Wonka's Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight

Usually when I need to give my brain a break I go to my childhood favorites.  This time I picked up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.  This book has always appealed to me for many reasons, not the least of which is the idea of endless chocolate.  Ready to go on a wild ride?  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Charlie Bucket is a very poor boy who lives with his parents and his four bed bound Grandparents in a tiny drafty house.  They subsist mostly on cabbage soup with the occasional bite of bread.  They are a loving family though and do there best to help each other survive.  Grandpa Joe tells little Charlie the story of Willy Wonka's Chocolate factory that had to shut its doors to the public due to all the spying going on.  Grandpa Joe tells Charlie that one day the factory started up again, with mysterious workers helping Wonka produce sweet wonders...but the gates remained closed and locked.  One night an announcement goes out that in five random Wonka chocolate bars are golden tickets that will allow a person into the Wonka factory.  Obviously the world is vary excited and a run on chocolate bars ensues.  The first person to find a golden ticket is the gluttonous Agustus Gloop, a little boy who won't stop eating.  Next is the very spoiled Veruca Salt who obtained her ticket when her father paid his peanut shellers to open candy bars instead.  Charlies birthday happens and he gets his traditional chocolate bar which sadly contains no golden ticket.  The third ticket goes to the annoying, gum chewing Violet Beauregarde and the fourth to the television and violence obsessed Mike Teavee.  Grandpa Joe figures out a way to get Charlie another chocolate bar, which again holds no ticket.  Mr. Bucket loses his job at the toothpaste factory and the family begins to starve.  Charlie finds a dollar bill on the way home and uses it to buy chocolate (smart boy) he wolfs it down and buys another and lo and behold GOLDEN TICKET!  The long anticipated day arrives and the five winners along with their parents (except Charlie who just brings Grandpa Joe) arrive at the factory to meet the mysterious Willy Wonka.  They are greeted by a funny little man in a green had and purple velvet coat who promptly brings them inside the wondrous factory.   The first stop is my personal favorite, a huge meadow area where EVERYTHING is edible and made of candy! How cool is that ?!?  The best part is the chocolate river running through it.  Here we lose our first winner when Augustus Gloop falls into the river while drinking the chocolate and is sucked up the pipe.  Here we also meet the Oompa Loompa's, small weird colored guys who sing mean, yet insightful songs about our wayward winners.  The remaining people get into a fantastic boat and go hurtling down the chocolate river past many tantalizing doors stopping in an experimental room where our next child leaves us.  The gum chewing Violet grabs an experimental piece of gum and turns into a giant blueberry.  New up the nut sorting squirrles who decide Veruca is a bad nut when she try's to get her greedy little hands on one, bye bye Veruca.  We are now down to Mike TeaVee and Charlie Bucket.  Mike requests something TV related and Wonka takes them to a room where he is transmitting chocolate by radio waves to televisions.  Mike gets himself miniaturized when he jumps in front of the camera to get on TV.  We are now left with just sweet Charlie Bucket and his grandfather.  Willy Wonka then reveals that the whole point of the competition was to find an heir to his factory.  He offers it to Charlie, telling him the whole family can move in.  The book ends with Wonka telling Charlie to press a special button on the glass elevator that hurls them to Charlies home where they pick up his family to start a better life.

World Building - The book is a semi-fantastical novel mostly set in this awesome chocolate factory.  The world is fairly contained and more hinted at then shown.  There is a huge scope for people to fill in details and use their imagination to make the factory anything they want it to be.  My favorite spot is the meadow and chocolate river as it makes my imagination explode.

Story - The main story was pretty straight forward, a cautionary tale for children.  This is the type of story that tells you if you behave you can inherit a chocolate factory :-)  It also had a good punch of humor and straight up crazy which is always a plus for me.  Keeping in mind that this is an old school MG book I think the story kept a good balance between cheeky and a morality tale.

