Shelly's Book Blog

Ellen Potter's Olivia Kidney is a fantasy filled with odd but wonderful characters. Reading this book, I was reminded of the Series of Unfortunate Events books, because Olivia meets many strange characters. It is also quite scary at times. For example, she faces the evil pirate Master Clive, a man known to enjoy torturing and murdering people. " 'If your daddy is lying, my sweet, I will slice off all your fingers and toes and feed them to the gulls,'" he tells one little girl in the story. Despite the cartoonish illustrations on the cover, then, this story is probably not meant for really young kids.
Olivia's dad works as a superintendent in a big apartment building, but he is not very good at his job and has been fired many times. This means, of course, that Olivia and her dad have moved often. Although being the new kid has become routine for her, it has not become any easier with practice, and Olivia is lonely. Over the course of this story, however, she discovers that she has an unusual talent that helps to alleviate some of her misery. This book is the first in a series, so I will looke forward to reading more about Olivia and her weirdly wonderful world.

I have found another gem: William Boniface's series, The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy. I have finished Book 1: The Hero Revealed, and have also read parts of Books 2 and 3 in this series with my boys, and we have thoroughly enjoyed every minute. This is a fantasy/adventure series about a world in which everyone has some kind of superpower.
The hero of the tale is the only one who has no superpower, and thus his name, Ordinary Boy. His friends include Halogen Boy, who can glow brightly when he drinks enough apple juice; Plasma Girl, who can transform herself into goo; Stench, who is remarkably strong but must tolerate the unfortunate side effect of emitting a horrible smell when he uses his powers or gets too excited; and Melonhead, whose head is shaped like ... well, a melon, and who spits seeds whenever he talks. I really like that the author uses a rich and varied vocabulary, but kids will probably just like that the stories are very clever and extremely funny. I cannot praise these books enough -- put them up there with Harry Potter and Series of Unfortunate Events. They're that good!

I enjoyed The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization, by Daniel Pinkwater, but it's a pretty strange book. The main character is a boy named Neddie Wentworthstein, whose father made a fortune selling shoelaces during WWII. A rather mysterious shaman named Melvin (only one of his names) gives Neddie a sacred stone turtle, which is supposed to help Neddie save the world. Before he has to be a hero, though, Neddie travels by train from Chicago to Los Angeles with his family, makes new friends, and lives a pretty normal life, except for making friends with a ghost and seeing a live mammoth at the circus where his friend's father works. Pinkwater slips in quite a bit of historical information about Los Angeles in the 1940s, and about turtles and tortoises. I think quirky is a good word to describe this book. I don't think it will be everyone's cup of tea, but for those who look for stories that are warm and funny but also a little bit strange, this is a perfect choice.

Emmy and the Home for Troubled Girls, by Lynne Jonell, continues the story begun in Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat. The evil nanny, Miss Barmy, was transformed into a rat at the end of the last story, but she is not about to let that stop her from taking what she believes is rightfully hers. This sequel is every bit as delightful as its predecessor!

Emily and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, by Lynne Jonell is a light, humorous fantasy for middle graders about 10-year-old Emmy Addison, who is very rich and lives in a house that looks like a castle. The problem is that she cannot seem to make any friends at her new school. People just don't seem to even see her, and if they do they don't remember her. She soon discovers that the class pet, a rat named Raston, can speak, but only she can understand him. She also finds out that speaking English is not the only thing that makes him extraordinary.
Emmy does manage to make friends with Joe, a boy in her class, and the two kids team up with Raston and a few other friendly rodents to rid Emmy of her evil nanny, Miss Barmy. I love the names in this story, such as Mr. Herbifore, Emmy's teacher, and Mrs. Brecksniff, the housekeeper. I enjoyed the story as well, and look forward to reading Emmy and the Home for Troubled Girls next.

My boys red Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls, for their high school English class this semester, so I decided to read it, too. The book is about ten-year-old Billy, who lives in the Ozark mountains with his family. He works very hard for two years to raise enough money to buy two hounds. Once they are trained, he enters them in a hunting contest. The story is filled with adventure and excitement but also with sadness. I was reminded of Rascal, by Sterling North, because it is about a boy who enjoys woodland adventures with his pets. Unlike North's memoir, however, Rawl's story includes a heavy healping of religious didacticism. Rawls uses Billy and Billy's parents as vehicles for these moral lessons, which I found rather distracting and unnecessary. I also felt that the book would have been better if Rawls had somehow lost the last two chapters before he sent the manuscript to his publisher. The end of the hunting contest seemed to me a satisfying ending to the story, and I felt that the tragedy of the last two chapters was just too over-the-top. Still, I would recommend the book. It is an exciting adventure and I admired Billy's determination and independent spirit.