Book Review: The Secret of the Stone Frog by David Nytra

The Secret of the Stone Frog is a gorgeous, graphic novel children's fairy tale.

Two children go to sleep in their rooms and wake to find that they have been transported to a mysterious forest. To get home again, they have to follow the directions of a stone frog (or a series of stone frogs?) that they find

The intended readers are children. The dialog is kept to a minimum and the words are shorter, easier for beginning readers. Also, while there are some situations that are scary for the brother and sister protagonists, there is nothing here that is intended to provoke nightmare or provide more than a very slight shiver to the beginning reader.

Nytra's portrayal of the sibling relationship is a delight. The two children clearly love one another and take turns protecting, and occasionally exasperating one another. Leah is clearly the protective older sister with Alan being the somewhat irresponsible "baby," but he'll help when she needs it.

The book is full of the unexpected, the bizarre, and the beautiful. There are suited lantern-fish men waiting for a train, enormous, word-eating bees, friendly giant rabbits the children can ride, and at the end, a city comes gloriously, terribly to life as the children leave the land.

I have to confess to twoo minor disappointments. One is that, right at the end, the book breaks its one of its own rules: The frog tells them early on that the way home is "always behind me." The actual exit turns out to be to the frog's left. Fairy tales tend to be very, very literal and to keep their rules rigidly, so I'd have been happier of Nytra had remembered his own instructions. Also, I admit to being slightly disappointed in the "It was all a dream (maybe)" ending. I prefer trips to other worlds to have happened! The art work there, though, is beautiful as the shapes in the garden echo the shapes and places the children visited during the night.

My complaints--and they are tiny complaints--aside, this is a gorgeous book suitable for reading with kids, giving to kids, or just enjoying on ones own for the lavish and lovely black and white artwork.

Book Review: The Spindlers by Lauren Oliver

I decided I wanted to read The Spindlers by Lauren Oliver on the basis of the first line: "One night when Liza went to bed, Patrick was her chubby, stubby, candy-grubbing and pancake-loving younger brother, who irritated and amused her both, and the next morning, when she woke up, he was not." I was drawn to the way the line captures the ups and downs of the sibling relationship: impossible and irreplaceable at once. The book did not disappoint in that regard. Patrick is not present through much of the book, but Liza's memories of their games, stories, and disagreements portrays the relationship well, particularly from the older sister's point of view.

Also impressive is Olver's description of stories and their importance. Liza tells herself stories all through The Spindlers; she tells them, "as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories." She needs her awareness of magic and all the stories she can remember when Patcick's soul is stolen, and only she realizes this because she has listened to her babysitter, Anna, tell of magical beings and of evil creatures, the spindlers, spider-like beings who steal souls and take them to their underground lairs. Liza knows she has only a day to save him, and she uses stories to guide her and give her strength through her travels. Anna's stories guide her, but remembering the stories she herself has told Patrick and imagining the stories she will tell him give her the strength to face the darkness and the monsters below.

Liza is also an engaging heroine, strong by virtue of her persistence, her love for her brother, and her willingness to turn to stories for guidance. She's not flawless, nor does she suddenly develop unusual heroic traits when she goes underground. She is an ordinary young girl in a strange world, and she uses what she knows to navigate, and that is enough.

Where The Spindlers does falter is in its mythology. Oliver's creatures are a mix of recognizably European fairy-tale types, author-invented beasts, and talking animals. They do not always mesh particularly well, and I sometimes stopped reading to wonder why Oliver used gnome-like creatures rather than just having gnomes, or why she included a fairy-court analog rather than sticking to just plain old fairies. Who was Anna and how did she know all of these stories? The world Below seems a bit of a hodge-podge of this-n-that. Whether this would bother the general eight to ten year old reader, I can't say. My inner child isn't so very deeply buried, and she is rather legalistic about these things, so I probably would have noted them, just as I would have wondered (as I do now) how it is possible for rats to blush.

The episodic nature of the story, which troubled Fyrefly, did not bother me now and probably would not have done so then: I like novels that break the mold (at least sometimes I do), but I also like tales that stick to the proper order of things, and The Spindlers was comfortingly orderly.

Overall, I do not think The Spindlers would have made it onto my childhood "favorite books ever" list, but I do think I would have liked it, and as someone who has pulled herself out of troubles, "hand over hand, on the long rope of stories," on more than one occasion, I can tell you that that is no small thing.

Further reading:
Fyrefly's review (also linked to above, but two links won't hurt, will it?). Fyrefly has the habit of quoting a book's first line, so I think you can guess how I came to read the book.

Charlotte of Charlotte's Library reviews the novel. Oddly, I hadn't read her review before, and I'm usually right on top of her blog.

Lauren Oliver's page for The Spindlers. There are links to her blog and to other book pages as well.

The Mountain of Adventure and The Ship of Adventure by Enid Blyton, a mini book review

Having recently been reminded of Enid Blyton, I'm working my way through the selection available at nearby libraries; it's not a very big collection, unfortunately. The one carrying the Adventure series has the first four but not the last two.  At any rate, I've been enjoying them.