Character - The main characters were all pretty stock style characters, but this was done on purpose to illustrate a point, so I will give the kids a pass on this one.  I do however love Veruca Salt not for any real reason, I just do.  I also really enjoy Grandpa Joe's spunkyness and his ability to take quiet Charlie on this great adventure.  Of course my absolute favorite character is Willy Wonka. Just his name makes me smile, but what I really love is his sheer eccentricness.  He is the perfect mix of creative, dreamy, responsible, compassionate, logical and bat sh*t crazy.  I love everything about him.

Editing - This was a pretty simple and straight forward book told in a simple and straight forward way.  Not a lot to say about the editing other then it was fine.  Also there a bunch of really weird, scary yet fitting illustrations by Quentin Blake that add the perfect touch to this book.

Parents - The children in this book all had very obvious flaws that caused their downfall, but what I thought was interesting and very cool was that the book was very clear that the reason the children had gotten as bad as they were was the fault of the parents.  We see multiple times where the parents could have brought their precious darlings to heel, but instead indulged and defended them.  It's good to know that the author at least knew where bad kids come from...bad parents.  In contrast Charlie's family was responsible and loving and had trained Charlie so well he didn't even need his parents at factory, instead he go his spunky Grandpa Joe.

Imagination - I like how this book inspires imagination.  There are a couple well explained rooms and candies, but most are just hinted at.  I like this because it gives the reader a chance to imagine what all the different things could be, or look like, or taste like.  The lay out of the book also hints at almost endless possibilities, making this a great book to read with your kids or nephews and nieces or whoever because it leaves a ton of open ended conversations.  Even the "punishments" that the naughty kids get are creative, and in the end not permanent.

Movies - I can't mention this book without talking about the movies.  There is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder as the title character, and the later Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp at Willy Wonka.  Now I adore Johnny Depp and I know that to some degree Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is more faithful to the book, but I mostly find it a tad too creepy for my taste.  The Gene Wilder version on the other hand is one of my favorite movies ever!  While it definitely does not follow the book word for word it most definitely keeps the spirit of the book to the fullest extant.  It will probably come as no surprise to anybody that my favorite scene is the World of Pure Imagination song/scene.  Also I feel that Gene Wilder captures the person of Willy Wonka perfectly.

Overall Impression - I very much enjoy this book, I feel it is entirley age appropriate, not overly complicated or angsty and is perfect for reading with a younger person.  I feel it encourages conversation and imagination and pretty much recommend it to everybody.  I give it 8 out of 10 everlasting gobstoppers and am now going to go watch the movie and eat some chocolate.  Happy Reading Everybody!!!

Random Christmas Bookyness

Finally got our Christmas shopping done in an EPIC marathon this weekend.  Here is the results of our quest for the perfect gifts of awesomeness while still staying on a budget.

Turkish Delight

We found this great candy store called Lolli and Pops (I am a huge fan of candy stores!).  Hubbin handed this to me saying, "Isn't this a thing in one of your favorite books?, you should get it for your book shelf."  One of the many reasons I love Hubbin, also my Chronicles of Narnia now have their own decorations.  

Bacon Soda

Of course if my bookshelf gets a decoration, Hubbin needed something for his "Man Shelf".  This soda is from the same shop as the Turkish Delight and we spent the day shaking our head in joy and disbelief over this wondrous find...and no we haven't tried it yet.

Book Gifts

The whole point of this trip was to get gifts for others, more specifically our five nephews.  This pile of packages are all books for the boys.  We do get them toys, but we pride ourselves in also being the "Book Aunt and Uncle" that send at least one book with every package.  This year the ages range from 2-7 so we got to get a variety this year.

Yep so that is how me and Hubbin shop, we are like two little kids who need constant supervision.  We got sugared up, caffeined up, bought ourselves stuff we like and then proceeded to hit the bookstore TWICE to load up on literary awesomness for our families.  Hope everybody else is getting some reading/shopping time in.  I am off to finish my book so I can ramble about it tomorrow.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Candy For All

Just finished an AWESOME book, that's right folks that AWESOME was in all caps, that is just how much I liked this book.  What book is this that deserves an all caps AWESOME you ask, well I will tell you.  The book is The Candymakers by Wendy Mass, it was a completely random acquisition and and even more random read (I accidentally touched it on my e-reader going for a different book), but as happens on those most wonderful of occasions, random acts of reading paid off.

