Frankly, Frannie: The Awesome Life of a 7-Year-Old

Frannie sees the world differently than you do. But that's understandable since she's only about 7 years old. (That's my best guess anyway.)

Frannie wants to speak and act like an adult and does her level best to accomplish this humungous task.

Unfortunately, it almost always gets her into trouble. Unintentional trouble, but trouble just the same.

Eragon ... And the Non-Fire-Breathing Dragon

A non-fire-breathing dragon? Well, technically, no. She (Saphira, the dragon) was seen to breathe a little fire just before the end of the book, but we only learn about it long after the fact.

To be fair, she's a young dragon, and in this universe, you have to age a bit before you can breathe fire. Maybe that's true in other fantasy universes too, but you just don't hear about it.

Eragon has been maligned for being too much like Tolkien and like Star Wars.

So what if it is? What if you read this before any Lord of the Rings or watching any Star Wars? You'd think it was a pretty good book, especially after you learn it was written by a teenager.

A Clockwork Orange: A Non-Kid Review

I mentioned earlier that I might from time to time review something here other than kids' series books. This is the first of those times.

A Clockwork Orange is not something for the young ones. At best, it's for teens and above.

This is a title I'd heard of a number of times but never actually read. It's one of those titles that sticks with you because it's so unusual. What is a "clockwork orange" anyway? The text never comes right out and tells you, so I'll give you a general idea.

A clockwork orange doesn't exist. It would be a strange, weird, unusual kind of thing if it did. The main character of the book, Alex, is the clockwork orange.

Fablehaven: Not for the Faint of Patience

Fablehaven is a series of 5 books written by Brandon Mull that were published between 2006 and 2010. In 2017, Mull seems to have continued the thread by starting a new series called Dragonwatch.

I read the third book in the Fablehaven series which is subtitled Grip of the Shadow Plague. I chose that one because 1) I wanted to see how well a book in the middle of a series stood on its own and 2) it was the only one available in our library.

So, did it pass my test of stand-alone-ness?

Yes, it did quite well. There were only a few unexplained or poorly explained references to earlier books. One word that was repeated without explanation (that might have been clarified in an earlier book) was "revenant". I only knew the word as the title of a 2015 movie. I didn't know it wasn't a made-up word. It actually means "a visible ghost or animated corpse that is believed to have revived from death to haunt the living." (WWDNL)

Okay then.

Seems a bit heavy for a children's book. Maybe children these days are more advanced than they used to be.

In general, Fablehaven was an okay book. No more than that though. There were far too many sections of tedious, overly-detailed conversation or description. I've read that a good writer eliminates everything that's not needed. Mull left it all in.

My other main problem with the book was the dismissive attitude of the main characters after the death (nearby) of some of their friends. At one time, one of them is tossed over the edge of a cliff by one of the magical bad guys. Shortly after that, another is dissolved into goo by magical floating orbs he was trying to crawl under.

In both cases, the rest of the troupe of friends barely mentions what has happened and show little to no emotion about the deaths. Much later, we're told how one or two other characters were fairly deeply saddened by it all.

That's it.

That's not enough.

Most of the time, the plot of Fablehaven revolved around not knowing whom you could trust. Evil demons were obviously on the side of evil, but pretty much everyone else could go either way. It was tiring.

As I said, this book stood well enough on its own, but the ending was not satisfying. It demanded that you read the next book to see what happens to the really bad guy. I don't mind a series being a series (or I wouldn't be reading these books), but I much prefer that, after reading one book, that's all I have to read for satisfaction. (I'm looking at you GoT.) I understand an author's wanting to sell more books, but in this case, Mull should then have shortened each book to about 200 pages, instead of the nearly 500 pages that Grip of the Shadow Plague was.

Final note: That centaur on the book cover above? Not a very big part of the story. Just so you know.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy: Kinda Average

The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy is a series by William Boniface that probably will appeal mostly to boys in the middle grades.

The premise is that everyone has a special, superhuman (sorta), superhero type of power - everyone except Ordinary Boy (aka OB), of course.

