“It was a dark and stormy night.” The opening of this book imprinted itself on my ten-year-old brain in ways I didn’t fully realize until I returned to it over four decades later. I first read A Wrinkle in Time in 1975 when my grandmother, a children’s librarian, gave me a copy for my birthday. It wasn’t just any copy; it was a signed copy that my grandmother had purchased in 1963 when she attended the Newberry-Caldecott award dinner in Chicago—almost two years before my […]
The weirdest afterschool special I’ve never seen
This book was an impulse purchase on a long airport layover a few years ago. I’d heard good things about China Miéville and wanted to give him a shot, and I figured a quick kids’ book read would be a good place to start, and then — classic me — I let it sit on the shelf for nearly two years before getting to it. Un Lun Dun has a lot going for it. The protagonists, Zanna and Deeba, pre-teen girls and best friends, have […]
A Side Quest, If You Will
Edgedancer is a small novella about the character Lift from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series, wherein we get a little more exposition regarding her character and how she falls into her role in Oathbringer, after first being introduced via a small interlude section in Words of Radiance. As far as the book goes, it is a quick and fun little adventure that fits easily within the already established story. It does, however, also serve (as mentioned in the post-notes) to solve a few problems and continuity issues within […]
No fever here, just a low grade fizzle
This book was not what I expected, and I didn’t really enjoy it. I have no issue with reading about fairies, or vampires, or other mythical beings but this book didn’t do it for me and I blame it all on the heroine (who narrates this tale). Well, I also didn’t care for the hero much either, which doesn’t leave a whole lot for reading enjoyment. Perhaps if the plot had been more interesting…but alas, that was lacking too. MacKayla (Mac) Lane had been […]