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A lush, nearly decadent book, A Practical Guide to Faeries is exactly what it advertises, a guide to finding, dealing with and surviving faeries. With beautiful art on every page, along with textured spots and even recipes, it teases every sense, pulling children (and adults) into the world of the Feywild. This book is high fantasy, but doesn’t forget the darker side of fae…Full review at Monster Librarian.
You can read Coraline for free online for a limited time, here.
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Bunnicula is a classic scary story for kids. When the Monroe family finds a strange bunny in a theater showing Dracula, their cat, Chester, and dog, Harold, decide to investigate the aptly named Bunnicula. As if the bunny’s strange markings and creepy red eyes weren’t enough, weird things start happening around him…
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Paperback: 978-0979432828, $9.99
Kandide is the most beautiful and the most perfect of the Fee, and after her father dies the most important magical gift of all, the Gift of Frost which changes the seasons, renewing the world, passes to her. But in overconfidence and with an over inflated sense of importance (which both cover the doubts and insecurities mixing beneath the surface) she has an accident, a mistake that leaves her scarred and therefore cast out from the society that days earlier prepared to make her their queen.
Banished from the perfect Fee society Kandide must come to terms with her imperfections and realize that there’s still a queen within her.
Truth be told I thought the book took too long to get going and I thought the Perfect equals, well, perfection plot line was heavy handed. But I read this story to my daughter, who is far closer to the target audience (9-12), before bed every night. She was absolutely enchanted.
Kandide’s emotional and physical pain made her a real person, and the bits of action kept her clutching the blanket and asking for one more chapter. The cast of fantasy characters from monsters to fairies to griffins, sparked her imagination and added more tools to her own storytelling equipment box.
While there wasn’t enough time spent on some of the secondary characters, Egan and Tara specifically, for her to get caught up with them this is the first book in a trilogy, as is promised by the resolution.
There are many pros to Kandide and the Secret of the Mists for both child and parent. Nonviolent solutions are promoted as a means to solving problems. The book is excellent for expanding a young vocabulary. Larger words are used in a way that makes their meaning easy to interpret for children. And even the scary situations are downplayed as much as the emotions are over played which leaves the danger still “safe” and not scary.
Kandide and the Secret of the Mists is accompanied by beautiful illustrations and crafted with the magic in the hearts of children in mind. If your child loves dreams and fantasy this is a fine addition to their early library.
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Wayside School was a set up to be special from the moment the builders mistakenly built it as thirty one-room floors instead of one thirty-room floor. Luckily this left a lot of extra space for the playground, a playground that Mrs. Jewels’ class rarely gets to play on since their room is at the top of the building.
I remember loving the Wayside books as a kid. Anything and everything could and did happen, from dead rats who are determined to sneak into Mrs. Jewels class, to Mrs. Zorf (who doesn’t exist, and her classroom on the 19th floor which also doesn’t exist) to puns and humorous literal interpretations of concepts. In trying to expand my children’s love of stories I picked Sideways Stories from Wayside School to read before bed each night.
While we enjoyed some stories, like Mrs. Gorf (who turns the kids into apples when they misbehave), Mrs. Jewels (who thinks the class is filled with monkeys because children can’t possibly be so cute) and Todd (a student who just cannot seem to get through a whole day without being sent home, no matter how hard he tries), others were a complete miss. There were some stories I feel we didn’t connect with because my son is a very literal thinker and didn’t “get” the joke.
Being willing to believe anything is important to enjoying the thirty short stories in this book. If your child can suspend disbelief then they’ll love these wacky tales. But if you stall on how unreal the concept of a story is then it’s hard to get past that. Sachar doesn’t suspend disbelief, he assumes you’ve already done that and writes a story about what happens afterwards.
Most of the stories are about three pages long, which lends well to before bed reading. Each is about a different student or teacher, but they all feature a familiar cast of characters which also makes this book good for reading in small bits since each story is like an episode, a whole story on its own but expands the world of Wayside a little bit at a time. The short length of the stories will also help children still learning to read or parents who burnout on books aimed at kids balance the pros of reading together with the frustrations.
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