Book Beyond Imagination

Hola Readers!  Who's ready for another rambling?  I am YAY!  Today let's ramble about...The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers.  It is part of his Zamonia series but can be read as a stand alone like I did.  I think this one was recommended to me by my baby sis...which is always a good thing.  Let me tell you people this book hit all my literary emotions.  It was not at all what I expected in a very very very good way. What the heck do I mean?  I'll tell you, but first, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

First of all, let me just warn you that I am not going to be able to get a billionth of this book into the synopsis 'cause every page, every word is dripping with meaning and story and well...yeah.  So instead I'm gonna try and just give you enough of an outline to not be too lost, but seriously you just should go read it. Our story is narrated by Optimus Yarnspinner, a Lindworm (a being that resembles a dinosaur) from the fabled Lindworm Castle, home to many a worthy author.  Optimus has just lost his authorial godfather Dancealot and has set out on a quest to find the author of a fantastic manuscript left to him.  This manuscript has the ability to run the reader through every emotion known to living beings and yet it has not been published.  To find this mysterious author, Optimus heads to Bookholm which is essentially a city devoted to all things books.  It is filled with book sellers, book binders, book publishers, cafe's with book themes, literary music, ink, pens whatever you can possibly relate to books you will find in Bookholm (kind of like my blog lol).  Upon arrival Optimus is thrust into an adventure that any book hero would envy.  He starts by showing his book to a couple of very interesting book vendors in the hope that they will recognize it.  This leads him to various other places and to aquiring the book The Catacombs of Bookholm by the famous Book Hunter Colophonius Regenschein and we as the readers learn along with Optimus all about the catacombs of Bookholm.  Optimus is finally directed to Pfistomel Smyke a collector of the rare book brought up from the catacombs and also a kind of literary scientist.  He turns out to be one nasty dude and after reading the manuscript reveals his nefarious plan to Optimus.  Smyke's whole goal in life is to essentially turn all art mediocre, to eliminate any greatness and essentially control everything.  To this end he drugs Optimus and traps him in the catacombs beneath Bookholm...and this is where his adventure really starts.  Optimus uses the knowledge he aquired to try and traverse the catacombs, but disaster keeps befalling him.  After several misadventures he is rescued by the not so malicious

Booklings, who despite their fearsome reputation, choose to care for Optimus.  They show Optimus many of the safer wonders of the catacombs and inspire him with their dedication to memorizing all the works of all the authors.  Tragedy strikes when an unusual alliance of Book Hunters finds the Booklings Grotto and destroy it along with killing many of the Booklings.  Optimus is shoved into a bookshelf contraption and sent spinning through the catacombs to more adventures.  He eventually ends up in the Hall of the Shadow King, a mysterious character that plays a part in almost all the scary tales of the Underworld of Bookholm.  After even more adventures (are you sensing a theme here?) we finally get the Shadow Kings story.  Turns out that he is the author of the fantastic manuscript, but that it was also his downfall.  The Shadow King started out life as a human who had the misfortune of running into Smyke, who of course could not stand the idea of such great art outside of his control.  Smyke then used many arcane techniques and wondrous supplies to turn the human into what is now the Shadow King.  He was made to be pretty much immortal, strong, smart, literary and unable to ever enter sun or moon light on the dire consequence of bursting into flame.  More conversation and writing and adventuring and book stuff and Optimus and the Shadow King decide to go back up to the surface regardless of the consequences.  They face down a hoard of Book Hunters, discover a confession and will and finally confront Smyke.  The Shadow King allows himself to catch on fire, burning down a good portion of Bookhom and Optimus escapes, inspired finally to write his first masterpiece.  This does not even BEGIN to remotely tell the rich and full story of this insanely wonderful world...but then short of reading the book, I don' think anybody could do it justice.