Most of the powers are relatively useless. OB, despite not apparently having any, still manages to be the hero of this tale.

The first half, or so, of this book (and I didn't read any others in the series) seems to ramble on without having much direction. The author has a lot of characters to introduce, which is fine, but in the process the main thread of the plot just never gets formed.

There are only 2 more books in the series: The Return of Meteor Boy? and The Great Powers Outage.

Many children probably won't notice this or even care because of the unusual characters they meet.

So based on just this one book, I'd call this a middle-of-the-road series as far as quality and the ability to hold the reader's interest is concerned. It gets a thumbs sideways and a little more than a meh.

Emily Windsnap: A Fish out of Water?

I had no idea going into this book, The Tail of Emily Windsnap, what it was about. I guess "Tail" should have tipped me off. I hadn't read the small print on the cover that says, "Girl next door. Best friend. Mermaid."

If that sounds a little strange, that's because it is.

Actually, the author, Liz Kessler, makes you about as comfortable with the concept as possible, which is a good thing, since this is, after all, a children's book.

It turns out that the title character is the child of a merman and a human mother. I guess this book is for young children who don't ask too many questions...? But it feels like a book for 3rd or 4th graders, so I think they just might wonder how such a union is possible.

Apparently the original book (the only one I read) was popular enough to create more of them. I have no inclination to read any of them though.

For me, there was way too much showing, versus telling, in the story. And there were a lot of rhetorical questions. Paraphrasing from memory...Will she make it? Would she fit through? How was it possible? Why didn't she remember? Who did he think he was?...Ya know what I mean?

I don't highly recommend this series, but I guess it works for some (girls). I can't see boys wanting to read these. If Charlotte's Web is a 10, then Emily Windsnap is a 4.

Charlotte Weaves a Web

"'Good-bye!' she whispered. Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him.

"She never moved again."

I choked up a bit when I read that line. I had read Charlotte's Web when I was in college...I think. If so, it would have been as part of "Kiddie Lit" class.

I read this annotated version  - The Annotated Charlotte's Web - again now to help me become a better writer. It is not included in the series books that currently comprise most of this blog. After all, it's not part of a series.

Getting back to the quotation above, the annotation associated with it says this.

"In Box 2, in the folder dealing with the proposed film version, [author, E. B.] White wrote:

When Charlotte dies, the story teller should be heard saying those words that begin, "She never moved again." I cannot tell you why or how those words have the power to move people, but is [sic] has been clearly established they do. Librarians, schoolteachers, mothers, fathers and children all seem to break apart when they hear those words. I had no idea what I was up to when I was writing them, but I wouldn't want to see them omitted from the script. You would be passing up the single most telling paragraph of the book.

In fact, the words 'She never moved again' were not included in the film."

It's good to know I'm not alone.

If you haven't read Charlotte's Web recently (or even if you have), you should find a young one to read it to.

Just be prepared for that line.

Dragon Slayers' Academy: Strange Mix of Modern and Arthurian

The Dragon Slayers' Academy (aka DSA) series by Kate McMullan has an unusual vocabulary. It has the characters sometimes using modern day words and phrases and at other times saying things like "Be gone, varlet!"

The names chosen for the characters range from the strange to the common too. There's Wiglaf (the main character), Eric (who is really Erica in disguise), Mordred (borrowed from somewhere I'm sure), Coach Plungett (Plunkett?), Yorick (borrowed from somewhere I'm sure), Brother Dave (who speaks in King James English), and more.

I read the first two books in the series: The New Kid at School and Revenge of the Dragon Lady. Both had an identical "DSA Yearbook" as the last ~20 pages of the book. Each book (the story part) was 90 pages long. I'm guessing the others in the series unnecessarily have that Yearbook at the end too. It's simply a map of the DSA and character sketches of the main participants.

In each of these two books, the hero (Wiglaf) manages to "slay" a dragon without ever having to kill one outright. In the first book, he slays one by telling it bad jokes. In the second, the dragon dies when it accidentally takes a "bath" in the castle moat. I'm guessing that similar things happen in the other books as well.

