Cautionary Tales for Boys and Girls

4.5 Stars

Guillermo Del Toro once mentioned in an interview that darkness in children's films is necessary. Darkness addresses various neurosis and impulses that exist in the human condition and bypassing these truths does a disservice to children and how they deal with fear. Of course, I am paraphrasing big time, but that is the basic idea. Growing up in the 1980's and the early 1990's, my children's entertainment was far darker than it is today. For instance, I scoffed when people claimed that Pixar's "Brave" was too scary for children under the age of 12. Are they kidding? Do they know that when I was a child, I watched Atreyu brutally kill Gmork in the Neverending Story? I seem to remember some terrifying scenes in the film adaptions of "The Secret of Nymh" and "The Last Unicorn." I am not going to even begin to discuss most episodes of "Are you Afraid of the Dark." What does this all have to do with "The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls"? This book is quite scary. It is also brilliant.

Basically, the story centers around Victoria, a perfect specimen of a child if she does say so herself. She is top of her class, loved by her teachers and always presentable. She doesn't have much need for friends, but she has found herself a project in classmate, Lawrence. Lawrence is an odd child with a streak of grey running through his unkempt hair. He is a musical prodigy, but always humming, a habit Victoria finds quite annoying. She has made it her goal to whip Lawrence into shape. This all comes to a head one strange day when some unraveling at school leads her to denounce Lawrence. Then he disappears. 

All of the adults, including Lawrence's parents claim that he has gone upstate, but there is something cruel in these proclamations and Victoria decides she will get to the bottom of it. A decision that leads her to the doorway of The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, a mysterious orphanage run by Miss Cavendish herself and her "project" Mr. Alice. Within this house leads Victoria on a terrible journey which is reminiscent of "Coraline" and slightly fable like in quality. 

In essence this is a very Victorian story. It is a cautionary tale. It is cautionary of cold Victorian values and has a heroine (albeit, a slightly annoying one) named Victoria. Miss Cavendish takes "difficult" children and strives to straighten them out. Some of her victims are Lawrence, who's odd humming and passion for music has begun of annoy his parents (children should be seen and not heard) and Jacqueline, the unkempt sister of Victoria's rival who's art work uses motifs of death and darkness. Then there is Victoria herself, who's crime may be her own perfection. If a child is straightened out by age 13 they are sent back to their home, but they are "changed" into a pale imitation of the person they once were.


Let it be known, there are some frightening elements of this book. It is very surreal and the implications of the horrors of the Cavendish home may not be suitable for younger or more sensitive readers. One example is the origin of the mysterious Cavendish casserole and her monstrous servants, the Gofers. I won't spoil it for anyone, but let's just say it is tied to fate of the children who do not make it to leave after their 13th birthday. Some of the scenes are also somewhat heartbreaking, but through Victoria's eyes we see something else. The caution against "too perfect". Miss Cavendish sees similarities between she and Victoria. Victoria too notices this and is horrified at the implications. 

The descriptive language is also quite beautiful, and while scary this book holds a lot of emotional value. Perhaps this is part of what Del Toro was talking about. In a world where competition to be "the best" and "elite" is pushed on some children from a very young age, this story strikes a chord.

Suffering for your art.

 A Solid 3 Stars
Oh, how I wanted to love this book! As a John Barrowman fan, I am well aware of how talented the man is. I really wanted that talent to carry over into his first children's novel. Not only was it getting good press, but he wrote it with his sister which is quite endearing.

I did not love this book. I liked a lot of it. I did not hate it. I also did not love it. The story is interesting enough. Twins Matt and Em discover that their ability to animate artwork that they create is due to their heritage as Animare. As mentioned in their abilities, Animare...animate their artwork. They are also naturally talented artists and many famous names in art history have been Animare. Van gough, for instance, was an Animare. However, these abilities come with a price. 

Sometimes Animare become power hungry or warped by their art. When this happens, a council of people called Guardians, who have powers meant to keep Animare in check bind the offender to one of their art works. When the story opens, Matt and Em are on the Guardian hit list. We discover that their mother, another Animare, broke a rule of the council by having children with a Guardian, giving the twins abilities of both. 

Furthermore, there is chatter of the return of a sinister group called, "The Hollow Earth Society", which believes that creatures created in the artwork of the Animare lives within the Earth wrapped up in another dimension. Anyway, Sandie, the mother of the twins spirits them away to an island in Scottland, where their Guardian Grandfather can protect them from those who wish to harm them. Mayhem ensues.

