Kate DiCamillo: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

As someone who adored both rabbits and dolls as a child I found this children's book to be quite cute. Edward Tulane was not necessarily the idea toy. For one, he was partially porcelain. For another, he was without a heart. No love for the little girl who loved him terribly, someone knew Edward's unspoken secret. One day everything in Edward's world changes. There were times when I felt very sorry for Edward. Heartbreaking as parts were, it was all for the better. This darling book is one I would definitely read to children if I knew any.

Neil Gaiman: Coraline

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

As many people know the movie Coraline is coming to theaters next week with an opening night on Friday, February 6th. What I find funny is that some people have missed that this movie is based on a book.

"The movie's a book?" some kids might ask. Such were the words spoken by my youngest sister, age thirteen, when we discussed this two weeks ago.
"Well, the book's a movie, actu-"
"I want to read it!"

Excellent! You see, it is worth mentioning. This is especially true if said youngster or teen isn't fond of reading to begin with. (Haha, dear sister. I love you.)

I must admit the quieter approach may be better with some of them. It might be best to withhold the information until after they've enjoyed it and then sneak it in. While you might not know when you can afford to take your kids (and possibly their friends) to see it again, they can check the book out from a library to read as many times as they would like.

Try to break this news as excitedly as you can. Picture a surprise birthday party. Hold that thought. It would make the book sound 'uncool.' I am here to tell you there is no doubt that this book is not. It's fantastic! This book is not your child's average bedtime story, however.

Gaiman chills us with his dark children's story about a girl named Coraline who is just trying to find something to do while playing all alone in a world with only grown-ups. That's when she discovers a door leading to a world exactly like her own and yet terribly different. Coraline is a very mature girl and a character that can easily be admired. Her story is incredible however short. My movie tie-in edition is 163 pages with impressive and chilling illustrations. It will find itself in my sister's hands tomorrow.

Like all movies based on a book, and yes, for the young uns, I will say with a smile 'book based on a movie,' there are differences between the two. The movie is rated PG. I think kids of many ages will enjoy it. I've been clued in that the book is the more scary of the two. My thoughts are that if younger children are going to read this you might want to consider reading it with them if you're worried. I would steer away from reading it as their nighttime story before bed.

This is the official trailer provided on YouTube from "Coraline, the Movie."

Lewis Carrol: Through the Looking Glass

The last book I finished reading in 2008 was Alice in Wonderland and I have now finished reading part two of the story, Through the Looking Glass. I was at first puzzled by the board game inside my copy of the book. The first page notes which characters (players) are which color (red or white) for a game of chess. It made me think of how we see font such as was in this book in works of Shakespeare right before the start of the plays. I began reading wondering if the story would appear in a similar fashion. It began with a poem and then an introduction about the pages showing the chess game information to make it more clear. The story itself was just like the last story in the way of the style it was written in.

I immediately ooed and awed over the black and white kittens, Kitty and Snowdrop. I had only known of Alice's cat, Dina, existing. As I read I had to stop toward the beginning because it hadn't been clear to me right away that Alice, rather than dreaming such as in Alice in Wonderland, was this time daydreaming and using her imagination.

Imagination is a perfect thing for children to have, and very good for a child who seems to not have any other children around to play with. Alice occupies her time playing with cats and inventing things that are make believe. She starts off with the mirror in the very room she is playing in by going through it and seeing how everything she already knew from her own world in another way, how it is on the other and unknown side of the looking glass.

On the other side of the looking glass, the chess pieces in the room have life. Alice begins this story by playing the part of one of the pawns. She comes across a few characters (i.e., players in this story) who she already met before and meets a few new faces as well. There is a great deal of playing with words. The characters put focus on some words versus others, and change the form of some sentences entirely to have a new meaning or to ask a new question.

I had to fold one of the pages because the poem on it reminded me of another. This is what was inside my book:

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things :
Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax --
Of cabbages -- and kings --
And why the sea is boiling hot --
And whether pigs have wings"
--(Carrol, 153)

I think there were actually a few poems this reminded me of but at present I can't name a single one. I think some others who read poetry might be able to tell me what other poem I might possibly have been thinking of.