These books should be an easy read for 3rd graders. Many will probably not find them all that interesting though. Boys would probably like them more than girls. But all this is generalizing and conjecture.

They are not high on my recommendation list, but I wouldn't recommend against them either. (Can you say, "Waffle"?)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid & Dork Diaries: Same Book, Different Gender

As I read these kids' book series in alphabetical order, it just so happens that Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries are next to each other in my list.

That's probably a good thing because they are essentially the same book (I read the original in each series.) which makes it easy to compare them to each other.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid was published 2 years before Dork Diaries and is the better series (again, based my reading on just one book of each).

The wimpy kid in the title is pretty much a wimpy kid. He's a young lad in middle school. The dork isn't really a dork. She's pretty much a drama queen - though not the most dramatic one I've ever seen.

Since both are "handwritten" in diary style, there's not usually much printing on a page, especially when there's artwork. So you can read them rather quickly.

The Dork book has many dated (2009-ish) cultural references that don't make it quite as pertinent to youngsters even today, just 8 years later. Wimpy Kid avoids most, if not all, such references making it more timeless.

Both made it to the New York Times best seller list, which doesn't surprise me. I'm not sure Dork really deserves to be thought of as such a book.

Crispin: How Old Is This Kid?

Crispin: The Cross of Lead is the first in a trilogy of books about Crispin by Avi (Edward Wortis). The other two books are entitled Crispin: At the Edge of the World and Crispin: The End of Time.

I really enjoyed this story. It was a real page-turner for me. I finished it much sooner than I had initially expected to.

Part of the reason is that I like stories of jolly old England - in most cases, the older, the better. In this case, the time is 1377 near or just after the time the Plague struck the English countryside.

Crispin, or Asta's son, as he's known for the first several chapters, is the main character, but it's his friend, Bear, who's pretty much the hero. It's Bear, a very large man, who kills the bad guy in the end. (Sorry, no spoiler alerts here.)

Crispin is a 13-year-old boy who knows virtually nothing but subsistence living. It sometimes feels like he's only 7 or 8 as the story progresses. It's not that he's stupid. He just has zero experience with almost anything.

Fortunately for himself and Bear, he does learn quickly.

One other feature of this book that I especially liked - and one that would make it good for children - is that Avi uses archaic words from time to time and often explains them. At least, in the beginning he explains them. When he uses new old terms later on, he doesn't, but it makes you want to look them up to see what they mean, if you can't figure them out from the context - which sometimes you simply can't.

Cody: Clementine Revisited

You may have noticed that I'm doing these reviews in alphabetical order. I may have even mentioned that earlier, but I'm not going back to check.

In any case, that puts the Cody series right after the Clementine series. Somewhere in between the two I read that those who like the Clementine series will probably like Cody too.

I sorta wish I hadn't read that because it set up some expectations for Cody that it probably shouldn't have.

And Cody didn't live up to them.

The Cody books are fine, but they're not as good as Clementine. They're not quite as witty. They somehow feel looser (for lack of a better term) than Clementine.

I only read one Cody book - Cody and the Fountain of Happiness - because I'd had enough of that style of writing for a while. That says something about how similar Clementine and Cody are.

I would recommend Cody for children, but I would give Clementine an even stronger push.

Clementine: She's Not a Fruit

Clementine is the first in a series of 7 books written by Sara Pennypacker between 2006 and 2015. I read the original, Clementine, and the 4th, Clementine, Friend of the Week.

I was already quite sure after reading the first book that this would be a series to highly recommend, but I just wanted to double-check by reading another one of them.

Usually I read a chapter or two in a sitting. Near the end of Friend of the Week, I had to read about 5 chapters because I really wanted to find out what had happened to Moisturizer, the kitten.

The book was that good.

Here is a list of all the titles in order of creation.

1. Clementine
2. The Talented Clementine
3. Clementine's Letter
4. Clementine, Friend of the Week
5. Clementine and The Family Meeting
6. Clementine and the Spring Trip
7. Completely Clementine

Clementine is a 3rd grade girl who lives with her mom, dad, and younger brother in Boston. These books will have a wider appeal than just the 3rd grade girl demographic. Hey, I loved them.

