The Scavengers
Michael Perry
ISBN: 9780062026163
Juv dystopia, spunky girl heroine, a bit overexplained at the end.
Read Summer 2015
This was a fun "beginner level" dystopia. It had elements of zombies a la Walking Dead, it has the scrappy heroine and a grizzled old mentor and his kitchen-witchery wife. Family in peril, younger sibling needing protection. Bonus points for random wordplay (sometimes genuinely funny, sometimes seemed a bit effortful) and a demented chicken.
Our girl has named herself Ford Falcon because it sounds really cool. Please don't look at the actual car, she knows it's a beater. But it does provide a nice cozy place to sleep, all half-buried in the abandoned rural scrapyard her family now calls home. There aren't many people out in the country now, what with the government offering everyone free food and protection inside the new domed cities. But a few holdouts linger, and her family is one - or they were, until someone trashes the family home and they all vanish. Now Ford is on her own (but not really, there are wily neighbors to help out) and it's up to her to find her family, and try to build a home again. A pretty good yarn, and a good gentle allegory for the push-pull of adolescent yearning to be safe at home, but also pretty sick of being stuck at home. Recommended for kids who are ok with pretty intense scenes of abandonment and lots of pages spent with creepy corn zombies.
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Tuesday Storytime: Halloween!
I love Halloween storytimes!
We started off with the delightful Zombelina, moved through the equally new and strikingly illustrated Ten Orange Pumpkins, and ended on a lighthearted note with Happy Halloween, Biscuit.
Zombelina
Kristyn Crow, illustrated by Molly Idle (Flora and the Flamingo)
ISBN: 9780802728036
Sweet green zombie gets stage fright at her dance recital, until her spooky family arrives to cheer.
This book is ADORABLE. I will probably read it on non-Halloween nights just as a dancing or performance book. (Maybe with Rock n Roll Mole?) Zombelina loves dancing at home, and her loving parents finally take her out to buy supplies and start in dance classes. Her classmates are a little weirded out by this limb-losing ballerina, but her teacher is accepting and encouraging, and she blooms. Until the night of her recital, where she gets stage fright, and starts acting like an actual zombie and scares her classmates and audience away. Her family arrives and cheers her on in a more familiar way, and she performs beautifully, then is whisked home for a celebratory dinner. Boatloads of wordplay and clever jokes with the illustrations had the parents laughing, while the kids seemed to enjoy our perky adorable heroine.
Ten Orange Pumpkins: A Counting Book
Stephen Savage
ISBN: 9780803739383
Already reviewed.
This one worked very well in the middle spot. I got through the spider with aplomb (I thought) and the kids especially liked the alligators in the river and the skeleton pirate crew.
Happy Halloween, Biscuit
Alyssa Satin Capucilli, illustrated by Pat Schories
ISBN: 9780694012206
Lift-the-flap book showing Biscuit the puppy hiding or getting into minor trouble on Halloween.
Super cute and as inoffensive as it is possible to be and still cover dressing up in costume and trick-or-treating. Biscuit and his little girl go out to the pumpkin patch to make a jack-o-lantern, pick out costumes to wear, meet costumed friends, and get treats from a family-member's house before going back home to bed. Very cute, and one of the parents checked it out after storytime!
We started off with the delightful Zombelina, moved through the equally new and strikingly illustrated Ten Orange Pumpkins, and ended on a lighthearted note with Happy Halloween, Biscuit.
Zombelina
Kristyn Crow, illustrated by Molly Idle (Flora and the Flamingo)
ISBN: 9780802728036
Sweet green zombie gets stage fright at her dance recital, until her spooky family arrives to cheer.
This book is ADORABLE. I will probably read it on non-Halloween nights just as a dancing or performance book. (Maybe with Rock n Roll Mole?) Zombelina loves dancing at home, and her loving parents finally take her out to buy supplies and start in dance classes. Her classmates are a little weirded out by this limb-losing ballerina, but her teacher is accepting and encouraging, and she blooms. Until the night of her recital, where she gets stage fright, and starts acting like an actual zombie and scares her classmates and audience away. Her family arrives and cheers her on in a more familiar way, and she performs beautifully, then is whisked home for a celebratory dinner. Boatloads of wordplay and clever jokes with the illustrations had the parents laughing, while the kids seemed to enjoy our perky adorable heroine.
Ten Orange Pumpkins: A Counting Book
Stephen Savage
ISBN: 9780803739383
Already reviewed.
This one worked very well in the middle spot. I got through the spider with aplomb (I thought) and the kids especially liked the alligators in the river and the skeleton pirate crew.
Happy Halloween, Biscuit
Alyssa Satin Capucilli, illustrated by Pat Schories
ISBN: 9780694012206
Lift-the-flap book showing Biscuit the puppy hiding or getting into minor trouble on Halloween.
Super cute and as inoffensive as it is possible to be and still cover dressing up in costume and trick-or-treating. Biscuit and his little girl go out to the pumpkin patch to make a jack-o-lantern, pick out costumes to wear, meet costumed friends, and get treats from a family-member's house before going back home to bed. Very cute, and one of the parents checked it out after storytime!