World Building - This book is set in the fictional world of Zamonia...which I cannot wait to read more of!  We got to visit Bookholm and the insane amount of detail was just fantastic!  I felt like I could find myself in any section of this city and know exactly where I am.  It felt whole and complete and layered.  There were customs, cultures, rules, consequences, legends, language, all in abundant variety.  There were notes that added to the depth of this world and for having so much shoved into one book, the world was not confusing in the least. I loved the little touches, like the cafe's with the literary inspired treats, or the various parts of the city dedicated to different area's of the book process.  It was just so full in a good way, it felt almost endless, like there was always another nook or crany or passageway to explore, new treasures to find, so cool.   Again this is just one part of whole world and this one book has made me very eager to explore the rest of it...such amazing world building.

Story - The story was whole and complete.  It had a beginning, middle and end.  It was in some ways your typical adventure story, but more along the lines of an epic saga like Beowulf with many small adventures, meetings and incidents adding to the whole adventure.  The story had a fairly classic structure with a lot of original ideas, giving the reader the comfort of structure and the thrill of discovery, very cool story.

Character - Variety is the word I think best describes the characters in this book.  In this book we see so many species (Lindworms, Booklings, Uggly's, Spinxxx and so many many many more), characters from different backgrounds, classes, shapes, sizes, needs, modes.  Again you would think that this would detract from actual character development, but I found that the characters that mattered where very fully formed and all the other characters added some delicious flavor.  Yay characters.

Editing - I'm shocked at how well this book is edited.  Again (are we getting sick of me saying this yet?)  it is just stuffed full of so many things that it should feel cluttered or choppy or overly long...but...it doesn't.  I found myself reading every single word, trying to absorb as much of the literary goodness that I could.  It was a page turner and I had very few complaints about the pacing.  Not sure how this happened, if the author is just that amazing, or his relationship with his editor is that good or some combination, but epic editing.

Book Lovers Dream - This book was written for lovers of the written word.  The language, the setting, the story, everything about it seems tailored to bibliophiles.  I seriously want to go wander into one of the bookshops and get me a stack of books, curl up in a cafe with a cup of Midnight Oil Espresso and a Book pastry and read my brains out.  The amount of literariness that has been poured into the book makes me feel like the author loves books and all things literary as much as I do.  It is finally a book about books that doesn't drive me nuts.  It is not just about reading books either, it is about how they are written, how they are published, the materials, the variety and the idea that there are types of books we can only imagine out there somewhere if we can just look hard enough.

Wordplay - If forced to choose a favorite component about this book, I would say it is the language.  The author uses a MASSIVE variety of words....and if there was no human word that was sufficient, he made one up and attributed it to one of his zillions of non human races.  On top of that the author would constantly list numerous books and their authors...I kept waiting for this to get annoying...but somehow it worked perfectly with the story.  To make it even better, he cleverly disguised some famous authors by anagraming their names.  For example:  Selwi Rollcar = Lewis Carroll, Aliesha Wimperslake = William Shakespeare, so very cool.  I love words, and when an author uses them correctly it just makes my little literary heart go pitter patter.

Not What I Thought - So to be honest I wasn't 100% sure what I was getting into when I started this book.  From the description and the titles of the authors other books in the series I thought it might be a kids book.  Then the illustrations and mostly almost silly animalistic characteristics of most of the characters led to me thinking it might be a light hearted tale....Nope.  This is definitely a book for at the very least older kids.  There is violence (so much violence), betrayal, complex ideas...not a book for 7 year old.  It was great though and the juxtaposition (sorry this book makes me pull out my big girl words) of the simple illustrations, the fun characters and the adult writing were very original and a great read.

Overall Impression - Ok, so I don't think I have been able to impart even a tenth of what I want to about this book.  In the end all I can say is that it is an experience, and one I think anybody who loves books should have.  I give this book 9 out of 10 Animatomes and really encourage every book reader to pick it up....even if it's just to figure out what the heck I'm talking about.  Happy Reading Everybody!!! 