While there is some real inventive qualities of this story, the major problems I had with it were in pacing, language and characterization. Until the very end, the story seems to lag far more than it should. Part of this I attribute to my second problem with the book. Language. Most of the action reads like directions. We are told what the twins and their friends do and how they feel, but nothing in the language gives a sense of realism. The phrase, "show, don't tell" rang in my ears throughout a majority of the action.

Last, characterization. The twins, who are supposed to be nearly 13, behave as if they are a good three years young. I simply could not get a good sense of who they are through their words and actions. I barely bought their affection for their mother, grandfather or even for one another. I read the words, yes, but the emotion behind them felt flimsy.

Still, I would not write this off as a total loss. As mentioned, the premise is interesting enough. Also, the chapters are short, making this a good choice for fantasy fans intimidated by long winded prose. Hopefully the Barrowman siblings are simply cutting their teeth here and will follow up this work with a sequel worthy of their talent. Maybe that is just a fan's wishful thinking

Avatar: The Last Airbender. Promises, promises.

4.5 stars
This is the conclusion to the first in what will probably be several graphic novels that bridge the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender to Avatar: The Legend of Korra.  While I enjoyed "Korra" for the most part I had some problems with the series in pacing and also some of the sloppy writing of new characters.  I was immensely pleased to see Aang and company captured so very well in Gene Leung's adaptation.

In the last two books (which I had not reviewed here) we found team Avatar in the midst of a few dilemmas.  First off, after the end of the war, Aang, the Earth King Kuei and now Fire Lord Zuko agreed to the Harmony Restoration project which would require the Fire Nation Colonies to evacuate "occupied territory".  The problem with this is that over a period of a century, the lines between the FIre Nation and Earth Nation have blurred in places where citizens have begun to intermarry.  For instance, Kori, a young earth bender identifies herself as Fire Nation.  Her father, a Fire Nation politician married a woman from the colony.

People like Kori and her family feel that it is unfair to move them since this is their ancestral home for over a century.  After Kori makes an assassination attempt on Zuko's life (during the first issue), Zuko realizes as Fire Lord he needs to consider the well being of his own citizens.  This puts him at odds with the treaty he has agreed to when the war ended.  He begins to make poor choices, the worst being consulting his father, the deposed Fire Lord Ozai, for advice.  For those who recall the animated series, Ozai was a tyrant who had taken his rage out on Zuko physically and emotionally in the past and conceals the fate of Ursa, the mother of Zuko and his sister Azula.  To complicate matters, Zuko had made Avatar Aang swear to kill him if Zuko himself began to exhibit Ozai like behavior.  Also, Mai, Zuko's consort leaves him when she discovers he has been keeping secrets from her.  This leaves the new Fire Lord very lonely and vulnerable at the start of this issue.

Further fleshed out in this issue are the very ideas behind what will ultimately found the Republic City, seen in the Legend of Korra series.  Katara, now comfortable in the role as Aang's girlfriend sees the mixed race culture emerging from the colonies (particularly Yu Dao, Kori's home) and foresees her own future as the wife of the last Air Nomad.  Aang is introduced and initially infuriated by a group of "fans" who wish to emulate the culture of his lost people.  These will eventually become the Air Acolytes.  This is really fascinating stuff as several of the characters refer to the world as "changing" from what existed prior to the great Fire Nation invasion which took place under Zuko's Great Grandfather Sozin.  This is very timely stuff in our own world where staunch ideals are flipping and bending to recognize the rights and needs of groups long ignored.

This is not to say that the series is without the signature humor that delighted audiences of the television series.  There is some real gold here.  The best being when characters recognize that Sneers, the portly and awkward former member of Jet's Freedom Fighter gang is dating the athletic and confident, Kori.  Everyone has the same reaction and while Sneers and Kori are confused by them, the audience should be delighted.  Aang and Katara's relationship feels least genuine when they refer to one another as "sweetie", a problem I have had in the past two issues.  In spite of this, you really see the emergence of a more mature romance between the two of them.  Aang appears to have grown taller and is a bit less childlike.  He and Katara discuss important issues and make mature choices in how to deal with them.  This is, of course all within a PG setting since this is based on a Nickelodeon series.  In fact, the only other problem I had with this series as a whole was the choice to swap out the word "kill" with "end" when referring to Aang's promise to Zuko.  I get that there were probably guidelines that Nickelodeon imposed in order keep this series within its original target audience, but it just felt inauthentic being that the book dealt with some really adult moral quandaries.