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Previously Published Review: Unnatural Issue, Mercedes Lackey
Sir Richard Whitestone was an Earth Master, as his family before him, tuned to the elements of hearth, home, and healing. He was called to London to capture and kill a dreaded Necromancer, practicer of forbidden blood and spirit-binding magics. Just part of his duty as a "good" magician and Master to help protect the innocent. While away in London, his beloved wife dies in childbed, and as he sees her lying dead hours later, he blames it on Susanne, their newborn daughter.
He forgets his grief by isolating himself on his magic-filled second-floor, poring over tomes of dusty magic practice, while Susanne is raised by the servants in the equally-isolated Yorkshire moors.
After 20 years, grief and desperate desire have driven Sir Richard to become what he once hated, and with his need for a perfect "vessel" for his wife's spirit, he chances to see Susanne out on the moors, and realizes that she is the perfect image of his wife. Now his hatred and bitterness has an outlet. Now all he must do is catch her.
Now, I won't go any further to avoid spoilers, but here's some highlights.
Susanne is feisty, spunky, and a better magician than her father, with an interesting magical sponsor.
Sir Richard is suitably mad, and totally misogynistic. I think the progression of his obsession with Susanne came up a little quickly, but otherwise, he's an excellent villain.
Lords Peter and Charles are interesting, and the sections with Peter and his man Garrick (especially the "impersonating a mad artist" bits) out investigating in Yorkshire are quite fun. I love the way Charles' manor and holdings and people are described.
The tale gets very dark around the midpoint, with the intro of WWI into the characters' lives. Everyone is threatened both by war, and by the mad, unimaginable power that Sir Richard now posesses.
Some slight flaws:
At the very beginning, Sir Richard gets magical 'poisoning' from being in London for only a week or so, due to the death and pollution and etc, but later on, Susanne is living in London for months with no ill effects. Likewise on the battlefields of France, with death and poison and shattered magical earth-bonds, there's no mention of this causing trouble. Perhaps a niggling point, but it bugged me enough to take me out of the story at several different places.
In another type of niggle, Susanne herself, other than having a mad father, isn't ever really challenged or directly threatened magically. She deals with any number of difficulties, but these aren't ever exactly threats. That, coupled with the insistence on her magical prowess (which we never really see either) made everything seem slightly unreal, and a litle less dramatic - I wasn't ever worried for her.
Last niggle, the "love triangle" was totally unnecessary, and really wasn't handled as well as it could have been. Either make it more realistic, or leave it out entirely, I don't care which. Please don't throw silly love stories into something which otherwise tries hard to be a gritty portrayal of people dealing with the horrors of the undead and of WWI in the trenches. The contrasts do neither storyline any good at all.
Niggles totally aside, a very fun read, and totally worth the 2 hours of sleep that it cost me to finish last night.
He forgets his grief by isolating himself on his magic-filled second-floor, poring over tomes of dusty magic practice, while Susanne is raised by the servants in the equally-isolated Yorkshire moors.
After 20 years, grief and desperate desire have driven Sir Richard to become what he once hated, and with his need for a perfect "vessel" for his wife's spirit, he chances to see Susanne out on the moors, and realizes that she is the perfect image of his wife. Now his hatred and bitterness has an outlet. Now all he must do is catch her.
Now, I won't go any further to avoid spoilers, but here's some highlights.
Susanne is feisty, spunky, and a better magician than her father, with an interesting magical sponsor.
Sir Richard is suitably mad, and totally misogynistic. I think the progression of his obsession with Susanne came up a little quickly, but otherwise, he's an excellent villain.
Lords Peter and Charles are interesting, and the sections with Peter and his man Garrick (especially the "impersonating a mad artist" bits) out investigating in Yorkshire are quite fun. I love the way Charles' manor and holdings and people are described.
The tale gets very dark around the midpoint, with the intro of WWI into the characters' lives. Everyone is threatened both by war, and by the mad, unimaginable power that Sir Richard now posesses.
Some slight flaws:
At the very beginning, Sir Richard gets magical 'poisoning' from being in London for only a week or so, due to the death and pollution and etc, but later on, Susanne is living in London for months with no ill effects. Likewise on the battlefields of France, with death and poison and shattered magical earth-bonds, there's no mention of this causing trouble. Perhaps a niggling point, but it bugged me enough to take me out of the story at several different places.
In another type of niggle, Susanne herself, other than having a mad father, isn't ever really challenged or directly threatened magically. She deals with any number of difficulties, but these aren't ever exactly threats. That, coupled with the insistence on her magical prowess (which we never really see either) made everything seem slightly unreal, and a litle less dramatic - I wasn't ever worried for her.
Last niggle, the "love triangle" was totally unnecessary, and really wasn't handled as well as it could have been. Either make it more realistic, or leave it out entirely, I don't care which. Please don't throw silly love stories into something which otherwise tries hard to be a gritty portrayal of people dealing with the horrors of the undead and of WWI in the trenches. The contrasts do neither storyline any good at all.
Niggles totally aside, a very fun read, and totally worth the 2 hours of sleep that it cost me to finish last night.
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