I always feel like my To Read list is insurmountable. How will I get to them all? This, I think, is the perpetual plight of the librarian/publisher/reviewer/bookseller/reader/teacher. There are just too many books in the world for one person’s lifetime.
Read more on The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black & Tony DiTerlizzi…
I’m late to the Philip Pullman party, but I just finished The Golden Compass on audio book and loved it. His Dark Materials trilogy has been on my To Read list for a while, but after my recent fight with Eragon I thought I’d finally read it and rekindle some love for fantasy. And it was amazing, I’m already tracking down The Subtle Knife so I can keep going. But maybe I’ll take a break and read something else so I can spread out the joy.
I’ve tried, people. I really have. I tried reading Eragon on paper. Now I’ve tried listening to the audio book. I cannot get past chapter three. If any fantasy reader comes into my department saying, “There’s a third one!” I’m the first person to answer back, “Brisingr doesn’t come out until September 20th.” I want to read it and talk to the kids about it. But I just can’t bring myself to wade through this series.
I’ve mentioned before how uninspired I find a lot of children’s fantasy. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is an absolute exception to this. I was hooked from the first book, the absolutely superb The Lightning Thief. Yes, there are some obvious parallels to Harry Potter, but I was too absorbed in the series to notice.
What a bizarre book. Inspired in part by The Island of Dr. Moreau, Dr. Franlin’s Island by Ann Halam tells the story of three shipwrecked British teenagers who fall into the hands of a mad scientist. Semi, Arnie, and Miranda are the sole survivors of a plane crash on their way to a scientific program for teens in Ecuador. They survive for weeks alone on the beach before discovering Dr. Franklin’s compound and his horrors of genetic engineering. He holds them as prisoners and alters their DNA in his attempts to make bird/human and fish/human hybrids.