And now, as per request, back to my original blogging style:
Genre: Children's Fantasy
Ratings:
Ease with which to read/enjoyable author style 4.0
Suitable ending 4.0
Personal favoritism 3.5
Poetic language 3.5
Memorable 4.0
Original, creative plot 4.0
Original, well-developed characters 3.0
Probability of recommendation 3.5
Ability to "move" emotionally 3.0
Literary value and/or educational value 4.0
Total: 37.5
Final Rating: 3 1/2 stars
4-sentence summary:
Coraline Jones' family has just moved to a new apartment, which is almost like any other apartment except that it has an extra door leading to mirrored world of her own. In this other world through the door, everything is the same: Coraline has the same house, the same parents, the same neighbors... except with eery differences leading her to suspect that this other world is not as wonderful as it seems. Soon, Coraline realizes that she must not only escape this other world and her "other mother", but save the people she loves the most.
Critique:
This is the second Neil Gaiman book I've read. The only other book I've read by him was The Graveyard Book, which is another children's book.
Coraline is listed on Amazon as being for children 8 and up, whereas Graveyard Book is listed as being ages 10 and up. It may seem small, but there is a lot of development happening between grades 3 and 5. Here's why I think this distinction is important: Coraline is creepy, while The Graveyard Book is scary. Creepy is something that makes your skin crawl, and it makes you uncomfortable, like seeing bugs on your wall or knowing that something is not quite right. But scary is when your family is being attacked by hellhounds and a demon is coming after you. Coraline is creepy; the mirrored world is peculiar, and her "other mother" is a good villain. There are ghosts, mists, secret doors, and people who have buttons for eyes. But none of them made me shiver or feel like I would have nightmares. But in the Graveyard Book, Nobody (the main character) travels to Hell and back, and sees some very terrifying things. In that way, Neil Gaiman has chosen two appropriate plots for two different age groups. In the younger book, Coraline, we are introduced to creepy. We feel our skin crawl, we feel a little nervous for our main character, and we see into the strange but compelling innerworkings of Gaiman's mind. But in Graveyard Book, Gaiman takes picks up speed and takes the reader to another level (both with vocabulary, length of the novel, and intensity).
That being said.... I think I like Coraline a bit better. The writing was fabulous, the story was very original and creepy in a very memorable way, and Coraline is a great young heroine for kids. (At some point, she comes to the very grown-up realization that although we want things, we don't necessarily need them). This is not a critique of the Graveyard Book; I also liked that book. But it was very convoluted and involved. Today, I was in the mood for a short, creepy story. And I found that perfectly within Coraline.
One other side note: I know that it was adapted into a movie a few years ago, and I vaguely remember being put off by the trailer. But after having read the book, I can say with absolute certainty that this is a story meant to be told with creepy animation in a movie. You could not do this with live action, nor should you. However, when I watched the trailer again, I saw that they added more fluff into the movie (they felt the need to add more fantasy and exaggerate the plot; this, however, is unnecessary). Perhaps I'll be disappointed by the movie... but I think I'll watch it anyway just to see how the villainous "other mother" is portrayed.
A likable heroine, a perfectly creepy villain, an interesting and unwilling sidekick, and a plot that ranks with the best. Overall, I'm a big fan of Coraline. I can't wait to recommend it to my students, and I can't wait to see the movie adaptation of it.
Sorry for rambling today, I'm all drugged up and my sentences become huge run-on sentences when I'm not watching :)
Friday, December 23, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
I won't follow my previous method of reviewing books- it was too complicated. But I would still like to talk about the most recent book I've read, "The Distant Hours". I'd read Kate Morton's two previous books: "The Forgotten Garden" and "The House at Riverton" and was excited to read her most recent novel.
