Collected Miscellany

This has turned into YA fiction week here at CM.  So we might as well keep things going with another illustrated chapter book.  The Wyrm King is the final book in the Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles which appropriately enough followed The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Here is a video trailer to pique your interest:

For those of you more literal and less visual here is the blurb:

In the final installment of Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles, Nick and Laurie had thought they solved their giant problems when they drove all the giants into the sea. But now, the Grace kids have come back to tell them they may have more trouble coming their way!

It turns out the giants control the population of Hydra, a dragon like creature that is creating sinkholes all over Florida. But with the mermaids refusing to return the giants to the shore, the nixie’s still missing and the threat of a destroyed Florida drawing closer, the kids have to take matters in their own hands.

Will Nick and Laurie be able to stop the destruction they unwittingly caused? Can a new giant hunter help save the day? Can Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide help them out of this or are they on their own?

My quick take: for the intended audience (ages 9-12) this final installment is an action packed conclusion to a fun series.  For me, however, the series had run its course and I no longer looked forward to each new book with such anticipation.  So while The Wyrm King was well done it lacked some of the magic of the earlier series.

A bit more below.

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Even though I picked up – and read – The Night Tourist from the remainders/bargain bin at Borders back in July, I just now got around to reading the sequel The Twilight Prisoner:

After traveling to New York City’s ghostly underworld, Jack Perdu has made it back aboveground, to join the living. But if he’s alive, why is he still seeing ghosts?

Jack tries hard to fit in at his new school-and tries even harder to win the affections of his Latin classmate and friend, Cora. In an effort to impress her, Jack leads Cora to the entrance of the underworld and makes a terrible mistake. Soon they have crossed the threshold—and this time, there may be no getting back.

Like The Night Tourist, this exciting sequel blends together the modern-day world and mythology-this time cleverly introducing readers to myth of Persephone and Eros.

I have a bit of a mixed reaction to this follow-up.

While it has all of the same ingredients as the last (mix of adventure, characters, mythology, and history) it just didn’t quite strike me the same way.  It might be because this book deal more with adolescent concerns: Jack likes Cora but Cora likes Austin, etc. Or it could be the more serious tone.

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I have become something of a Neil Gaiman fan.  Not an acolyte of anything, but I do enjoy checking out his latest project.  So when I spotted Odd and the Frost Giants at the library I quickly added to the pile.  After all, it fit right into my recent children’s and young adult kick.

Rather than stealing PW’s plot summary, how about we have Neil himself introduce the book?

I can’t get away, however, without a quote from School Libary Journal, as I like their description of the book.  They describe it as a “thoughtful and quietly humorous fantasy.”  Which was my reaction as well.

As is typical of Gaiman, there is a simplicity to the story but also a playfulness to the prose and  a sense of deeper and darker things lurking behind the scenes.  Odd has that infuriating smile that adds an edge, and a sense of mystery, to this partially lame but brave and generous boy.

While nothing is too dark or scary for young readers, Gaiman hints at the darker and capricious side of the gods and includes an element that will bring a smile to the adults in his portrayal of the relationship between the Frost Giant and the goddess Freya.

This slim volume, originally written for World Book Day in the UK and sold there as par of that charitable endeavor, has the feel of a fable; simple yet hinting at deeper things.  Obviously a must have for Gaiman fans – and fans of Norse mythology – but worth checking out for anyone who enjoys a simple yet well done tale.

Cover of Ottoline Goes to School

For those of you keeping score at home, I have been exploring what you might call the graphic novel side of children’s and young adult literature.  Works that are more than picture books; chapter books with a heavy visual aspect to them.

The latest book I stumbled upon at the library, Ottoline Goes to School, is actually the second book in a series but I didn’t know that at the time.  Regardless, it is a witty, silly, and visually stimulating story.

Here is School Journal’s plot summary:

In this second story about Ottoline, who lives with her faithful, hairy best friend, Mr. Monroe, readers are visually thrust into her Big City life, as she befriends Cecily, who is quite a storyteller, and decides to accompany her to the Alice B. Smith School for the Differently Gifted. There the students, each with an outlandish and noteworthy pet, seek out their talents in origami curtain-making, plate-spinning, tea-sipping, and other different arts. Ottoline flounders, unable to find her special talent, but is drawn to the mystery of the curse of the Horse of Hammersteins. In the end, she proves to be a fine sleuth.

I am most familiar with Riddell from his collaboration with Paul Stewart in The Edge Chronicles.  And the illustrations here will stand out to anyone familiar with that series.  But this series is much more playful and more of a graphic novel than a straightforward illustrated story.

I read this story to my daughter in one sitting and she really enjoyed it.  I did as well. The illustrations are fun and full of surprises and the humor is dry and witty.  The text illustration combination pack a lot into this slim volume.