As a whole, this was fantastic.  As a series and more so as an issue.  Fans will be happy to see Sokka and Suki reunited and even Toph gets some lip service, even though she is not used to her fullest.  Furthermore we finally get to check in on Iroh at his tea shop, where he pays lip service to a current trend in sweet drinks, with a hilarious outcome.  I am very excited to see where this series takes us in the next arc, "The Search" which will deal with the long awaited answer on most fan's minds:  Where is Ursa?

Not EXACTLY a love story.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

3 stars

One thing that has always bothered me about a majority of romantic comedy films is stalking.  I don't mean to be totally rude. The protagonist of this story is not a bad person.  He is actually pretty like-able.  Like-able for a stalker.  As much as I wanted to root for him, I just found his methods unsettling. It also kept me from loving this book.  Allow me to elaborate a bit.

Vinny (Vincenzo) Gold, a 15 year-old living in 1977, is surprised and disheartened to find out that his parents are getting a divorce. They assure him that they still care about one another (in fact it appears that dad is still in love with mom, adding insult to injury), but their relation has lost whatever spark brought them together.  Vinny's mom then marries his high school gym teacher, who is obsessed with football, as per the stereotype.  Vinny is not the football type.  Then, after a mugging in the subway, Vinny's mom and new stepdad decide to move to Long Island, where the stepfather has just accepted a job!

It is hard not to feel for Vinny.  He is pushed from one place or another due to things that affect him, yet are out of his control. We also discover that Vinny has "a girl" in his NYC school. Sadly for Vinny, she moved away. Sad for only Vinny, because this girl was unaware that she was "Vinny's".  He had been pining for her and done nothing about it.  So, pretty early on we know that Vinny is pretty shy, especially when it comes to girls.  In fact, we can assume that Vinny is just shy in general, because after arriving at this Long Island high school, he doesn't seem to be interested in making male friends.  He goes right from mourning the one sided relationship in his old school to lusting after his pretty female neighborm Patsy, in his new home.

After watching Patsy dress through his window to hers, Vinny becomes fixated on Patsy and begins a campaign of late night calls to her.  After eavesdropping on a conversation from a high school jock/classmate of his, Vinny gains access to Patsy's unlisted phone number.  His first few calls, which always seem to happen after midnight, are a disaster when Vinny makes an obscene comment to her.  Let me just explain, that I am not so much disturbed by Vinny's voyeur activities as I am by what happens with Patsy's phone number.  Vinny is a teenage boy and I am sure that a majority of teenagers his age would have succumbed to watching an attractive classmate dress if given the opportunity.  What bothered me was the relationship Vinny and Patsy forge through what is definitely phone stalking. 

Vinny feels badly about his racy comments to Patsy and continues to call trying to apologize.  On the same level though, he appears to be empowered by his status as "obscene caller".  He even uses this term to gleefully refer to himself several times.  I get that he is trying to be funny, but it came off as creepy.  Sure, Patsy calls him out on being creepy but plays this game with him hanging up whenever she feels the conversation has gone too far and continues to pick up every night when he calls back.  Since this is the late 70's Patsy can ask an operator if the call is local, but there are no other methods of discovering her caller's identity. 

Still, it is Vinny who has all the power in this relationship.  He only tells her that his name is "Italian" when she finally asks.  He begins to see himself as suave "Vincenzo" and acts like kind of a jerk to Patsy.  She knows he is a student in her school but that is it.  So basically she is being watched by someone who knows everything about her school social life (friends, boyfriends, etc) but does not know who it is.  For all she knows it could be a teacher?  She also at one point opens her heart to Vincenzo and asks for his number so she can call him back but he refuses.  We are expected to believe that this is due to Vinny's under confidence that he believes she would not want to date him if she "met" him, but really it keeps him in a position of power over her.  Again, creepy.

So when Vinny starts spending time with Patsy herself he struggles to merge his two personalities.  He clearly is not a bad guy, he defends Patsy's honor when the aforementioned jock disrespects her, but just does not say terribly kind things to her himself during their phone calls.  This is supposed to be romantic?  It really bothered me. 