A Troll, A Fetch, A Gramophone, And A Wombat Walk Into A Painting

It's FALL!!!! I may have mentioned that before, but I don't care, it makes me very very very happy...now if only the weather would cooperate.  As a sort of fall tradition and needing a special book to break in my new house,  I picked up the second to last book in the Fairyland series, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland by Cathrynne M. Valente.  This one was different because it focused on a not September character and took place mostly in the human world.  Did this at all change my love of this series?  Let's find out shall we?  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

In this installation of the series we focus not on our plucky and amazing September, but on a troll named Hawthorn.  Hawthorn is taken/conned by the Red Wind to become a changeling and replace a baby boy in the human world.  Hawthorne is taken to the Fairy Post Office and shipped of to Chicago where he takes the place of one Thomas Rood.  Hawthorne has only vague memories of his trollness and Fairyland, but they are enough to make him seem odd to his utterly normal parents.  Hawthorne starts school, and after a bit of a rough start makes friends by convincing them to talk to their desks...because in Hawthorne's memories every thing talks back to him.  This type of "imagination" and the way he gets the other children to follow him disturbs his teachers, prompting them to contact his parents to try and get him to act Normal.  Obviously our poor little troll changeling can never be completely Normal, no matter how hard he tries and his parents, while loving him, have a difficult time with it.  Hawthorne's human mother knits him a wombat who becomes his best companion

through out his strange life.  Hawthorne befriends a girl by the name of Tamburlaine who turns out to be another changeling.  Tam is not a troll however, she is what is known as a Fetch, a girl made of wood.  Her parents kind of know what she is and love her anyways and do their best to protect her.  Tam has the talent of painting and shows Hawthorne a fantastical forest that she has painted on her walls.  One day while visiting Hawthorne, Tam shows him how to work magic.  She shows him Scratch, a gramophone she brought to life using the same magic.  Hawthorne uses his magic to bring to life pretty much everything in his apartment, including the wombat named Blunderbuss that his mother made him.  After bringing to life his baseball...which turns into a tattooed monster, it grabs the foursome and dashes into the piece of forest Tam painted on Hawthorne's wall.  The foursome (Hawthorne, Tamburlaine, Scratch and Blunderbuss) wake up in an incredible forest that resembles the one that Tam painted.  Turns out they are in Fairyland and have reverted back to their troll and Fetch forms.  They are overtaken by the traveling capital of Fairyland, the fabric made Pandemonium.  The current King, King Crunchcrab enlists the foursome to help him quit being king.  They meet up with the human changelings of Fairyland who have been reduced to servitude to prevent them from bringing about the changes that changelings are known for.  They are sent to find a person known as the Spinster who can free Crunchcrab from his Kingship.  The foursome, along with Penny Farthing, who has been removed from her beloved fairy mother and no longer runs with the velocipedes end up serving at the party of a powerful Fairy.  They run into the real Thomas Rood and after a few meta moments gives them the key to the Spinster.  They find the Spinster...who turns out to be our girl September...who was aged by events in the previous book.  The dodo Aubergine gives them an egg that brings lost things back.  As you probably guessed, chaos ensues and all of the previous Kings and Queens of fairy come back.  The crown leaves Crunchcrab and falls to...September...who is know queen.  Hawthorne and Tam get to stay in Fairyland and Thomas returns home to ecstatic parents.   We end with Septembers mother being told by her sister that she knows where her daughter is and how to get there.

I'm gonna revert back to my old school of rambling for this book 'cause I think that I will be able to convey my feeling best in this format.  First of all, the authors trademark ability to make everything wondrous and fantastical was front and center.  The coolest part about this particular installment of the series was how amazing the writer made our mundane human world.  By showing us everyday things through the eyes of a young Fairylander, a dreary apartment in Chicago was made into a vertibal wonderland.  The rules that Hawthorne divined from his experiences in the human world and how he applied them to his life are a great reminder of what it is to be young in unfamiliar circumstances and how an imaginative brain adapts to these scary new things.  The author uses

Hawthorne to not only show us the human world through different eyes, but also a very young person learning and growing.  I did however very much miss September.  I understand what the writer was doing, and the story was very well done...I just really really love September and not having her play a main role in this book made me a little sad.  On that note, Blunderbuss may be my favorite wombat of all time.  Seriously this crazy patchwork marsupial in all it's incarnations made me smile every time she was on the page.  I was not the biggest fan of Scratch...I did not really see what this character contributed to the story other then being proof that Tam could work magic.  The story itself was pretty well done until they came back to fairyland, then I had to work really hard to remember everything that had happened in the last books to try and sort out all of the politics and keep everything straight in my head.  Overall it was a decent installment into a beloved series.  It does not compare to the first two, but definitely holds it's own overall.  I give it 8 out of 10 chain covered coats and recommend it to anybody who is as addicted to this series as I am.  Happy Reading Everybody!