In The Mountain of Adventure the children go off on a camping trip in the Welsh mountains, lose their way in the fog, and find themselves on the side of a mountain that mysteriously rumbles from time to time. They find their way inside to a series of secret passages (there are always secret passages) to a strange kingdom where a scientist "king" is attempting to create gravity-defying wings and testing them on a group of reluctant paratroopers. The children are caught and soon Phillip is chosen to test the disastrous new invention, and they all hope Bill will come to the rescue in time.

In The Ship of Adventure, Mrs. Mannering (mother of two and adoptive mother of the other two (formal adoption or not? It's never clear)) takes them on a cruise on the grounds that it will be fun and the children cannot possibly get involved in any dangerous adventures while safely on board the Viking Star. These being the Adventure kids, the four of them manage to find an ancient treasure map, tangle with villains who want the same treasure and, oh yes, get lost in a maze of secret passages (Yes, they're formula, but I rather like secret passages).

Up til my recent (re?) read of Five on Kirrin Island Again, I hadn't read any Blyton for years, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed them. Sure, they're formula, but they're fun formula. Phillip's ability to instantly make friends with any and all animals is unbelievable, but who doesn't wish they had that ability? And the girls are far more active than I had remembered; I do think Dinah would have long ago stopped screaming when she saw snakes, but she's ready for adventure, all the same, and Lucy Ann really gets to shine in these two: She offers to take Phillip's place in Mountain of Adventure and seems quite used to adventures in Ship of Adventure. I'm interested, too, in the role adults play in these books--they are very relaxed about letting the children go off alone on camping trips or island exploration, often conveniently disappearing just when an adventure is about to begin, but they, Bill in particular, are always reliably there when rescue is needed, providing a security not often found in children's adventure books.

Incidentally, both the The Mountain of Adventure/ The Ship of Adventure and The Island of Adventure/The Castle of Adventure combination books had a note saying they were modified in 1988. I did a quick search and found that, yes, there are definite textual changes to reflect changing social mores, so the current changes to the Famous Five are not without precedent.

A note on illustrations: The same web search turned up evidence that a number of Blyton's books, including some editions of the Adventure series are lavishly illustrated. Unfortunately, that is not the case for the omnibus editions.

Five on Kirrin Island Again by Enid Blyton, a book review

The recent article in the Guardian, "Enid Blyton's Famous Five get 21st-century Makeover" and the subsequent discussion at Charlotte's Library left me feeling somewhat nostalgic for Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven.

They're a little hard to get hold of at local libraries, but I did find a copy of Five on Kirrin Island Again at the local library sale (for the grand total of 25 cents. Have I mentioned lately that I love libraries?) and happily settled down to enjoy it.

It's a straightforward adventure with clearly delineated good guys and bad guys, a sketchily detailed scientific invention that is impressively full of glass and wire, and a brisk pace that keeps the pages turning. Someone is threatening George's father, trying to steal his inventions. It is up to the Five to find out who, even though they are not supposed to go near the Island and the mysterious tower George's father has built.

Even though it has been years, the characters were still familiar: There is "Little Anne" hanging back timidly, George wishing she were a boy, Julian taking the lead, and Dick being the slightly hotheaded one. Actually, Anne was more adventurous than I recalled--I remember being irritated because George always had to wait behind with Anne; here, she is as involved as anyone.

I found the same qualities in the two books in the Adventure Series--The Island of Adventure and The Castle of Adventure I was able to put on hold at the library: There was a tomboy, a more "typical" girl (though Lucy-Ann seems more determined to get involved than Anne), two boys (Phillip and Jack; Phillip is the animal-lover, Jack's the one with a bird), and an engaging animal, Kiki the Cockatoo. There was also a briskly moving plot, just enough threat to keep the tension going, and a satisfactory happy ending.

There were moments of alienation, but these came neither through the language nor the gender, class, or race differences. They came from being an adult and stumbling over the casual way the Adventure kids were dumped with tutors, left their assigned guardian, and showed up elsewhere without anyone worrying. Suddenly, I was wanting to jump in and tell everyone to start paying attention to the kids. Ah well. No departure, no adventure. See also Vladamir Propp on the fairy tale. See any fairy tale. See most of Diana Wynne Jones. Having seen that, I tell myself, get back to the adventure.

I picked up an Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train, at the same sale, and read it immediately afterward. The two share a distinct kinship: Just enough characterization to keep the plot going, and a heavy reliance on "types"(1)  (Christie makes a point of this in the Marple books). Both authors are light on their feet, moving quickly from point to point and relying on plot rather than character. Both also reflect their time period in their choice of word and, yes, gender relations. And, both are fun in small doses.


(1) The Unicorn and the Wasp may be one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes, and Christie may be an author I quite regularly return to, but I am not sure quite what the Doctor was thinking when he praised Christie's great and blinding insight into human nature. Perhaps she was deeply insightful, but if so, she kept it for her real life, not her books.