Ok this is were I usually go and spoil all the fun for everybody by writing a detailed rambling synopsis, but I am not going to do that this time.  I will do my very best to leave out any major spoilers because that is half the fun of this book.

Essentially the book is about four kids who are contestants in the annual New Candy Contest.  The contestants are all 12 years old and will be on of 32 competitors.  The winner of the contest gets $1000, but more importantly his/her candy will be mass produced and sold in stores, thus potentially jump starting a persons candy making career.  Let's meet our cast shall we.  First up is Logan Sweet, he is the son of the Candymaker (with a capital C) and lives with his mother an father in the Life Is Sweet factory.  Logan is home schooled and does not have a lot of association with other children.  His biggest talent is to be able to taste a sweet and tell exactly what's in it, and exactly what it needs to make it perfect.  He is hoping to win the competition with his Bubbletastic ChocoRocket...if he can just get it perfected.  He wants to win to continue on in the tradition of his Grandfather who won with the Pepsicle and his Father who won with the Neon Yellow Lightning Chew.  He is a bit on the clumsy side, but is a sincere boy who genuinely loves the candy making business.  Next up we have Miles O'Leary, who is a bit of a strange little dude.  He carries

around a backpack with him constantly and has a weird obsession with the afterlife. Miles has some weird allergies and seems to be afraid of his own shadow.  At heart he is a good kid and loves a good hug.  Daisy Carpenter is next on our list.  This quirky vibrant girl even rides her horse to the factory one day.  She is strong, loud and willing to stick up for the little guy.  Her best friend Magpie is partial to Pepsicles and she likes to read, especially romance novels about cowboys.  Finally we come to Phillip Ransford III, a stuffy young man who arrives at the factory in a limo, wearing a suit and tie.  He is not very endearing and very quickly drops the bomb that he does not even like candy.  He tells everyone his sole reason for entering the competition is to win.  He is constantly scribbling away in a notebook that he refuses to let anybody see.  So that is our gang of kids, a variety of characters that seems to fill the requisites in Middle Grade (MG) reading...but not all is at it seems.  The book is actually best summed up by a quote from the beginning of the book,

 "Once there were four children whose names were Logan, Miles, Philip, and Daisy. Each of them had recently turned twelve, and although none of them knew it yet, their lives would never be the same. You might ask, what makes them so special that their essays were selected over hundreds of others? Why do they each want to win the contest so badly they are willing to risk everything? Perhaps it would be best to show you. Let’s start with Logan, since he is the Candymaker’s son, after all. But don’t think he has an edge in the contest just because he was born smelling like chocolate. Logan has the hardest task, for he must be your eyes and ears. Pay close attention to what he tells you about the others— and himself— and what he doesn’t. The others will get their chance, too, but it’s only fair to start with Logan because if it weren’t for his father’s generous invitation to help prepare the others for the contest, Miles, Daisy, and Philip wouldn’t be standing outside the Life Is Sweet candy factory right now, wondering if they should knock on the huge wooden door or just let themselves in."
Mass, Wendy (2010-10-05). The Candymakers (pp. 5-6). Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Kindle Edition.

