Children's book reviews, all age comic books, Kidlit, mglit, movies, entertainment and parenting
Blood in the Water has a nice, bubbling sense of tension. Creating a book for mid-elementary school through mid-middle school can’t be easy. That age is learning to read chapter books, reluctant to read anything, or too ensconced in fart-borne books to care about anything else. Young readers in that eight through 14 demographic want to read something with bite and suspense. Throw in the caveat that said book needs to be age-appropriate, and you’ve got a bit of a challenge on your hands.
Louisa Learns to Write is an illustrated book that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before. It tells a story, but not in a manner that elementary school audiences are used to. It operates on two levels without audiences realizing it until the end of the book. As the titular character is growing up, she’s learning deeper life lessons that translate to anyone, regardless of age. Louisa Learns to Write: Louisa May Alcott Creates Little Women isn’t so much about the creation of the seminal piece of literature, as it is about the things that shaped Alcott’s life.
When I was in elementary and middle school I was knee-deep in curiosity about ancient Egypt. I also wasn’t a reader at that age. The internet didn’t exist and if I wanted to browse information on a topic I had to look through an encyclopedia. Yes, my family had a set of them, which weren’t used nearly as often as my parents would’ve wished. I remember my sister searching in vain for information on the cold war and having to ask my father instead. RIP, the physical monolith of Encyclopedia Britannica. Actual Factual Files: Ancient Egypt is the time-traveling book I needed when I was seven years old.
The Furious is a near-perfect action film. There are a couple of logical improbabilities. The biggest one being a skinny street kid holding an escape rope made from blankets for children who are exiting a fourth story window. In a movie that’s just under two hours long, and being a genre with a very lenient curve automatically applied to it, that’s amazing. People will compare The Furious to The Raid and they’re correct, but it’s so much more than just another martial arts movie.
Noemi Vola has a style. It could be more appropriate to say that Tra Publishing has a style and Noemi Vola’s art fits nicely into their groove. No, No, No is an illustrated book that’s smarter than you think it is. Its eye-catching cover feature a large yellow thing that could be a frog, who is in a small pond on a sunny day. There’s a spider, or a small octopus behind this yellow thing who is holding two ice cream cones that are melting on its Kraken-like arms.
Say this about The Second Life of Snap: it knows its target. Older readers might look at its cover and draw parallels to The Iron Giant. They could alter their opinion after looking at the back cover and see that our heroine is accompanied by three other kids. The three of them are seated on some nondescript rubble of a not-too-distant society, while Zuzu is on Snap’s shoulders. The subtitle to the book is, A girl, A robot, A race for the future, so readers will know that it’s dystopian to an extent.
Folk tales are different than fairy tales. The latter have to include magical or supernatural aspects, like beans that grow to the sky or a witch. Folk tales are passed down from generation to generation and are cultural in nature. They don’t have to have magic, but do focus on common people and could have a more graphic ending. The Boy Who Drew Cats: A Japanese Folktale got the memo on that. Originally translated in 1898, this is a new edition has illustrations on a grander scale.
The marketing for The Backrooms is top-notch. As someone who appreciates good marketing and a well-produced trailer, I am in. Our 16-year-old son has been watching the web series of the same name. He made us aware of its cultural prominence and then I started to see it in the classrooms. My students were all watching it, once their assignments were done, I like to tell myself. As a film, The Backrooms has a high bar to overcome.
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