Sara Pennypacker is wonderfully witty. I wish I could write like she does. Actually, I think I would write much like she does, if I were to write a similar type of book.

In Friend of the Week, there was one short passage that especially got to me for some reason.

Clementine's classmates were to write something they appreciated about her in a book that would be given to her at the end of the week when it was her turn to be "Friend of the Week".

"Once, when I was in first grade, I lost my crayons, Joe had written. Clementine broke every one of hers in half, so I could color."

Aw.

The Chronicles of Narnia: All 7 of Them

Yes, it's been almost 3 months since my last review, but I have a good excuse.

I'm not the fastest reader, so it takes time to get through 7 books, even if each one isn't as long as The Fellowship of the Ring.

I just now finished reading all 7 books of The Chronicles of Narnia, in order.

1. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
2. Prince Caspian
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. The Silver Chair
5. The Horse and His Boy
6. The Magician's Nephew
7. The Last Battle

Captain Awesome Is...Awesome

According to Simon & Schuster, "Stan Kirby tied a beach towel around his neck and became Super Commander Beach Boy when he was six years old."

I figured it was either that or that he had a son with an awesome imagination.

The Captain Awesome books are about a young boy's imagination. Eugene is Captain Awesome. His friend, Charlie, is Nacho Cheese Man. Together they keep Sunnyview safe for humanity.

There are 19 books in this series. I first read book #1, Captain Awesome to the Rescue. It was so awesome that I checked two more out of the library to see if they were just as awesome. They are. So I have also now read Captain Awesome and the New Kid (#3) and Captain Awesome Takes a Dive (#4).

Calvin Coconut: Silly Name, Okay Book?

Calvin Coconut: Trouble Magnet is the first in a series by Graham Salisbury.

"Why would anyone (even in a kids' book) be named Coconut?" you might ask.

The answer is quite contrived, but fortunately it's not a major concern in the book. Calvin's father is a performer who wasn't satisfied with his real name. Fine. Many performers have stage names. But Calvin's father legally changed the whole family's last name to Coconut.

Hm.

Other subtitles in the series include the following.

Bunnicula: Much Cuter Than You'd Expect

Well, that was quick.

I just finished reviewing Hatchet 2 days ago, and now here I am writing Bunnicula's review already.

To be fair or honest or whatever, Bunnicula is a very short book. I'm definitely not a fast reader.

Like Hatchet, Bunnicula is a book that I had heard of many years ago (published in 1979) but had never had an interest in reading. I thought this book was going to be much too hokey and cartoonish.

I was wrong.

Hatchet - Nice Job

Photo credit

Hatchet is part of Gary Paulsen's series called Brian's Saga, though almost nobody talks about anything but Hatchet.

The photo you usually see for this book is shown at the right.

It's a ridiculous picture.

The picture below is the one that was on the cover of the copy that I actually read.

It's a little better.

That's pretty much the worst thing I have to say about this book.

Boys vs Girls: Battle of the Ages?

From the author of Shiloh, Phyllis Naylor, comes the Boy/Girl Battle Series, a collection of 12 books about a family of boys and a family of girls who live in the same neighborhood and who just can't get along with each other.

In the first book, The Boys Start the War, we learn that the 4 Hatford brothers - Jake, Josh (twins, but that doesn't matter much), Wally, and Peter - are upset because their best friends have just moved out of state to Ohio.

In their place arrives the Malloy family who have 3 girls - Caroline, Beth, and Eddie (Edith). Their father has taken a job, that may only last a year (and it does), it the small town of Buckman, West Virginia.

Trouble ensues.

Ember: Worth Remembering Ember?

I forgot to take a pic of book 1

The Book of Ember series is an easy and interesting read. I'm just not sure whom it was written for.

Here's the problem.

The story starts out mysteriously which leads you to want to keep reading, but the whole thing is about the "post-Disaster" time on Earth. Most people would call this post-apocalyptic. So it sounds like there has been the equivalent of a nuclear holocaust about 100 years ago, and this story is about the survivors.

