Robots.  Grease stains.  Plagues.  Moon people.  Are these the things you think of when you hear the name “Cinderella”?  Well they should be now!  126 years after WWIV, the world is suffering from a terrible plague.  No cure has been found, and the Emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth has fallen victim to it.  The young Prince Kai is now facing a diplomatic and emotional nightmare.  And we have Cinder.  Cinder is a cyborg – part human, part robot.  They are seen as less-than human, mere property.  Her guardian has “volunteered” her to be studied (aka sacrificed) in hopes of finding a cure for the plague.  What she discovers in the research lab changes her life forever, and has the potential to change the fate of the world.  But can she reach Prince Kai in time?  Would he believe her?

I’ll be the first to admit that my description does not do justice to this novel.  There’s just soooo much packed in there!  This novel is a prime example of how much more a journey can be over the destination.  Almost everyone knows the Cinderella story – you know how it ends.  So then why should you keep reading?  Because these characters are amazing!  Honestly, who would think of a robot fairy tale?  Cinder is a strong lead with a great android sidekick.  The Prince is a gem, caught in the middle of awful circumstances.  Some of the plot twists that were in there were too easily predictable.  But I am excited for the rest of this series!  I am bummed that it’s not supposed to be finished until 2015…  I so hope that cyborgs are the new vampires.

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.

Warning!!  Contains spoilers for The Looking Glass Wars and Seeing Redd!

The final segment in The Looking Glass Wars trilogy.  What began as my happy accident with an audiobook on a trip to New Mexico in March has now finally concluded.  Well, the book was written in 2009, but I just recently finished listening to the last disc.

Wonderland has fallen to its worst enemy, King Arch of Borderland.  His aim is to destroy the Heart Crystal – the source of all imaginative power in Wonderland and on Earth.  Queen Alyss and her followers are unable to comprehend how this could happen.  Are the Caterpillar Oracles working against her?  How could Wonderland actually thrive in the hands of Arch, or worse, her Aunt Redd?  How could it survive without imagination, that which its very essence?

I am almost sad that these adventures have concluded.  I have come to care for these characters and for the world which Beddor has expanded from Carroll’s original.  Between Beddor’s excellent pen and Doyle’s perfect delivery, I have left part of my heart in their Wonderland.  I have no idea if these works are well-known.  I had never heard of them – as I said, the first encounter was a happy accident.  But they should be.  Do yourselves a favor.  If you ever loved Alice in Wonderland, if you ever loved a good fantasy story, pick up these books.

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.

E has fallen down the stairs and broken its leg!  Now in the hospital, the only way for E to get well is for everyone to stop using it.  A replacement must be found immediately!  The rest of the alphabet decides on O, because of how well-rounded it is.  But even after all of the changes have been “onforcod,” E still isn’t getting better!

Rave reviews from publishers leave much to be desired by readers.  Well, that’s sort of true.  The story is great and words are well-chosen.  But this book suffers from its illustrations.  There is way too much going on for it to be an effective read-aloud.  Although the text certainly lends itself to general hilarity, the busyness on each of the pages prevents a reader from grasping the cohesive story.  One is too occupied with looking at all of the jokes drawn around the text to get to the end of the book remembering what happened in the beginning.

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.

In Mirror, Mirror, Singer offers her readers poetic shifts in points of view.  Read one way, her poetry tells one story from a fairy tale.  Read in reverse, they tell another character’s point of view.  If you’ll pardon the pun, it puts a whole new twist on the fairy tale genre.

While I was intrigued by the concept and structure of this book, it gets old quickly.  Once you read a few, you’ve pretty much got them all.  The two voices could be the same character, feeling two different emotions.  Or they could be two different characters – a princess and a prince.  Fun to use as a writing exercise or prompt, but even at 30 pages, this book seemed to go on a bit long.  Masse’s illustrations definitely augment the poems.  They are bold and bright, and help you see the shift when the words fail to convey whose point of view we’re supposed to see.

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.

Set in Jackson, MI in the 1960′s, The Help tells a story about telling stories.  Any white family who can afford it has “help” in their home.  These are African American women who cook, clean, and raise the children.  While they are cherished in one way, they are scorned in others.  It’s the 1960′s in the south – there is racial tension.  Then enter Skeeter, white, a recent college grad, returning home while working to become a writer.  She sees her old friends differently – how they treat their help.  She wants to give the help their own voices (and hopefully use those writings to spur her own writing career).  However, it’s almost all-but impossible to get these women to open up.  Sharing what they know about these families with the rest of the world could cost them their jobs and their lives.  But sharing what they know may also free others.  Told from multiple points of view.

Very rarely do I read what I call a “grown-up” book.  Most of the time, I find them too thick, too wordy, or too hopeless.  I am glad I hung up my prejudice to read this book.  There’s a reason why everyone was talking about this book.  It has marvelous characters, none of whom really trump the others in importance, voice, or style.  It catches you up and doesn’t let you go until the end.  I’m not really any kind of authority to say whether or not everything about this book is believably accurate in terms of setting and plausibility, but even if there are inconsistencies, it was a fabulous read.  And I hear the movie is well-worth it, as well.

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.

