Chapter Eleven: A Kingdom Far and Clear

It is thanks to my grandmother for giving me a visually beautiful edition of Mark Helprin's Swan Lake trilogy, illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg. (Those of you familiar with picture books may know Van Allsburg from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The Polar Express.) I had never read this story, but apparently it's a classic! Overall, I enjoyed it, but I could have done without the references to God, and although the very end was, thank goodness, hopeful, the final installment generally was rather heavy and hopeless. So I'm not sure if I'll be rereading this book, but I did enjoy reading it this first time through!

Chapter Ten: Welcome to Lizard Motel

This was neither children's/YA fiction nor was it fiction at all!  But I heartily enjoyed this memoir, which I felt was as much about motherhood as it was about an adult's perspective on children's literature.  Of course, given how concerned children's literature is with adult conceptions of childhood, it isn't surprising that author Barbara Feinberg's experiences as a mother ended up being so entwined with her views on children's literature.  I didn't agree with everything she wrote, nor all of her judgments on the specific books she critiqued.  (For example, she disliked Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, which admittedly I haven't bothered to reread probably since sixth grade, but which I remember liking very much between then and when I first read it, probably in third or fourth grade.)  However, it was truly refreshing to read a published account by another adult validating what I felt as a kid about most of what I had to read for school--it wasn't what I wanted to be reading, and it wasn't enjoyable to read.  (Like her, or rather her son, the books we both dislike are the sorts of books I read maybe in fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades--we didn't read much before that, or at least not as a class, and after that we were pretty much in the realm of (adult) classics.)  I don't know if someone not familiar with the books Feinberg focuses on (mostly written and taught from the 1970s onward) and not interested in children's literature would find this book interesting, but I definitely enjoyed reading it!

Chapter Nine: The Amulet of Samarkand

So, first, my apologies for not having written in more than a month!  I can lamely say that I was busy with school and then the holidays, but I was at least reading for fun, even if I didn't write about it right away!  So, The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud...  I honestly didn't enjoy this read nearly as much as I'd expected to.  I generally quite like YA fantasy, but something about this left me feeling lukewarm.  I did bother to finish it, and I found the last few chapters more interesting than most of the rest of the book, but I didn't end the book feeling that I absolutely must read the sequels--in fact, I ended thinking that I almost certainly won't bother with the sequels.  I think a lot of my problem with this book stemmed from the fact that I had trouble identifying with and liking the main child character.  He was both cold and whiny, I found, and I had trouble sympathizing with him.  I rather liked the other main character better, who is a wise (or so he thinks of himself) djinn, although I'm not sure how much I was supposed to like him.  The villains weren't compelling enough to really hate or fear, so they didn't help spur me on, either. On the whole, I wasn't terribly impressed by this book, but I've certainly read worse.

Chapter Eight: Passarola Rising

So this one isn't a children's book, it just caught my eye while I was browsing the school library's Australian Fiction section.  It wasn't quite as captivating as, say The Hunger Games, but I enjoyed reading it in a calmer way.  It's a fun little piece of historical fiction with just a note of science fantasy in the titular airship (the Passarola), which is designed like a boat and propelled by wind in its sails, but which is held aloft by vacuum-pumped copper spheres.  Peppered with a bit of Portuguese and French, as well as some old-timey wording, the book's language itself was fun as well.

Chapter Seven: Mockingjay (Hunger Games III)

The final book of the Hunger Games trilogy may have been my favorite!  It kept me guessing right up until the end, which I always appreciate in a book.  I also liked how the plot continued to thicken in interesting and difficult ways; it would have been easy to have this final installment be merely a neat wrap-up based on the end of the second book, but Collins didn't go that route.  Katniss is also presented with even more difficult choices than before, and we really get to see her grow as she struggles with them.
I really liked the ending--it was just what I wanted--but I almost bawled as I read the end, partly from the content and partly because I was sad to be done with the series!  I'll miss Katniss.

Chapter Six: Catching Fire (Hunger Games II)

Once I was finally able to get my hands on a copy of this book (at first the college and town libraries' copies were out), I burned right through it!  While the writing itself remained a bit wimpy, the plot thickened deliciously.  Politics take much more of a role in this book than in The Hunger Games, and this added a really interesting dimension to the book, especially given the vitriolic election season that was gripping the nation as I was reading it.  Katniss is allowed to mature nicely, by no means overcoming all of her flaws, but having another chance to face up to them.  But beware--the ending's a real cliffhanger!  It was all I could do to restrain myself from forgoing my homework and starting the next book immediately upon finishing Catching Fire.

Chapter Five: The Hunger Games

Now that everyone's been talking about Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games for four years, I finally decided to read it and see what all the fuss was about.  While I will admit that the quality of the writing is not amazing, I was hooked by the end of the first chapter.  The plot is fast-paced and compelling, to be sure, with plenty to thrill and terrify and keep a reader turning the pages, but I was also intrigued by the book's heroine, Katniss.  It's nice to have a strong female character, and Katniss is complex and multi-dimensional as well.  She's not always sure about what she feels and whether she's doing the right thing, and in her grappling with these issues of self-evaluation she becomes a really interesting character.  By the end of the book, I was left hungering (if you will) for the next installment, with the characters still haunting my mind.