The plot is as follows: Thirty-something Edith is a publisher living in London who begins to delve into her mother's secretive past. She discovers that her mother had been evacuated from London during the air raids in 1941 and had stayed at an old castle in the countryside. The inhabitants of the castle were the old Raymond, a former brilliant author who has gone mad; Percy, a twin whose love for the castle outshines anything else; Saffy, who longs to leave the castle for London but cannot leave her twin behind; and Juniper, the youngest sister by 20 years, a brilliant but crazed author who has terrible secrets to hide. As Edith digs deeper into the past, she uncovers all the long-hidden secrets of Milderhurst Castle.
Unfortunately, this book could not even begin to compare to the first two books by Kate Morton. There are a few simple reasons for this.
The author has my writing style. That is to say, she writes overly long, complicated sentences in a free-flowing thought-like way. It's not all that pleasant to read. I don't recall her having this issue in her other books. It almost feels like she wrote this book as a diary and then slapped it on the shelves to sell. It just feels sloppily written.
It is unimaginative! The first two books relied heavily on plot twists to make their narratives worthwhile. Perhaps the problem was that I was expecting the plot twist in this one and so I began to guess early on what had happened. And I guessed right. And then there were 300 pages yet to read. To be fair, the actual plot twist wasn't even as daring and grandiose and the author wanted it to be. It was actually a little disappointing.
The book is too long. You could shorten it by about 200 pages and it would be a much better read. There was too much unimportant information for the book to hold my attention. Indeed, this book has been sitting on my nightstand for months now.
Now for the redeeming quality of the novel: Simply that I have a penchant for historical fiction... I enjoy the settings that this author portrays- and she does have a fabulous imagination. (Though the characters in this book also had weak and single-minded, somewhat unbelievable motivations as well.)
All in all, I did LIKE the book, but I certainly didn't love it. Would I recommend it to my mother or my friends? Eh, probably not. I would much rather recommend "The Forgotten Garden" or a dozen other books I've read and enjoyed recently. This one wasn't terrible- but it just doesn't warrant my attention for any longer than it takes me to finish this blog post.
Onward and upward!
The plot is as follows: Thirty-something Edith is a publisher living in London who begins to delve into her mother's secretive past. She discovers that her mother had been evacuated from London during the air raids in 1941 and had stayed at an old castle in the countryside. The inhabitants of the castle were the old Raymond, a former brilliant author who has gone mad; Percy, a twin whose love for the castle outshines anything else; Saffy, who longs to leave the castle for London but cannot leave her twin behind; and Juniper, the youngest sister by 20 years, a brilliant but crazed author who has terrible secrets to hide. As Edith digs deeper into the past, she uncovers all the long-hidden secrets of Milderhurst Castle.
Unfortunately, this book could not even begin to compare to the first two books by Kate Morton. There are a few simple reasons for this.
The author has my writing style. That is to say, she writes overly long, complicated sentences in a free-flowing thought-like way. It's not all that pleasant to read. I don't recall her having this issue in her other books. It almost feels like she wrote this book as a diary and then slapped it on the shelves to sell. It just feels sloppily written.
It is unimaginative! The first two books relied heavily on plot twists to make their narratives worthwhile. Perhaps the problem was that I was expecting the plot twist in this one and so I began to guess early on what had happened. And I guessed right. And then there were 300 pages yet to read. To be fair, the actual plot twist wasn't even as daring and grandiose and the author wanted it to be. It was actually a little disappointing.
The book is too long. You could shorten it by about 200 pages and it would be a much better read. There was too much unimportant information for the book to hold my attention. Indeed, this book has been sitting on my nightstand for months now.
Now for the redeeming quality of the novel: Simply that I have a penchant for historical fiction... I enjoy the settings that this author portrays- and she does have a fabulous imagination. (Though the characters in this book also had weak and single-minded, somewhat unbelievable motivations as well.)
All in all, I did LIKE the book, but I certainly didn't love it. Would I recommend it to my mother or my friends? Eh, probably not. I would much rather recommend "The Forgotten Garden" or a dozen other books I've read and enjoyed recently. This one wasn't terrible- but it just doesn't warrant my attention for any longer than it takes me to finish this blog post.
Onward and upward!
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