Children's book reviews, all age comic books, Kidlit, mglit, movies, entertainment and parenting
Be Yourself and Other Bad Advice is a very helpful, readable, relatable book with a bit of a subtitle problem. Problem might not be the most accurate word. Limiting comes to mind, but specific could also be used, and specific isn’t bad per se. A Teen Girl’s Guide to Unlearning the Rules is the subtitle and immediately identifies the book’s target audience. That subtitle will almost certainly rule out all but the most read-hearty boys.
My pseudo-critical thinking lessons to high school students sometimes challenge them. I do provide answers, but I prefer to have students find the path or the solution, themselves. Jokes, stories and raw enthusiasm can lead people to learn in a manner where they want to, as opposed to they have to. Mushrooms and Company takes the former road. Educators, parents and some students will recognize the look of Mushrooms and Company.
Double agent: an agent who pretends to be a spy for one country or organization while in fact acting on behalf of an enemy. The concept of a double agent makes my head spin. I understand who a spy is and what they do. A double agent gets a little tricky when it comes to fully comprehending who or what they’re spying on. They have to report to their handler in their home country, as well as their contact in the country they’re spying on. Additionally, they have liaisons in both countries and need to keep their cover identity intact. Failure to do so is almost certainly torture and death, plus all manner of pain their families and loved ones would be subject to. Longest prologue ever. Double Crossed: The WWII Spies Who Saved D-Day is the amazing, non-fiction account of D-Day and the duplicity that was needed in order for it to succeed.
There’s a 1 on the spine of Jake Spooky and the Wolves Within Him. Jake Spooky is a punk rock ghost. He’s got the surly soul of today’s teens and throws up wolves, at least in this first book does that. Jake lives with Brand-O, a cool, flip-flop-wearing human with an old-school television as his head and an upright walking cat who doesn’t speak much, named Quincy. Elementary school graphic novel readers-Are you not entertained? If a graphic novel were a character in a movie, then Jake Spooky and the Wolves Within Him is Maximus Decimus. Its absurd, playful content gleefully runs circles around other early reader, graphic novels. Amidst all of this running, it still has the bandwidth to ask an obvious question, and yes, we are.
Remember in college when you heard that song from Gypsy Kings? Maybe it was later in life when you discovered that 99 Luftballons was just the tip of Nena’s catchy rock/pop German catalogue. Your kids are into KPOP or J-rock and you probably don’t understand any of those lyrics. The comprehension is low to none, but you can enjoy it just the same. The Underwild: Relic of Thieves has something in common with all of that music for the uninitiated reader.
There’s an almost impossible point of believability to accomplish between Scooby-Doo, The Hardy Boys, the authentic enthusiasm of teens and realistic fiction. But wait, you want to successfully thread that needle through an opening further complicated by setting the book in 1930’s Germany? Somehow, The Spider Strikes, the third book in The Web of the Spider book series, navigates that 1%. It deftly tells an age-appropriate story about teenagers in 1931 Germany. I was skeptical too. However, during the book I was enthralled at the way it balanced everything. I was also bummed that the first two books in the series had slipped past my radar.
Oh dystopian mglit and YA, you vex me so. Burn the Water is by Billy Ray. He’s the Oscar-nominated writer of the screenplay for Captain Phillips. Ray has also had his screenwriter or writing fingerprints all over The Hunger Games, Richard Jewell, and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. Text is not a stranger to him. Ironically, Burn the Water is his first novel, but he’s obviously cut his teeth on tense projects that have a taut narrative. Even if you didn’t know his pedigree, you’d suspect that something was higher than usual within the first couple of pages of Burn the Water.
Herman’s Hermits did more for Henry VIII than most North American schools. I just asked a group of 25 high school juniors if they knew who Henry VII was, and two students raised their hands. They knew that he had many wives, but incorrectly said that he killed all of them. To be fair, when I was a child, if a teacher had said Henry VIII we would’ve echoed it with, Herery the eighth I am, I am. Set against this backdrop is what makes The Six Queens of Henry VIII all the more remarkable. It’s an illustrated book with graphic novel element that manages to entertain audiences in equal measure to its education.
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