When I was a kid, my dad and I read books together. It’s a bittersweet memory, since we’ve been estranged for most of my adult life. My favorite author then was John Bellairs, who wrote Gothic horror set during the era of his own childhood in the 1950s. The early editions had covers and sometimes illustrations by Edward Gorey, and between Bellairs and Gorey, I grew up with a lifelong love of the macabre. This weekend, I had to do an assignment for my editing […]
Life’s too short to read stories without well-written female characters
I feel a little bad calling one of Le Guin’s books meh, but A Wizard of Earthsea was really only so-so for me. I bumped it up a little in the rating purely due to how groundbreaking the book must have been in 1968 when it was released. This series influenced many famous authors and for good reason. A wizard protagonist with dark skin? A school for wizards? An epic bildungsroman featuring a somewhat unlikeable character? All those things should be considered when evaluating this […]
Thor needs to keep track of his shit.
What a silly book. At this point I think I’ve given up expecting to see anything new from Rick Riordan, and yet I’m going to keep reading his books, so I think I shall make a vow to not talk about how repetitive they are, and how he just keeps doing the same thing over and over again with variations. After that sentence I mean. In the future I shall call this The Riordan Factor and link back to this review as an explanation. It […]
Saving the world for dogs.
The Android was always one of my favorite Animorphs books when I was a kid because, even before I knew what it was, I loved worldbuilding in fiction. This is one of the reasons I love serialized storytelling so much, because serialized stories (no matter the medium) are the ones that have the most room to deepen and define their fictionalized worlds without sacrificing character or theme. And The Android does quite a bit of worldbuilding in a short period of time. We’re introduced to […]
It’s scary to be brave
My 11yo daughter loved Telgemeier’s Sisters, Smile, and Drama, so this was a must-order for me when it came out last week. We opened the package this morning and she and I have both already read this sweet graphic novel from cover to cover! My 8yo son is up next. Catrina and her family are moving to a blustery coastal California town in the hopes that the climate will be better for Catrina’s little sister Maya, who has cystic fibrosis. Catrina is torn between wanting […]
Super-sized Animorphs.
Okay, first of all, whoever had the idea to jumbo-size Animorphs was a marketing GENIUS. Get kids hooked on a book series and then just give them as much content as possible. They are a captive audience, and they have enough pocket money to pay out once a month to get their next fix. (If you’re lucky, it will also be quality, like this series.) Animorphs was such a success by the time this book was published that they moved it from being a bimonthly […]
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