How To Use The Words

I feel like I haven't said this in a while, but everything on this blog is completley my own opinion.  I do not think I am the ultimate authority on anything...I just know what I like and what drives me crazy.  So on that note...here we go.  With the books I've been reading lately I have noticed something that either makes me very happy or makes me roll my eye and that thing is words.  Ummm hmmm what are talking about is what you are probably saying right now.  Are not books all about the words?  How do words do anything but enable me to read?  Let me see if I can explain with any coherency what I mean.  It's not so much words that have grabbed my notice, but the way authors use words.  Hmm let me try this in list form and see if it makes more sense.

Flowery Words - Words that are put in a story strictly to make it sound more poetic, lyrical or artsy.  This works on occasion, especially in certain short stories.  They can add an extra layer to a place or feel and in piece that is supposed to be mostly imagery it is necessary.  Unfortunately I have found that certain authors, especially first timers use these types of words to over describe everything, or make a book...I don't know...more authory...is that a word?  To use these over the top phrases takes skill and restraint, and an author who can successfully pull it off is rare and amazing. Mostly though when used improperly you come across as overly pretentious.

Repeat Words - Lot's of authors (myself included I am sure) find a word or turn of phrase and get stuck on it.  I see this in everything from first time writers, to established authors to your local book bloggers.  Some writers stick it in ever other sentence, some spread it out in a more palatable manner, but I would say I could probably put together a list of authors and their favorite words and/or phrases (hmmm possible blog post).

Descriptive Words - These words are different then flowery words as in they are almost always adjectives.  These words when used appropriately are wonderful, necessary and can make a good book great.  On the other hand when over used can turn a great book into a tedious laundry list.  I have read books where every single outfit, piece of furniture and the physical description of every person in the room was detailed, and let me tell you BORING.  I also don't need every single landscape described to me in perfect detail, give me the general idea and only use the super descriptions on the things or people that need my attention.

Font Styles and Punctuation- I will be the first to admit that I suffer from this myself, I love ellipses...tee hee hee.  The occasional use of italics, Bold, Underline, or some combination can give some variation to a text, especially when they are used to delineate between characters.  The same goes with other punctuation (other then your normal grammatically correct stuff), but when any of these becomes over used, it just gets confusing.  Although I have seen this in every type of book, recent YA novels seem to be the biggest offenders, especially with the exclamation points!!!!

Simple Words - Some of my favorite books in the world utilize simple words and phrasing to produce a clean, beautiful read.  I think this is the hardest style of wording to use because it takes the skill of a master. Unfortunately I have read to many books that do not utilize the simple words as well as they could and the result reads as very stilted and juvenile.  As much as I love e-books and the ability to read authors that would never have gotten published by a major print outfit, I feel it has also led to a lot of wannabe's putting out stuff that hasn't had the benefit of an editor or even other people reading it resulting in a lot of the above misuse of the simple word.

I have seen all of the above examples used in both awesome ways and in ways that have driven me bonkers.  The words themselves and never good or bad, it is the way they are used and crafted that make a book what it is.  Words are tools, and some authors just know how to use them better then others.  I know that for good or bad, without words, I would be a sad person.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Bitter Blue Wind

