now I'm done

Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper; read by Jim Dale.  I downloaded this early in the summer, for family car trip listening.  I picked it because it came up on a list somewhere as being survivalist-themed a la Woods runner and Lost! On a mountain in Maine, both enjoyed by the family.  The story does start out with a wilderness-survival portion, but once that was over, it couldn't keep my kid's attention.

I re-downloaded it a week or two ago to finish it.  There is a surprising amount of historical daily-life detail that will probably fascinate a particular group of young readers (but I'm guessing students slightly older than my 4th-grader).  Despite the author's note about her meticulous research, I'm never sure how accurate it is when multiple historical characters are presented with more "enlightened" (read: "modern"?) attitudes. 

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye.  I really enjoyed this book, but I think it had some serious flaws.  This always makes me really uncomfortable; I usually feel like my enjoyment of a book is proportional to its quality.

Major flaw 1: Jane's acceptance, or determination, of her identity as a "murderess."  She never seems very distraught at this idea; she's minorly concerned about what other people will think of her, but she doesn't seem to think of it very much herself.  She also doesn't exactly embrace it: she uses her identity, more of already-damned soul rather than a serial killer, when she sees a need, but she doesn't embrace that identity and search out the most evil people in her city, without whom the world would be a better place.  It's not even like she was ambivalent about it, either; more like she couldn't be bothered to think much about it at all.

Major flaw 2:  In her narration, Jane refers to events in Jane Eyre throughout the book, but doesn't talk at all about why this is important to her.  It isn't clear until over half-way through the book when she first encounters the story at all.  She points out life events that are similar to those in the novel, but those would be apparent to the reader anyway.  It also isn't exactly clear in what year(s) the book is set, and the publication history of Jane Eyre, plus other works by the Bronte sisters, would have been an interesting addition.  The author hit the worst possible balance: she didn't need to call attention in the text to Jane Eyre at all, but since she did, it needed to be more integral to the story.

Jane, the fox and me by Fanny Britt; illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault; translated by Christelle Morelli and Susan Ouriou.  This is really beautiful-- the unfinished-looking pencil drawings for the young girl unsure of herself and the colorful images when she relates the beautiful story she's reading add depth to the story.  It seems simple; read it slowly.  Highly recommended.

Stepping stones: A refugee family's journey by Margriet Ruurs; artwork by Nizar Ali Badr; translated by Falah Raheem.  These illustrations are very unique and beautiful; I'm curious as to the scale.  The notes in the front are more informative than the story, which is kind of flat. 

The plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg.  The day after Christmas, I had so many returns and donations (we cleaned up in the living room and weeded some titles from the shelves) that I completely forgot to bring a book to actually read on my lunch break.  I quickly consulted by Want-to-Read list in GoodReads for any graphic novels that might be checked in.

I read this over two or three days and it seemed new to me, but when putting the tags into Blogger it alerted me I have already read this.  Apparently I read this six years ago when I was doing middle-school book-talks.  I was really good back then at skimming books just deeply enough to talk about them at the time but I don't remember much about most of the titles from that year.

I'm glad I unintentionally gave this book a rereading, as I enjoyed it very much.  I guess I have become a more proficient Graphic Novel reader over the years.  The story is a bit light and the characters are a little stereotypical but it's a sweet, touching story.

The Indian in the cupboard, with Hal Scardino.  Ugh, this was a waste of time.  The acting was horrible.  In the book, Omri is a likable character because he spends so much time thinking about how to help Little Bear and figuring out imaginative ways of scaling down items for his benefit.  This is missing from the movie-- obviously it would be hard to convey at all, and it isn't.  Patrick is a stupid, unthinking cardboard cut-out of a character in the book, but he's redeemed when he recognizes that Boone has real needs and leaves him in Omri's care as the best thing for him.  In the movie, that never happens; his character is further damaged by an actor with no skill and perfectly expressionless face.  It's hard to blame 10-year-olds for being bad actors, so I'll instead mock Little Bear's fragmented English, delivered with a run-of-the-mill modern American accent.

The Swiss family Robinson by Johann Wyss.  This... is not one of the fun classics: far too much instruction and philosophizing, poorly incorporated (and incorrect) natural history and other instructional paragraphs.  The survival story is interesting, but the way the father inherently knows about every machine, craft, and plant from any part of the world defies belief.

Although she has some "screen time" and is not an absolute ninny, the boys' mother is named only once in the whole book.  The rest of the time she is referred to by the narrator as "my wife" but more usually as "the mother;" not "Mother," for some reason, as her family name or title, but "the mother," as her position.