Doug was turned into a vampire at the worst possible age – 15.  So he will forever be undead, unable to drive, unable to lose his baby fat, unable to clear up his acne.  He will forever be awkward around girls.  He is mysteriously matched with a vampire mentor who will hopefully help him out of this awkward stage to become that glorious vampire image.

This book started out so well – two geeky kids, a vampire and his bff, at a Comic-Con; the vampire too afraid to actually bite someone, stealing blood packets from a Red Cross blood donation van.  But my hopes of the continuing misadventures of an awkward teenage vampire were quickly dashed as the story progressed. At one point in the story (I forget which, since it wasn’t terribly memorable), Doug turns into something completely different than fat and awkward – just kind of an all-around jerk.  I lost more and more interest in him, and none of the other characters made me want to care what happened to them.  This is one that probably everyone could avoid, even the most hardcore vampire-fiction lovers.

Adam Rex, I still love your Frankenstein poetry.

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.

The chronicles of Harris Burdick are based on the 14 mysterious drawings, titles and captions supposedly left at a publisher’s home in the mid 1950′s.  Mr. Burdick brought them to a Mr. Peter Wenders, promising to bring the rest of the stories that went with the drawings the following day.  Burdick never returned and was never heard from again.  The art and quips were originally published in 1984 after Chris Van Allsburg first heard this story in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.  Since then, these drawings have captured the imaginations of readers and writers everywhere.  These 14 chronicles, inspired by Burdick’s mysterious work, are written by some of the most prominent authors in fiction.

I had never heard of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick until I read a review for The Chronicles of Harris Burdick.  All the reviews I read raved.  Naturally intrigued, I checked both of them out.  There was reason to rave.  With just one brief sentence, the drawings (obviously the work of the Caldecott medalist Van Allsburg) invoke all kinds of emotions – hilarity, tragedy, horror, whimsy, and curiosity, just to name a few.  It is easy to see how you can’t not be inspired to write the rest of the untold story.  Like with any collection of short stories, there are those that make you wonder, “That was really the best you could do?” And then there are those that you want to reread again as soon as you’ve finished.  For very different reasons, those for me were the ones by Jon Scieszka (hilarity), Linda Sue Park (heartbreak), Walter Dean Myers (mystery), and Chris Van Allsburg (whimsy).

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.

The Olympians series continues with Hera, Queen of the Gods, who always seems to be known only for her terrible jealousy and temper.  O’Connor attempts to dispel that reputation and spin Hera’s delicate wrath in a new light.  Starting with Zeus’ pursuit of her, she is painted as a strong female character with family values at the center of her actions.  Most of the book is taken up with the story of Heracles (Hercules in the Latin), who was forced to do twelve tasks to appease the goddess.  While he is furious that he is made to do these things simply because he is a bastard child of Zeus, Jason (of Jason and the Argonauts) gives him a different perspective.  If she hadn’t made him do all of these things, he never would have won the glory and heroism that have made his name known throughout the world.  It even means “The Glory of Hera.”

In the afterward, O’Connor admits that Hera is his favorite goddess.  He contests that she gets a bad rap because pretty much all mythology was written down by men – they never bothered to ask the women their tales.  There were some stories in here about Hera that I’d never heard before.  And there probably are a lot more that will never be told because they never were written down by men.  The book as a whole has a good composition, and Hera’s story and artwork is much easier to follow than her husband’s.  And if you pay attention closely, you can see how they all begin weaving into one another.

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.

Robert Lee suffered from dyslexia as a boy.  But he trained his eyes to be able to read properly and grew up and went on to higher education.  He became the Reverend Lee, and went to pastor the small village of Nibbleswicke.  It wasn’t until he got to Nibbleswicke that he realized that this would be his first job ever.  Would he do a good job?  Would the townspeople respect him?  These thoughts and others triggered great stress in Reverend Lee.  And that stress triggered something even stranger – a sort of verbal dyslexia.  He wouldn’t even realize he was doing it – turning the most important words in his sentences into insulting or incomprehensible backwards gibberish.  With the only cure as silly as the affliction, the people of Nibbleswicke all agreed that this vicar was by far, the most interesting cleric they had ever seen.

Another confession time.  This is the first Roald Dahl book I have ever read.  And I’m not just rereading it, either.  Somehow, I missed all of these in my childhood.  I’m so sorry Mr. Dahl.  It won’t happen again.  A light and silly little book, it’s easy to see why generations of children love Dahl’s works.  His is a world of obvious nonsense that Lewis Carroll would be proud of.

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.

Do I really need to write a synopsis for this classic trove of children’s literature? It’s so well-known and celebrated in many countries.  The little girl, Alice, chases the white rabbit down a hole into Wonderland, through a mad tea party, to the silliest croquet game ever invented and incurring the wrath of the death-sentence happy queen.

I feel like I need to confess – though I have read many allusions to and adaptations of and seen movies based on this book, I had not read it until a week or so ago.  If I had realized how short it was (130 pages on my iPhone (which is about 2 paragraphs per page)), I’m sure I’d have picked it up sooner.  Oh well.  Better late than never, right?  Needless to say, I loved it.  Knowing all the many references to it, finally seeing the source was a delight.  I know that Through the Looking Glass won’t be far behind.

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.