My computer has finally decided to behave...sort of, but it is working well enough to hopefully get this blog back on track.  To kick of my birthday week I thought I would start with a rambling about a book that I've had on my list all fall.  The book is The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two by Catherynne M. Valente.  This is the third book in my beloved Fairyland series and with the other two I had to wait for the perfect weather to read this.  Before we get to my thoughts on the book, here is my attempt to summarize the plot, such as it is.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Our girl September turn 14 in this book, and has grown much since we first met her.  She has survived her father gone to war, his return as an injured veteran, her mother working on planes, school and of course overthrowing not one, but two despotic rulers in Fairyland.  September is longing to go back to Fairyland and counting the days until the year is up and she can return.  This of course makes her "real" life seem dull and unbearable by comparison.  To keep herself from going crazy, she works hard to save up money so that she can have some resources of her own when she finally gets back to Fairyland.  She learns to drive an old car, and makes money doing delivery's,

mending fences, taking care of animals and so forth, all very grown up.  September is finally taken back to Fairyland by the Blue Wind, a Wind unlike her Green Kin, is a wild, bitter, cold wind who has none of the kindness September had from her friend the Green Wind.  September ends up as an Official Revolutionary and Criminal and is given clothing to mark her as such.  She is given a task to deliver a box to the Whelk of the Moon.  She travels up to the moon in her little car that also got transported to Fairyland and meets all sorts of creatures.  She eventually ends up in front of the Whelk of the Moon and learns that the giant city of Almanack, which is contained in a shell is how the Whelk keeps all of her people safe.  She can't open the box and sends September to a library to open it and lo and behold, she finds her beloved friend A-L (known as Ell) her Wyverary.  They open the box and find the Sapphire Stethoscope and we learn the story of the Yeti's Paw.  September is reunited with her Marid Saturday, and discovers she has some new feelings about this friend of hers.  A whole ton of stuff happens, as it does in these books and in the end we discover the moon is having a baby moon and this is the reason behind a lot of the goings ons.  September feels the sensation that happens when she has to leave Fairyland and begs to stay.  The Blue Wind, shows just how devious she is when she lets September stay in Fairyland.  Meanwhile back in our world Septembers parents frantically search for their girl.

As long as that synopsis was it really does not do the book justice.  As with the first two, trying to summarize all the little bits and pieces and story lines and characters and vignettes is pretty impossible.  That being said, one of the reasons this one was harder to summarize was because it seemed to be less of a story and more of a portrait of emotions.  There are a lot of concepts in this book that seemed to be a bit old for the middle grade reader that this book is supposed to be targeted towards.  I know the author stated that she wanted September to grow up through out the books, and in that regard she has succeeded, but this book felt more like it was focusing on what the author felt were growing up teenage feelings and less on the adventure of Fairyland.  All of the really amazing pieces were there, the author still has a fantastic imagination and knows how to utilize it, but for me it felt like every little vignette came with either some moralizing, or long drawn out emotional struggle or some other esoteric bit that seemed to slow the book down.  Of all the locations we've seen I found the Moon to be the most bleak and barren, I almost felt like I needed to read it in winter instead of the vibrant fall of the first two.  This is not a bad thing, as the contrast of the Moon to Fairyland and

Fairyland Under was pretty cool and added some great dimension to the overall world building.  As always the sheer originality of the characters, places, and objects leaves me wanting to just curl up and see how crazy I can let my imagination go.  I love how the author does not constrain herself by the laws of physics or probability or convention at all, it adds to the sheer fantasy of the book.  The word usage was fabulous as always, making me so glad that I am a logophile (somebody who loves words).  There seemed to be a bit of an obsession with currency, and having babies.  September has a hard time with the fact that she and Saturday will have a daughter together, part of her issue is the inevetableness of it (which is understandable), but childbirth is brought up alot.  The whole the moon giving actual birth to a baby moon, complete with labor, blood, and an umbilical cord was kind of weird.  I also found that you had to have read the first two books for this one to make any sense at all. Overall I liked the book, but did not feel the same kind of overwhelming love that I did for the first two.  There was a feeling of melancholy, which while I do remember from being a new teenager, made this book a bit of a slow read. I give this book 7 out of 10 fizzy orange drinks and recommend it to anybody who has started the series.
Can you keep up the crazy expectations through out a whole series?  How do you feel about characters growing up through out a series?  Where did you want to run away to when you were growing up?  Is it strange that I still want to run away to a fantasy land?