I don't want to give anything away, because a) I can't do it justice, the way things are revealed is pretty cool, b) I really want you all to read this book and enjoy it the way I did c) it was a 450 page book that felt like 100 pages and that is a lot to sum up.  I will try and hit some of my favorite non-spoilery parts for you.
The Factory- The factory itself is amazing!!! It has a Willy Wonka feel to it, minus the Oompa Loompas and magic.  Well actually that is not entirely true, there is magic, but it comes in a realistic form of the sheer awesomeness of people who love what they do.  Anyways back to the factory.  Life Is Sweet does its best to produce all of the raw materials for there goodies right on the premises.  This means in addition to the candy rooms (The Taffy Room, the Some more S'more's room, the Cocoa Room, etc.) there is a fully working farm, orchard and ranch.  The best part of the factory is the Tropical room where they have figured out a way to grow cinnamon trees, vanilla beans and a special variety of cocoa tree.  I think I could spend forever and a day exploring this place.
The Candy-One of my favorite things about this book is that it is continually describing new candies and new candy making techniques.  A lot of books that use a premise like this one load the front end with all kinds of awesome descriptions and variety and then the last 3/4 of the book don't introduce anything new.  This book is continually introducing us to new treat, new varieties and new ways to make things, be warned have a bag of candy with you when you read it.  These are real candy (well real as in not magic beans or anything like that) the Oozing Crunchorama is described perfectly with hazelnuts, chocolate, carmal and other yummy things.  At the competition itself many of the entries are described and this just adds awesomeness to the very end.
The Adults-In MG and YA books adults tend to fall into one of two categories, either meanie heads out to get the kids or practically non-existent.  In this book there are a few of those, but for the most part the adults are as realistically involved in the children's lives as one would see in the real world.  Keeping in mind that not every kid in this book has a traditional life, but the adults including the workers at the factory have a good
mix of authority, empathy, and frustratedness that one sees from adults dealing with 12 year olds.  Also most of the adults have a great sense of humor adding to the overall awesome tone of the book.
The Kids-After all is said and done (and there is a lot to say and do) this is actually a story about friendship.  Sure there are a ton of twists and the mystery/problem is harrowing, the solution difficult, but in the end it is about four very very different kids figuring out not only who they are, but how they fit into the world and with each other.  The friendships do not come easy and has to evolve several times over the course of the book, but by the end they all agree if nothing else to keep working at the friendship. This is a great book to show readers to never take a person at face value because you never know there true motivation at the outset.  Also how you perceive a person may not be at all how they perceive themselves.
The Story/Writing-The concept and execution of this book is truly AWESOME (sorry I just can't type that in lowercase letters).  A story of this type could very easily get out of hand, but the author keeps just the right amount of...I don't even know what it is, but she did it.  This was a 450 page book that I finished in a day and a half (hence the lack of post yesterday), I did not even realize how long it was until I was done.  To me that is a sign of a good author, one who can keep your attention and have you turning the pages as fast as you can.  Another good thing about the story is that it was interesting all the way through.  A lot of times with books like these you just want to get to the part where the secret is revealed, sometimes you don't even care about the in between stuff you just want to figure out what the heck is going on.  In this book the author does a good job setting up the questions and then doling out the answers fairly evenly through out the story, also you actually care about the characters themselves so after a while the secrets become secondary...until she reveals one and then you are like WOW OMG AHHHHH.  The only tiny nitpick is that there are a couple highly coincidental/far fetched things that make you roll your eyes a bit, you know especially those two things (read the book and then you will know what I am talking about), but in the end you just let yourself accept it and enjoy the ride. Also as far as rereadabilty goes it's kind of like The Sixth Sense once you know the secret it takes a certain Ahhness away.

In case you haven't figured it out yet I loved this book, I am sorry for the lack of details, but it must be read with out any spoilers for the full AWESOMENESS to take effect.  This is a great one to read with your kids, or curled up with your favorite treat, or to read out loud to a class (hmmm this would make a great class project that you could learn to make your own candies while reading it).  I think almost anybody would enjoy this book and give it a 9 out of 10 Oozing Crunchoramas!
What book have you accidentally started and could not put down?  How awesome are the cheapo deals on e-books that make you pick things up you never thought of before?  What kind of candy would you invent?  Is it weird I like books with yellow covers?

Magic Killer Candy

After a couple weeks of supreme business I finally got to get in some good reading yesterday, and by good reading I mean I sat down and devoured two books in one sitting!  To be fair we got a brand new couch (more on that tomorrow) and I was so exhausted I don't think I could have done more than turned a page if you paid me, but still it was nice to have 8 hours of straight up reading time.

The book I am going to ramble on about today is called The Candy Shop War by Brandon Mull.  I loved loved loved loved loved his Fablehaven series (posts about these are coming I promise), and was kind of disappointed in the first book in his Beyonder series, so I was not sure what I was getting into when I started this book.  Turns out it is a fabulous romp through the world of magic candy, think Willie Wonka, with more candy makers and less Oompa Loompas (though there are plenty of henchmen). I started this book Sunday morning and didn't stop until I was finished, it was that good.  So I've noticed my synopsis/plot summations are getting pretty long so I will try and keep it short, but who are we kidding we all know I love to ramble :-)
As always SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD!

