh, cleaning, so if you're thinking of getting one (or preferably two) females for your kids, please make sure the child not only understands that work is required, but also what that work will entail. Fresh water every day, and frequent fresh greens as treats. Even little guinea pigs need big love!

But I digress again! So this book was cool, fun, and did teach something about caring for guinea pigs without seeming to do so - which is the best teaching technique of all, isn't it? I recommend this one.

Goo and Spot in the Do Not Wiggle Riddle by Elsa Takaoka, Catherine Toennisson

Rating: WARTY!

This book offered a riddle to entertain young children, but I thought it wasn't very well executed. I don't apply the same strong criteria to children's books that I do to adult and young-adult novels, but I do expect a decent story, or a whole lot of fun, and some educational content. This one failed on all counts. I can see where the author intended to go, but for my money she fell far short.

The idea was a commendable one: the aim is to try to get kids to understand that there are times when they need to sit still, and pay attention, and not fidget, and so on. Good luck with that! The riddle was supposed to help with this but it was long, and all over the place, and so poorly metered that it became a real distraction.

Maybe that was the intention - distract the kids so that they forget to fidget? It didn't work for me. It felt to me like children would be more likely to fidget and call out answers because they couldn't see where this was going, and they were being given no clues unless you count one long, almost endless negative 'clue'. I really don't. Not for young kids.

The problem is that the so-called riddle wasn't even a riddle, it was a long, raggedy ramble about what this story was not about - with no clue whatsoever what it was about. Catherine Toennisson's art work was uninspiring, too, and I know from her website she can do better. I honestly can't recommend this unless you're into nonsense "rhymes" and very basic children's stories.

The Snarls by Becca Price

Title: The Snarls
Author: Becca Price (no website found)
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Tanya Gleadall.

This was an amazingly inventive story that makes me wish I'd thought of it myself. It takes those annoying hair tangles and snarls, and personifies them; then it romances this idea into an amusingly exaggerated tale of woe.

Tangles will get you if your hair grows long and you don't spend the requisite time caring for it, but if you really let it go, then the Snarls move in and not only set up home, but build cities! There's no end to their industry!

And there's no end to the giddy passion of the author in detailing their exploits in this crazy tale which reads more like a cascading poem than a simple prose story, with the exaggeration building and building until you wonder how the author is ever going to get out of it.

I have to recommend this because it's so fresh and whimsical, and it really does make you want to go wash and brush your hair out, which for children prone to playing in the dirt, and running around having fun, and climbing trees, and so on, is definitely a good thing!

Who Took My Banana? By Sally Huss

Title: Who Took My Banana?
Author: Sally Huss
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

I liked the previous outing I'd read by Sally Huss, who both writes and illustrates her books, but this one failed for me. Note this book is not to be confused with Prentke Romich's Who Took the bananas? (which I haven't read).

When it comes to children's stories, I apply somewhat different rules than I do for reviewing young adult and mature novels, of course. Obviously novels have to be realistic, unless they're something like a fantasy, or a paranormal or sci-fi story, but even then they have to make some kind of sense within their own framework. I don't hold a children's story to that level of rigor.

Children's stories can be much more fanciful, as are children's imaginations, and even nonsense stories are fun to read and useful in helping children to think outside the box - not that most of them need any help there! I do like children's stories to have some sort of educational component, but I'm not absolutely rigid with that requirement. Sometimes it's fine just to have fun, and even random play is a learning experience for the young.

In a case where a children's story features animals, I don't mind that animals talk or behave rather like humans, but where the animal is located in its natural setting, even if it's having an adventure that no real animal would, I do like the story to be faithful to its origin. This is why it bothered me to see a Green Mamba snake depicted in this story. This snake isn't found where orangutans are found, so why not use one which is?

I did not get the thinking here, and this wasn't a lone slip, either. The sloth isn't found in Asia, which is the only place where the tragically dwindling orangutan populations are found. Neither are chameleons and toucans found in Asia. Again, there are scores of animals which could have taken these roles, including interesting Asian lizards and stunningly colorful and distinctive Asian birds, so I didn't get why the author felt a need to bring these things into the story when there are plentiful alternatives.

If the story had been set in a zoo, then any kind of animal could have been introduced, so if you want to use those animals, why have it take place in the wild? I agree that it's not necessary to be spot-on accurate for younger children because they're not discriminatory (bless 'em!) or exacting when it comes to stories (not for the most part anyway), but it's just as easy to get it right as it is to be misleading! For me, this matters.

The story is about a mom orangutan who wakes up to find her banana gone. She hikes through the forest asking one creature after another if they took her banana and at the end of the day, she returns to her tree nest to discover that her baby took it. This is a mom who abandoned her baby for the entire day in pursuit of one small banana, which isn't even the primary food of an orangutan!

To me this was the wrong approach to a story entirely, especially in a book which carries a banner extolling a mother's love, and goes right on to depict mom abandoning junior for selfish reasons. I think it could have been told in a much better way (and more accurately!), and I don't honestly feel I can support a book which could have been significantly better. For those reasons, I cannot recommend this book.