Shadows Of Faries

I have this book for a couple months and was just waiting for the right time to read it, I really wanted to get the full environmental experience, cozy blanky, comfy reading chair, hot cider/glass of wine, and time to actually read!  I finally got it all together on a regular basis and got to read the much anticipated The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente and perfect illustrations by Ana Juan.  This book is the sequel to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making which immediately earned a spot on my forever favorites bookshelf.  As with all sequels I was a little nervous, a little excited and a lot curious.  To see what happened read on as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

These books are a little hard to sum up as far as plot goes because so much of the book is words and imagery, but I will give it my best shot at a bare bones idea, and you will just have to go read it to get the full effect.  We find our girl September turning 13, which as anybody who as ever turned 13 knows is a big deal.  This is the age where you start your path to adulthood, but can still clearly remember being a child.  September is longing to go back to Fairyland and her friends the Wyverary A-Through-L (known as Ell) and her dear Marid Saturday.  She also misses her father who is away at war, and her mother who has to spend many an hour working on airplanes.  Eventually Saturday makes it back to Fairyland, landing in a glass forest.  She is taken in by Hreinn a group of people who can put on and take of a reindeer skin in the style of a Selkie.  They inform September that the shadows are disappearing and magic along with it.  It has gotten

so bad that they are now rationing magic in Fairyland. September figures out that the shadow she had given up in her last adventure to save a child is now ruling Fairyland-Below and is somehow stealing the shadows and magic for herself.  September acquires a new red coat (YAY!) goes through a door shaped like a girl and heads down to Fairyland-Below.  She immediately runs into the shadow of Ell and quickly meets up with the shadow of Saturday.  They both seem very similar to their unshadowed counterparts, but with a dark wild streak.  September starts her journey at the Duke of Tea and the Vicereine of Coffees family abode, here she learns about Prince Myrrh who sleeps in an unbreakable box at the bottom of the world, and is destined to rule when he is awakened.  September runs into a traveling Goblin market and acquires a friend in the shape of a DoDo named Aubergine who is skilled in Quiet Magik and a beautiful copper Watchful Dress.  September finally meets up with her shadow, the Hollow Queen who uses a creature called the Alleyman to siphon of shadows from Fairyland-Above.  The Hollow Queen and September talk about the shadows and magic.  Halloween (as the Shadow September is also called) states that she is merely freeing the shadows to live their own life, finally having choices and freedom, that fact that she is slowly killing Fairyland-Above and by proxy (since Fairyland-Below is dependent of Above) the eventual demise of Fairyland-Below does not change the

Hollow Queens mind.  September embarks on a journey to find the sleeping Prince Myrrh and goes on a spectacular adventure, culminating in meeting up with the shadow of Maud, formerly known as the Marquess, formally known as Good Queen Mallow from the first book.  Above Maud is sleeping to prevent her return to the Human World, but below her shadow is free to move around.  Taking Maude and the shadow of Iago the Panther of Rough Storms with her September enters the labyrinth and after more adventure finally awakens the sleeping Prince Myrrh.  It is discovered that he is actually Maud's son (it all makes sense in the book I promise) and he refuses to reign over Fairyland-Below just because some story says he is supposed to.  September goes back to Halloween and discovers a way to put her shadow and herself back together, but Halloween begs her not too, asking to be allowed to continue to live a separate life. A plan is made for the shadows to return to their Above counter parts on occasion, replenishing the magic and ensuring that Fairyland-Above and
Below remain magic and separate from the mundane Human world.  September also discovers that the dreaded Alleyman is the shadow of her father, brought by the Hollow Queen to try and recreate her family. September takes her fathers shadow back with her to the Human world, where she discovers her father has returned (injured but alive) from the war.  The family and shadows (well most of them anyways) reunited ends our tale...until next time.
Again a mere synopsis cannot capture even a billionth of the story, because the story does not come from a single plot, but a ton of mini stories, little adventures, quick moments, and various encounters.  This book is just as wonderful in a different way from the first one.  In the first one everything was wondrous, September had no experience with these strange worlds, but used her young and practical mind to adapt and grow.  In this book September thought she knew what to expect, but did not count on things changing in such a drastic way between visits, especially herself.  I read in an