Nate Sutter has just moved to the small town of Colson.  He will be entering the 5th grade and soon meets up with some new friends, Trevor, Summer and Pigeon.  The three have a treasure seeking/detective/trespassing club that they invite Nate to join once he shows a willingness to defend the group from three 6th grade bullies by the names of Denny, Eric and Kyle. School starts and Nate, Summer and Pigeon are all placed in Miss Doulin who turns out to be a very strict teacher.  After school they meet up with Trevor and decide to explore the new candy shop that has opened called Sweet Tooth Ice Cream and Candy Shoppe.  They are greeted by the owner and candy maker Mrs. White who shows them all kinds of wonderful treats.  She keeps a jar of penny candy that changes on a daily basis and trades the children treats for work.  The children are all thrilled with the arrangement and work hard, cleaning, stocking, and generally helping in exchange for eggnog milkshakes, butterscotch brownies and other mouthwatering delicacies (I have to admit that I stopped reading here and made a pan of walnut chocolate chip brownies 'cause I just needed something sweet to eat while I read this book).  One day Mrs. White tells the children about some special magic candy that she has made.  She tells them that if they are willing to preform some unusual tasks that she will pay them in magic candy.  The children though skeptical agree.  They go and collect dusk beetle eggs in

mushrooms and receive Moonrock candy in return.  Mrs. White cautions the children to only eat them where they won't be seen and that once you have placed it in your mouth you can not take it out and save it for later.  The kids go to there secret meeting place, eat the candy and then start bouncing around like they are almost weightless.  After the effects wear off (which happens as soon as the candy is gone, or you spit it out) the children are eager to earn more candy.  The next task Mrs. White has for them is simple, pass out samples of her special white fudge, warning them not to eat any as it will diminish the effects of any of the magic candy she will give them.  The kids give it to their parents, siblings and Pigeon (who is quit the smarty pants) gives some to their teacher. The children notice that after giving out the samples, people have become obsessed with the stuff, eating it every chance they get and lining up at the candy shop for more.  On their way to the candy shop for their next assignment the children are approached by a strange looking man who claims to be Nate from the future.  Obviously the kids don't believe him and are even a little scared.  The man wanders away with a final warning, digging up graves is not right.  With this cryptic warning in their heads the kids find Mrs. White who is ready to give them their next task.  The tasks start to get progressively more and more ethically shaky, breaking into museums and stilling artifacts, digging up graves.  She keeps the kids interested by giving them all kinds of candies that help them with their tasks such as Shock Bits that allows the eater to release one shock against a person, or Proxy Dust which allows one to control a little doll.  Eventually she asks the kids to erase

somebodies memory, which overrides any excuse they had been making up to this point. They realize that she is not a good person.  The person she was trying to poison is one Mr. Stotts who runs an ice cream truck and also has magic candies.  He is more willing to share information with the kids, but he still sends them on missions and pays them in candy, like Ironhide jawbreakers that makes the user almost invincible.  On one of these missions Trevor gets trapped in a mirror world and is out of commission until they can figure out a way to rescue him.  A man named John Dart appears and finally tells the children the whole story of how all of the magican's are after a treasure hidden in Colson.  Magic works best if you are young, but the one thing a magician cannot do is make themselves younger (which is why they were using the children to do all of there work).  Hidden in Colson is a draught of the Fountain of Youth, which would make any magician the most powerful in all of the world.  Much chaos ensues and Nate ends up time traveling to the past, future and finally splitting into three people in the present.  They manage to defeat Mrs. White by slipping the Clean Slate memory wiper into the cup holding the Elixir of Youth, making her a child with no memories.  Everything is eventually returned to some state of normal and world is saved.