Benjamin Batholomew Piff Could Be So Much Better

If you look at his picture on the cover of You Wish, which is the first book in the series and which is shown here, you'd think Benjamin (I wish the author, Jason Lethcoe, hadn't shortened his name to Ben.) was a cute little kid of about 7 or 8.

It turns out that he's 12 going on 23.

In the first book, we find Benjamin in a home for wayward boys - not because he is one, but because his parents died in a plane crash.

Apparently he has no next of kin.

Eventually he makes his way into the magical world of wish fulfillment. He never really goes back to Earth, and no one seems to notice.

Baseball Card Adventures...& Me

You're probably wondering how books based on baseball cards can be adventurous.

They actually can be...to a point.

You do need to have some interest in baseball history, or these books will be as dry as dust for you.

Dan Gutman created a series of 12 books that all (I assume) revolve around a fictitious boy named Joey. The baseball players that Joey meets are definitely historical figures.

The adventurous part comes in that Joey has the magical ability to travel through time and space to where each of these players lives. He can do this simply by holding a baseball card of a player who lived before the 1960s or so.

Bad Kitty: Mostly Harmless. Mostly.

Bad Kitty is a series of 12 books by Nick Bruel. I read almost half of them - five, to be exact.

The ones I read were picked for no special reason. They might have been the only ones available at the library at the time.

Here is the full list. The books I read are in boldface.

Babymouse: Adult (and Kid) Approved

Babymouse is a series of 20 books by Jennifer Holm, in collaboration with her brother Matthew Holm.

The books have been written over a period of 11 years so far with the latest appearing in 2016. I don't know if others are planned, but I hope so.

The current books include these.

1. Queen of the World!
2. Our Hero
3. Beach Babe
4. Rock Star
5. Heartbreaker
6. Camp Babymouse
7. Skater Girl
8. Puppy Love
9. Monster Mash
10. Babymouse: The Musical

Awfully Beastly Business Awfully Written

The Awfully Beastly Business series is co-written by 3 authors - David Sinden, Matthew Morgan, and Guy Macdonald.

You'd think that amongst the three of them they could have gotten more things right in these books.

Let's start with the full series title, An Awfully Beastly Business. That's pretty decent, actually. It sounds intriguing - a little spooky, maybe a little ghastly.

Artemis Fowl - Fun with a 12-Year-Old Master Criminal

Most arch villains are a bit older than 12.

But who says they have to be?

Most master criminals are so evil you hate them.

But is that really necessary?

In the case of Artemis Fowl, a young lad of 12 who comes from a criminal family, I found him both intriguing and charming, in his own nasty way.

Animal Ark - Shoulda Let It Sink

Animal Ark is probably newer than this. Probably.

The Animal Ark series consists of an astounding 94 titles created by various authors.

Maybe the two I picked were among the weakest, but I kinda doubt it. I have the feeling that there are various authors because no single person wanted to be accused of writing them all.

The two I read were Kittens in the Kitchen and Pony on the Porch.

The books are set in England...supposedly. There isn't a thing about them that feels British.

The Three Little Kittens - Reader's Digest Version

This review is a one-off that has nothing to do with the series (plural) that I've been telling you about before this.

You may not be familiar with the entire nursery rhyme The Three Little Kittens, so here it is with thanks to Wikipedia.

The three little kittens they lost their mittens,
And they began to cry,
Oh, mother dear, we sadly fear
Our mittens we have lost
What? Lost your mittens, you naughty kittens!
Then you shall have no pie.
Mee-ow, mee-ow, mee-ow.
We shall have no pie.
Our mittens we have lost.

Amelia Bedelia, A Name That's Fun to Say

Amelia Bedelia. Amelia Bedelia. Fun, right?

What youngster doesn't like saying the name?

George Herman Ruth. George Herman Ruth. Just doesn't cut it, does it?

Peggy Parish wrote the original 12 Amelia Bedelia books. I got to read all but three of them that were not available locally. Reading the other nine, plus one by Herman Parish, was plenty.

Here are the nine, plus one, that I read.