interview with the author that she wanted to write the September series about the girl growing up, each book seen from an older perspective and I think this book shows that wonderfully.  To me September longing to go back to Fairyland, giving it the patina of nostalgia, remembering the best parts and glossing over the bad and then finding it not at all what she remembered is like going back to a childhood home and realizing that the magic apple tree is just a tree, that may have even been removed by the new owner.  As before, amidst the magic, impossible characters and stunning imagery there is a story of a little girl who is now a teenager and trying to understand what that means. Aside from September there were some other really cool things unique to this book.  In the first book September is told that she will come back once a year because she ate Fairy food.  In this book we take it one step further and many underworld myths are referenced. Especially the myths of the Greek Underworld.  Persephone and her pomegranates are mentioned several times and the tale of Orpheus is alluded to a couple of times.  The river of Lethe has been turned into the Forgetful Sea and there is even a Minotaur.

 These references were all there, relevant and usually twisted into something unique to Fairyland-Below.  The zillions (I know I'm in a big number mood today) of tiny details and characters that come together to make this a whole is perfect fodder for later imaginationing (that is totally a word, I swear).  I did find (and I felt this way about the first book too) that this book was more conducive to reading 1 or 2 chapters at a time and letting all of the glorious words and imagery sink in.  This is not a bad thing, 1) it makes the book last longer (YAY) 2) it is such a packed book that almost every word produces a whole scene in your head and if you just plow through it you will get overwhelmed.  Ok so I am rambling again, in case you can't tell I adored this book just as much as the first one, as much for its differences as for its similarities.  If you loved the first one you will love this one, if you have not read either of them, then STOP AND GO READ THEM RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!! Oh and also the illustrations are again the perfect touch.  I give this book 10 out of 10 Cups of Elephant's Fiery Heart!

What was your favorite part of this book?  How excited are you for the third one?  Am I the worlds pickiest places/times to read certain books reader ever?

The Shortest Giant in the World

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster is a childhood favorite of my dear Hubbins.  I too really enjoy this little gem that takes you through the city of Dictionopolis,  through the Forest of Sight,  into the Doldrums, up

the Mountains of Ignorance, and the Island of Conclusions is just a jump away. This book has been a favorite of many a child (and adult) throughout the years, it is witty, clever, and the imagary is outstanding.  I paticularly like how it opens with our boy hero Milo in a slump.  There are so many things to learn, but nobody has bothered to explain why he must learn them, or the purpose for thinking things through, so he never bothers, just plodding along through life.  I think this is very symptomatic of the world today, we send kids to school and tell them they need to learn and regurgitate information without giving them a reason why they should learn it, why they should think and puzzle through things.  This method makes learning all about memorization and spouting back meaningless facts, where true learning is when somebody wants (do we all love my use of italics today) to take the time to figure something out

 because it means something to them (thanks for putting up with my little philosophical rants).  Anyways back to the book.  Young Milo discovers a package containing a tollbooth and after setting it up and driving his little toy car through ends up on a magical quest culminating in the rescue of Rhyme and Reason.  Throughout this journy Milo is accompinied by Tock a literal watchdog :-).  Along the way they encouter a word market (I want to go so bad!), a spelling bee, a place were you literaly have to eat your words (I think all politicians and famous people should have to eat there) and my personal favorite a man who is all at once the smallest giant in the world, the tallest midget in the world, the thinnest fat man in the world and the fattest thin man in the world ( I on the other hand am the most undiscovered supermodel in the world).  My Hubbin

paticurlarly likes the Dodecahedron a very percise individual.  This is but a small sampling of the amazing wordplay that propels the plot of this wonderful book.  In the end Milo learns that knowledge and thinking are not boring or dull, but rather a means to make ones life better and happier.  He returns home to world full of possibilites better then when he left. This is another book I cannot wait to read with my nephews when they get a little older...poor kids are gonna be stuck with a zillion books from Auntie Super Bookworm Girl.

What is your favorite wordplay?  Which book do you still cherish from when you were a child?  Don't you think it is adorably hilariouse when little kids use big words?

Shout out to Charles Dickens who would be 200 today!

PS sorry for the crappy spelling, the spellcheck isn't working for some reason, and I really suck at spelling.