Yeah so maybe not so short in my synopsis, sorry, but there was so so so much going on in this book, I did not even cover a tiny bit of it!  This book had it all, adventure, magic, candy, fat men who squirted orange goo.  I liked that the story always had something more to tell you, that you felt you had it all figured out and then something else would pop up.  The pacing was good and consistent.  The characters were pretty stock, but it was more about the friendship and group then about the individual characters.  I liked how the author

figured out a way to remove the parents from the role of authority, giving them the fudge and turning them into borderline zombies was a great way for the children to be able to run amok in a semi-believable way.  I also liked how the author showed how scary it was for these kids to not be able to depend on their parents, that they realized that they did need them and missed them acting like responsible adults.  I am a sucker (haha did you see what I did there, I said sucker and this book is about candy teeheehee...ok I'm going to drink my coffee now) for books that...crap....I never know how to describe it.  I like it when you take an ordinary thing like, sewing, cooking, gardening, candy and make it into something magical.  I find candy pretty magical to start with, all of the varieties and combinations, and then you add some magic and voila a happy premise for a good book.  Seriously I could probably just read a catalogue describing all the magic candy available (Harry Potter is a good one for this too, Honeydukes anybody?).  I like how the kids had to choose between right and wrong on more than one occasion, especially when it wasn't always clear.  I like it when a book shows people, especially kids put into these situations as I feel to many books just give the hero(s) carte blanche to do what they want because you know, they are the hero's.  Over all in case you can't tell I really enjoyed every page of this book, right to the very end.  I love this authors style and am totally excited to see that another book in this series just came out.  I give it 9 out of 10 Moonrock Candies.

What is your favorite candy?  Do you still turn into a wide eyed 10 year old whenever you go into a candy store?  What kind of magical candy do you wish existed?

Epic Break

A lot of the books I read probably fall into the EPIC category.  They are great books, but tend to get pretty heavy, what with all the bloody battles, deaths of beloved characters, moral crises and so on so forth sometimes a girl just needs a little break.  Usually I head over to the humor section for a little satire or comic relief, sometimes I get a borderline trashyish but fun girly novel, and once in a great while amidst all of the angst, the teen section can come up with some great light reads.  I call these my candy books 'cause too many of them make my teeth hurt, but on occasion are so yummy :-)
One of these priceless gems is a little book called How to Ditch Your Fairy, by Justine Larbalestier

The book is set in a semi-fictional North America/Australia type place in modernish times.  At some point most people started being born with fairies.  Nobody knows why or where they came from...it just kind of happened.  The fairies are invisible, but imbue there "owners" with all kinds of powers ranging from the mundane Loose-Change-Fairy, to the coveted Shopping Fairy.  A lot of times you won't even know what fairy you have until you notice things happening in patterns, and it seems no to people can have to same fairy.  The story is about a teenage girl named Charlie who has the Parking Fairy, which essentially ensures that any vehicle she is in will be able to find the perfect parking spot each and every time.  This causes her problems as her parents are always dragging here to boring places so that they can get a good spot.  As the story progresses one of her classmates starts using her to get good spots for illegal activities.  Here best friend Rochelle has the Shopping Fairy which makes anything look good on her AND always makes it on sale for unbelievable markdowns. Her nemesis (I love that word) Fiorenze has the All-The-Boys-Like-You-Fairy which attracts Steffie the new boy that Charlie likes.  As we read on Charlie tries several different ways to get rid of here fairy, hoping to attract a new one and one point even switches with Fiorenze after they team up with disastrous results.  In the end everybody gets what they need and live happier then they were before.

After I finished reading this I called all my siblings and told them that I had finally found an explanation for all of Mamma's luck.  No matter where we are, no matter how crowded, holiday time, events, bad weather doesn't matter if my Mamma is in the car there will ALWAYS be a perfect parking spot.  Sometimes we will be sure it's not gonna work when all of a sudden a car will pull out of a spot right in front of the store!  We always assumed it was luck, but now we are pretty sure she just has a parking fairy!

What fairy do you have? What fairy does a friend or family have?  What fairy would you like to have?  I think I would like to have a time control fairy that would allow me to speed up time when I was bored and slow down time when I was having fun.