The Places You Will Go

Mini Review: Century

CENTURY

By Sarah Singleton

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

What It's About: Century is a house, the home of a pair of sisters, Mercy and Charity, their father and the household staff. Here it is always winter and each day passes in exactly the same way. The girls rise in the night and go to bed at dawn. They cannot remember it ever being different.

The book opens with a haunting. Mercy can see ghosts, but one day she sees one that has never appeared to her before - a woman floating beneath the ice in a pond. It scares her, not because it is a ghost, which she is used to, but because it means a change in her daily routine. It is a signal, perhaps, that something is wrong. 

Mercy wakes one morning soon after to find a snowdrop on her pillow. She then meets a mysterious young man in the grounds of the house who tells her that her life is not what it seems. Slowly, it becomes clear that the family is caught in a web of secrets and lies, and Mercy must find a way to break free.

What I Liked About It: I was reminded of the film, The Others, in which there are also two children who live in a twilight world. Century is as creepy as that movie and it's not because there are shrieking banshees everywhere or bloody beheadings on every other page. The eerieness is conveyed in a much more subtle manner by the author who describes this nighttime world so well that I felt I was walking through the shadowy garden paths with Mercy, and could see the moonlight fall like silver on my path; and feel and taste the cold air.

There is also a sense of taut and silent tension, so extreme that it's you almost dare not breathe as you read about Mercy trailing after a ghostly child and stepping into another world which holds the key to all the secrets of her existence.

It's been a long time since a book scared me so. It's a feeling both horrid and delicious.

If You Like the Sound of this Book, You Should Also Try: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

 

Mini Review: Get Spooked - Eerie Tales to Chill Your Bones

GET SPOOKED: EERIE TALES TO CHILL YOUR BONES
By Freaky Nick
Publisher: Times Editions, 142 pages
(ISBN: 9833001068)

What It's About: Get Spooked is a new series of ghost story collections. Each book is supposed to contain stories that stick to a particular theme. Most of the time the themes seem pretty general though, as you can see from the one I've just read.The two collections mentioned in the back of the book are Terrifying Tales Untold (although, now that they're in a book, shouldn't they be Terrifying Tales Told?) and Experience the Unexpected. There's another title, Spirits of the Forest, listed on Amazon.com.

Mini Review: The Whispering Road

The Whispering Road
By Livi Michael
Puffin Books
ISBN: 0141317035

Main Characters:
1. Joe
2. Annie

What It's All About
Brother and sister, Joe and Annie, run away from their master, a cruel farmer who bought them from a workhouse. The children were left there by their mother who promised to come back for them. Like most workhouse children, Joe and Annie are ill-treated - beaten, starved and over-worked.One night, Joe decides to flee and takes Annie with him. So starts a journey full of dangers and evils.

What I Like About It
It's a fast-paced, exciting story, with characters (Joe and Annie as well as the people they meet along the way) you can really believe in.

What I Didn't Like About It
It's very sad. However, that's also what makes it good. Michael is simply describing a state of affairs that actually existed. This is no fantasy but the grim truth of 19th century England. What's really heartbreaking is that Joe and Annie's life is really not too different from that of children living in poverty in many countries, right now in the 21st century!

If You Like The Sound of This book, You Should Also Try:
Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Reviewed by: Daphne Lee

Mini Review: Little Women

Who hasn't read and loved Little Women by Louisa May Alcott? Well, I was surprised to discover that many of my friends and acquaintances are Alcott-virgins!

I first read the book when I was about seven. It was an abridged, picture book edition with the most wonderful illustrations that made it clear that the illustrator had a soft spot for Jo: She was drawn so that her hair was certainly not her "one beauty".

After I'd read the book at least a dozen times, I went on to read the unabridged edtion as well as the sequels Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys.

I recently recommended it to a Tots to Teens reader who said she didn't "dare" read it because
classics were boring. Well, this one definitely is not. I happen to think everyone should read Little Women at least once in their lifetime. Which has got me wondering ... if you could pick five books (of anyy genre) that every man, woman and child had to read, what would they be?

Have a think about it. And in the meantime ...

 

Mini Review: Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary

Title: Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary

Author: Pamela Dean

Publisher: Tor

Where You Bought This Book: I ordered it, through Bookfinder.com, from an independent American book seller.

Main Characters:

1. Gentian

2. Her sisters, Juniper and Rosemary

3. Their parents

4. Gentian’s best friends

5. Dominic, the boy-next-door

What It’s All About:

As I’ve said before, I’m not sure. The book is pretty plotless, but basically it’s about Gentian and her sisters coping with a very odd new neighbour, Dominic. He’s handsome and speaks in quotes, and he lives at an address the post office insist doesn’t exist.

Dominic wants the three sisters to help him build a time machine but this doesn’t happen til the end of the book. In fact, nothing much happens until the last four or so chapters. Before that, it’s all Gentian and various other characters discussing literature or science or feminism. This makes the book rather unbelievable seeing that she is 13.

What happens finally is quite devastating and you wish Pamela Dean had got to it earlier.