As School Journal also noted:

This is an outstanding example of a picture book-cum-graphic novel, in which Riddell dazzles readers with visual detail and comical oddities and language that is rich, zany, and imaginative. It will satisfy visually needy and visually discerning readers.

To use a cliche, this includes readers young and old.

So if you are looking for something different to read at bed time, or to have your young reader tackle themselves, this fun series is a good choice.

Cover via Amazon

I will fully admit that I can be far too derivative in my reviews. I think that I can write some thoughtful and detailed reviews when I have the time and energy.  But I also post a number of “here is the publishers blurb and here is my reaction” type posts.

This doesn’t bother me too much because one function of this blog is simply to track what I read; and not every review is, or has to be, a thoughtful masterpiece.

I bring this up, because I would be hard pressed to add much to Heidi Broadhead’s Amazon.com review of The Sorceress by Michael Scott:

The third book in Michael Scott’s “Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel” series, The Sorceress, kicks the action up to a whole new level. Adding to the series’ menagerie of immortal humans (“humani”) and mythological beasts, the book picks up where The Magician left off: the immortal Nicholas Flamel (of The Alchemyst) and the twins, Sophie and Josh, have just arrived at St. Pancras international train station in London. Almost immediately, they’re confronted with a demonic bounty hunter that immortal magician John Dee has sent their way. At the same time, Dee’s occasional cohort, Niccolo Machiavelli, decides to focus his energy on Perenelle Flamel, the Alchemyst’s wife, who has been imprisoned at Alcatraz since the beginning of the series. In this book, Perenelle gets a chance to show off her sorcery and resourcefulness, fighting and forging alliances with ghosts, beasts, and the occasional Elder to try and find a way out of her predicament and back to Flamel.

Scott is as playful as ever, introducing new immortals–famous figures from history who (surprise!) are still alive. He also adds to the roster of fantastical beasts, which already includes such intriguing foes as Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess, and the Morrigan, or Crow Goddess. Raising the stakes with each installment, Scott deftly manages multiple story lines and keeps everything moving pretty quickly, making this third book a real page-turner. More than just another piece in the puzzle of the whole series, The Sorceress is an adventure in its own right, and will certainly leave series fans wanting more.

I wasn’t blown away by The Alchemyst but each book since has ratcheted up the intensity.  The Amazon review matches my reaction perfectly.  The action is kicked up a notch, the pacing is great, and the characters – both old and new – are fun and well done.

If you have been living in a cave and haven’t stumbled on this series yet, and you like fantasy adventure, I highly recommend it.

This is one of those great series where each book seems to get better and each wait for the next one to come up seems more intolerable.

Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate is an interesting take on a sequel.  One that I confess I can’t recall reading before.  It isn’t until nearly half-way into the book that the central character from Alex and the Ironic Gentleman enters the story.

Instead the first half, as you might expect, focuses on the titular Timothy.  From the publisher’s blurb:

Timothy Freshwater’s father can’t control him, his mother is always out of town, and now the boy too smart for his own good has been expelled from the last school in the city. After he meets Mr. Shen, a mysterious Chinese mailroom clerk at his father’s office, Timothy winds up in more trouble than he has ever gotten himself into.

It turns out the diminutive Mr. Shen is a dragon. Forced to take human shape for a thousand years, Mr. Shen cannot resume his true form until he scales an ancient Dragon’s Gate during a festival for the 125th year of the dragon. Now Timothy finds himself Mr. Shen’s latest keeper: stalked by a ninja, and chased by a menacing trio of black taxicabs.

And therin lies the rub, as they say (do they really say that?).  Allow me to cowardly pass of my own critism on to someone else by quoting Kirkus:

Sporting a chip on his shoulder the size of a sequoia while being prone to both snotty behavior and fits of rage, Timothy makes an annoying protagonist.

Yes, I too found Timothy to be an annoying protagonist but Kirkus said it better in one sentence.

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One of the drawbacks of the chaos of my life lately, is that I haven’t been able to participate in as many conversations about books and reading as I would like.  I read far too few book/literary blogs and only catch a small sliver of Twitter discussions, etc.

But I benefit from the little I am able to catch; often finding new authors and interesting books along the way.  Once such example is LitChat – “a fun, fast, and friendly way for booklovers to talk about books on Twitter.”

I try to catch their chats when I can and earlier this year I participated in a chat on young adult fiction (I think) and won an autographed copy of Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate by Adrienne Kress.  It seemed a good idea to read the first book in this series so I grabbed Alex and the Ironic Gentleman for my Kindle.  But I only got around to reading both books recently.

I clearly should have read them earlier as they are fun, imaginative and entertaining reads full of wit and adventure.

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