Again, what kept me reading way that I did feel that Vinny was a good person.  Like I said, he is like-able, but the choices he makes just made my stomach churn.  The fact that he was empowered by these calls did not sit well with me.  I wish that we could have seen Vinny pursue regular friendships at school other than listening in on Patsy's friends conversations.  I appreciated the view of Vinny's ever changing relationship with his parents and their new lives.  I did enjoy reading his story, I just had too much trouble with what felt like the glorification of a habit that would become less charming as Vinny grew older.  Let us hope he learned his lesson.

Hey There Little Red Riding Hood

4.5 Stars.  A big thanks to Net Galley for the ARC.

Once again Jessica Day George has proven that she could write the contents of a cereal box and I would read and love every word. Having devoured both "Princess of the Midnight Ball" and "Princess of Glass" I could not wait for this next installment. 

This time, George uses "Little Red Riding Hood" as her template for the tale of the twelve princess sisters who were doomed to dance due to an unfortunate contract with an evil king who had entrapped their mother.  Of course, her original story used "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" as the bones of her tale and the second was loosely based on "Cinderella".  As a lover of the Grimm tales each one has been irresistible. 

However, the success of these novels lies with George's ability to spin a fully engaging tale with characters the reader cares about.  She writes believable romances that begin with friendship and contain a healthy amount of mutual respect.  This is refreshingly different from the desperately unhealthy "Twilight" clones.  Gender roles are challenged without being overly heavy handed.  Some of the male characters knit.  The princesses are good with a pistol.  Both of these factors are important to the story as a whole and feel very natural within the context.  I love that. 

While this book deals with some very potentially dark themes such as the implications of a forced marriage and emotional slavery, George brushes over them in a way that preserves the urgency of the princesses' situation and yet could be easily read by middle grade readers.

The few complaints I would have about this novel are actually minimal.  Mainly, as in the first two, I found it a little difficult to keep all the princesses straight.  This isn't so much the fault of the author as that it is a problem with the amount of princesses called for by the original tale.  Twelve girls all with names of flowers.  Each of the books shifts its focus to a different princess.  The first one was Rose, the eldest.  The second, Poppy a middle princess.  This final one was mostly the story of Petunia, the youngest.  This leaves nine other girls who run together in your mind.  To be fair, Lily, the second eldest has been fleshed out the most but beyond that we know that Jonquil is pretty, Orchid wears glasses, there is a Pansy and a Lilac.  I recall Hyacinth being referred to as religious in the past two books, but that seems to be missing in this one.  Mainly, I complain because I love this world so much I would be happy to spend time with more than one princess per book to get to know them better.

The second complaint was that this novel gave the promise of explaining the origins of the curse of King Understone.  I would have loved to learn more about the crone and her doomed king.  I wish I could have learned what the exact nature of Queen Maude's contract with the evil King.  These things are a lot to ask and may have weighed the story down with a lot of unnecessary text.  Really, the ending might have felt a bit abrupt but it didn't ruin my enjoyment of this novel. 

I would happily recommend this series and this author to fantasy lovers grade 5 and up.

A Discovery of Annoyance.

2.5 Stars

Note:  This is an old review I wrote but wanted to share on my blog.
I am so tired of vampires. I am tired of romanticized tales in which they watch women in their sleep. I am tired of their constant reminders to their love interests about how dangerous they are. I am sick and tired of vampires. 

Mainly I don't think I can take them seriously anymore, which is probably why I was so amused by Mary Janice Davidson's "Undead and Unwed" series. While these were fluffy romance novels I respected the protagonist so much more. The author was clearly having fun with the genre and Betsy was a heroine who didn't go in for all of that stuff. She frequently mocked her own kind (vampires) for their sullen attitudes and though she had heart and loved genuinely she just seemed to make light of what other novels just try to push too dark. F*cking vampires. 

So I can't entirely pan this book as it had some good points. The world in which Harkness has created for this book has a lot of potential. The basic premise is that of an alternate reality in which four types of "creatures" exist. Vampires, Witches, Daemons and boring old humans. Vampires are self explanatory. Pale beautiful sulky creatures who feed off of blood, seduce, captivate, mope and live in castles. Witches are a combination of magical beings, both male and female who use magic in their daily life and modern pagans who celebrate the harvests and the equinoxes. Damn, I wish just one day someone would write a book with a pagan character who did not have magical powers but observed it as naturally as any other character would celebrate their religion. Then there are Daemons who can be born to humans and possess a wild savvy, usually artistic or musical that they wield with an other worldly talent. Often Daemons are troubled as they can be born to humans who don't understand the magical world and therefore cannot explain what they are. 

