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Book meme! day 2
Jul. 22nd, 2010 09:00 pmDay 02 - A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about
I was enchanted by Otto and the Flying Twins, by Charlotte Haptie. I didn't like the two sequels I've read quite as well but I thought they were both well written and interesting. These are kids' fantasies, probably aimed at 8-12? The world-building was really exciting to me - there's a city where everyone is surrounded by very magical things and people who have magical abilities, but they're all firmly anti-magic - and it's anything that isn't their own, comfortable magic that's defined as magic.
It's a very colonial construction in some ways that are explored with what for me was the right amount of explicit parallelism - the people who live in the city came there from another place, and found a culture that they didn't understand, which they exploited and warred against and drove underground and to the outskirts. Then they built a wall. The city residents are very concerned with identity - who is part of the Us and who is part of the Them - and one of the main threads of the book is how much they don't understand that they are no longer (or never have been?) the Us they define themselves as.
At the same time, the magic is the inventive, light-hearted wonderful kind that felt to me like a mix-up of Edward Eager, E. Nesbit, and Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga stories. The world they live in is full of fabulous, delightful, magical things. Many of the kids and the grownups are well-meaning in ways that can be flawed or shortsighted but feel genuine. There are some bigger picture magical things that didn't work as smoothly for me, but even where they didn't work smoothly I thought they were interesting.
I liked the family dynamics - the mom and dad were distracted enough to let the kids have scope to do important plot / narrative things, without seeming mean or criminally negligent. There was a sense that the parents trusted and expected the kids to handle some things.
The magical creatures also seemed rare and unusual and inventive to me - like the ones who have hides covered in precious gems and are hunted as animals (because of the worth of their skin) even though they have human intelligence.
And in all the years I worked with kids in libraries, or talked to adults about kids books, I can't remember a single adult or kid bringing up these books. I'm not sure why.
( Book meme list )
I was enchanted by Otto and the Flying Twins, by Charlotte Haptie. I didn't like the two sequels I've read quite as well but I thought they were both well written and interesting. These are kids' fantasies, probably aimed at 8-12? The world-building was really exciting to me - there's a city where everyone is surrounded by very magical things and people who have magical abilities, but they're all firmly anti-magic - and it's anything that isn't their own, comfortable magic that's defined as magic.
It's a very colonial construction in some ways that are explored with what for me was the right amount of explicit parallelism - the people who live in the city came there from another place, and found a culture that they didn't understand, which they exploited and warred against and drove underground and to the outskirts. Then they built a wall. The city residents are very concerned with identity - who is part of the Us and who is part of the Them - and one of the main threads of the book is how much they don't understand that they are no longer (or never have been?) the Us they define themselves as.
At the same time, the magic is the inventive, light-hearted wonderful kind that felt to me like a mix-up of Edward Eager, E. Nesbit, and Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga stories. The world they live in is full of fabulous, delightful, magical things. Many of the kids and the grownups are well-meaning in ways that can be flawed or shortsighted but feel genuine. There are some bigger picture magical things that didn't work as smoothly for me, but even where they didn't work smoothly I thought they were interesting.
I liked the family dynamics - the mom and dad were distracted enough to let the kids have scope to do important plot / narrative things, without seeming mean or criminally negligent. There was a sense that the parents trusted and expected the kids to handle some things.
The magical creatures also seemed rare and unusual and inventive to me - like the ones who have hides covered in precious gems and are hunted as animals (because of the worth of their skin) even though they have human intelligence.
And in all the years I worked with kids in libraries, or talked to adults about kids books, I can't remember a single adult or kid bringing up these books. I'm not sure why.
( Book meme list )