What I like About It:

1. It’s not believable that modern-day 13-year-old girls should spend so much time discussing poetry and feminism, but I did enjoy the conversations Gentian has with her best friends.

2. The poetry that’s supposed to be written by Becky, Gentian’s favourite best friend.

3. The bits which describe the planets and stars Gentian looks at with her telescope.

What I Dislike About It:

There’s nothing I actually dislike. I actually like books that are full of rambling conversations, where nothing much happens, but I guess I wasn’t expecting it of a children’s book, and a fantasy ones at that!

Other Books I’ve Read by the Same Author:

I haven’t, but now I want to.

If You Like the Sound of this Book, You should also Check out these Titles:

1. Katherine Mansfield’s short stories.

2. A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen.

3. The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones. This one also features sisters and a beautiful boy. 

Name of Reviewer: Daphne Lee

Mini Review: How Santa Really Works

Title: How Santa Really Works

Author: Alan Snow

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Where You Bought This Book: It’s a review copy.

Main Characters: Santa and his elves. 

What It’s All About: Have you ever wondered how Santa runs his “business”? This book reveals where Father Christmas lives, how he gets all our presents to us in time, how he knows what we want and if we’ve been good, plus lots, lots more. Like, training for elves and how they’re assigned to the different departments within Santa’s Workshop (eg. Reindeer Welfare, Customer Support and Weather). Myths are busted too. For example, Santa isn’t really fat – how would he fit down a chimney then?!! He’s actually quite skinny and very fit, but he has an emergency inflatable suit that he can activate if he is accidentally seen: it inflates with helium to aid a speedy exit up chimneys!

What I like About It: I love the busy illustrations. There’s loads happening on every page and the details are brilliant, including the conversations going on between the elves. I also like the way the elves are shaped – a bit like fat-bottomed teapots with spindly arms and legs.

If You Like The Sound of this Book, You Should Also Check Out These Titles:

1. How Dogs Really Work

2. The Truth about Cats

3. Stink Stoppers

4. The Monster Book of ABC Sounds

All four are also by Alan Snow.

Name of Reviewer: Daphne Lee

Mini Review: Malaysian Children's Favourite Stories

Title: Malaysian Children's Favourite Stories

Author: Kay Lyons

Illustrator: Martin Loh

Publisher: Tuttle (Distributed by Periplus/Berkeley Books)

Where You Bought This Book: It’s a review copy.

What It’s All About:
To quote the jacket (and the blurb in Amazon.com): “Retold for an international audience, the beautifully illustrated legends in this book will give children in other countries an insight into both the traditional culture and the environment of Malaysia. The country's rich tropical scenery provides the perfect backdrop for these tales, many of which incorporate the indigenous plant and animal life into their story lines.Though the book is aimed at children in the five to twelve year age group, readers young and old will find much to love within its pages.”

What I like About It:
It’s cool that someone is preserving Asian folktales.

What I Dislike About It:
1. No Malaysians were involved in the writing/illustrating of this book. I wonder why. Surely there are Malaysian authors who would have liked to contribute.

2. Loh’s artwork is really, really ugly. It’s the worst of all the books in this Favourite Stories series. How convenient to say that he specialises in “naive art”!

3. For every copy sold to bookstores in Malaysia, the publisher is giving ... RM1 (!!!!) to charity. I just think they can afford to give more (the retail price is RM45), but maybe that's naive of me.

If You Like The Sound of this Book, You Should Also Check Out These Titles:
The other books in the series feature folktales from Japan, China and Tibet, the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore.

Name of Reviewer: Daphne Lee

Mini Review: Mean Girls

Title: Gossip Girl: You’re the One that I Want

Author: Cecily von Ziegesar

Publisher: Little Brown and Company, 227 pages

Where You Bought This Book: I received a review copy from a book distributor.

Main Characters:
1. Blair
2. Nate
3. Serena etc

What It’s All About: This is the sixth book in the series about spoilt, rich kids living in New York.

What I like About It: Nothing. The teens all take themselves way too seriously. They are a selfish, ignorant bunch that need a good slapping!

What I Dislike About It: Practically everything! There’s nothing likeable about any of the characters who all act pretty mean and self-centred. Yawn. I couldn’t finish the book and I’ve never been able to finish any of the others in the series.

If You Like The Sound of this Book, You Should Also Check Out These Titles:
1. The Au Pairs by Melissa de la Cruz
2. The A-List by Zoey Dean
3. Insiders by J. Minter

Well, actually, I haven’t read any of the above, but they seem to be the same sort of bitchy fare – celebrating shallow, mean and clothes-obsessed adolescent females.

I read the second of The Clique books: Best Friends for Never, by Lisi Harrison, and it was even worse than Gossip Girl. The way the characters constantly go "Ewww" and "Ehmegod" really gets on my nerves (Summer in The O.C. TV series does this, wretched girl. BTW, there are now The O.C. novels too!)

On the other hand, I quite like The Princess Diaries books. At least most of the characters in that series seem to have brains of some description. They may be silly at times, but they aren’t vapid and superficial. And Princess Mia has a good heart and a strong sense of social justice, bless her her sparkly tiara!

Name of Reviewer: Daphne Lee

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