So our heroine, Diana is a Witch. Her lineage is that of the Bishops and the Proctors. The same who died in Salem village. However, due to traumatic events she refuses to practice magic and opts to live as a human. She is also an over achiever who has published books as a historian and studies alchemy texts of old, a move her aunt Sarah believes is ironic since she is a witch trying to live as a human. 

While studying in Oxford, Diana encounters a bewitched text called, "Ashmole 782" and inadvertently breaks the spell without even trying. With this she attracts the ire and admiration of several creatures. This lost text is said to contain the origins of the creatures. This could have been a great story right here if not for the addition of a forbidden romance with, you guessed it, a vampire. Matthew Clairmont could have stepped out of the pages of any vampire book. Pale, handsome, lethal. He has a sad past which haunts him. He stalks Diana at first for information on Ashmole 782 and then of course becomes her possessive protector. I ran with it a while. The entire witch community is angered that Diana would share her knowledge of the text with a vampire and not them. While Diana rejects Matthew harshly at first she eventually warms to his presence and finds he is more trustworthy than the witches she encounters. I really wanted to know about this text. I wanted to know about the creatures. I wanted this world to be fleshed out so I could feel as if I could live and breathe within it.

What killed it for me was when the story took a turn to focus on the fact that due to an ancient covenant inter-creature love is forbidden. Then the angst began, the mooning the delay of physical encounters. Seriously, what is it lately with vampires and celibacy? Is it because they have so much time in the world they feel rushing between the sheets is unnecessary? And while Diana is a stronger heroine than the dreaded Bella from a book I don't even have to name, she falls victim to the same follies. Sure Diana looks Matthew in the eye and talks back to him. She challenges him. This is probably why he grew to care so much for her. I got that part. What I didn't get was what about him, other than the normal vampire stuff, she fell for. Is it because he is sad? Is it because she feels he is broken and she can fix him? Is it because her community forbids it? I just didn't buy it on her end. And any splash of personality? Anything that made me like her to begin with died as soon as Matthew professed his feelings to her. It was as if he was a moxie vampire than drained her of that spark that Matthew himself adored. 

So while the premise was enticing and the research on various historical matters, including Ashmolean texts, was intriguing, in the end it just became yet another vampire romance novel. 

**Addition** I just discovered that the author Deborah Harkness is a historian who herself uncovered a lost "magical" text while studying in Oxford. I love that the author is a true scholar and is dedicated to research. I adore that there is a certain autobiographical quality to the catalyst of the novel. It is a shame the love story got in the way.

They're always after me lucky charms!

4 Stars:
Have you ever picked up a book on a sheer whim? Maybe it wasn't a whim exactly which led me to read, "Cold Cereal" but the book's odd brand of whimsy radiated from the moment I laid eyes on the cover.

In a plot that might delight fans of Terry Pratchet, Lemony Snicket and Monty Python, a clash of fairies, knights and breakfast cereals come together in a hodgepodge of humor and adventure that makes up the first in what appears to be a new series. 

Scottish Play Doe (Scott) is the son of a movie star father and a physicist mother who had split years ago. Since then, Scott's mom has collected boyfriends, jobs and new addresses. This would be stressful enough if Scott didn't seem to suffer from delusional visions of mythical creatures. When Scott and his sister (Polly AKA Polly Esther Doe) relocate to accommodate their mother's new job at the Goodco cereal company, Scott's delusions begin to spiral out of hand. On his way to his first day of school he encounters a Rabbit-Man wearing pants who begs Scott to hide him from some mysterious enemy. Scott ignores what he believes to be a figment of his imagination (especially since the Rabbit-Man is followed by the vision of a unicat. Sort of like a unicorn but a cat) which somehow seems even more insane than the talking Rabbit.

However when Scott rescues a lephrechaun from capture while on a field trip who suggests Scott himself may be a changeling the story surges forward at a madcap pace with grins and action at every turn. 

Along with orphaned twins Erno Utz (genius) and Emily Utz (super genius and mysterious outcast) who have been wards of Goodco as long as they can recall, Scott and his magical companions uncover a mystery which began in the days of King Arthur. 

I will be recommending this one to my avid readers who adore a little oddness with their brand of fantasy