Of course, I was very likely to recall these words from Disney's movie as well, which I did. I pictured it and was not happy for those dear little clams. I think I would have lacked as much sympathy for them without it because they were just too young and cute in the film. How dare that Carpenter and Walrus! I also pitied the kitty who Alice shook when the Red Queen turned into Kitty. Yes, it's only a story. Yes also that Alice must love them, though not quite enough to understand what their meows mean. Silly Alice.

Lewis Carrol: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

There are many books I missed as a child that others generally read enough times to sometimes even memorize. It wasn't that my mother never read to me because I remember reading in the rocking chair with her many times. It was my favorite thing because it was when I had alone time with her in a single parent family of four people in those days. I just for some reason never got to some of them. I was a poor reader until my teens. Before anyone misjudges and thinks it was a call for attention, I had a partial learning disability that I didn't overcome until I was older. Two of the stories absent from my childhood were Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

I spent the first half of my childhood with four other kids in the house, all of them younger. Our favorite things to do involved watching movies again and again before playing and acting them out in the backyard. We'd have them memorized. This is one way I came to know a good deal of the Alice stories without ever having read them until I read the first of the two this month. It was from the movie that I came to recognise and fall in love with the Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, a much-loved and favorite series of mine.

I first heard about Fforde's books while in high school but never got around to reading them until college. This was about six months after I first read Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in a women's literature class, a book which strongly ties to the first in the Thursday Next series, The Eyre Affair. About that time was when I really and truly began to fall in love with books, and after getting further along in the Thursday Next series the thing I thought most amazing would be to have a stuffed Cheshire Cat toy. I wanted to keep one amongst my own small pile of books to mimic the Great Library in Jasper Fforde's created Book World. As of Christmas last week I now have one, and quite a good deal more books since then that it can actually be considered a small library for him to sit amongst. I was very excited and happy for the gift.

The Thursday Next series pretty much taught me all that I didn't learn from Disney's created Alice film up until now. It's usual for one to watch a book made into a movie and say, "What did they do with this or that scene?" For some reason I had it in my head that there was a good deal more in Disney's film than what I've read in Carrol's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I dare say I need to re-watch the film I once knew by heart. Speaking of hearts, the deck of cards is hilarious. Alice is a peculiar sort of girl in a time not quite our own any longer. I'm happy to be reading it at last. My book is a two-in-one and I plan to begin the second story very soon. After that I may at long last read the much curious Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor.

Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black: The Field Guide

Out of curiosity and due to there being a movie based on this series, I read Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black's first book of the Spiderwick Chronicles, The Field Guide. It's rather short as can be expected and therefore an extraordinarily fast read. Semi interesting, I may not read any others in this series and add it to my BookMooch inventory after my youngest sister gets a chance to read it.

Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden

I wanted to read this book as soon as I finished reading The Little Princess. It took a while to get a copy because I got it from BookMooch, but I finally received it and just finished reading it last night.

As a kid I adored The Secret Garden movie. From the start of the book, I had it in mind and was able to notice some of the differences. I liked that the book began while Mary was still in her home in India. (I truthfully can't remember where the film began.) I felt it emphasized just how alone she was and had always been, something crucial to show the dramatic change she has during the course of the book because by the end she is quite happy and has friends. It's funny to compare the child that was at her uncle's the first morning who stiffly stood waiting for Martha to dress her versus the girl who wakes early, dresses herself, and runs out the door without anyone noticing her so she can slip into the garden.

I loved Martha's character and thought of the movie version even more so every time she was in a scene. Dickon was everything I thought he'd be based on the movie. It has been several years since I've seen the movie but one of the differences was in the character Mrs. Medlock. I just remembered her as being more of an unkind woman. I thought I remembered there being more disagreement to Colin's going outdoors. Perhaps that was Dr. Craven.

What is this book about? The title says it's about the garden, but that's if you take it without another meaning. What else could the garden be? Based on the reading, it felt like the story was changing from being about Mary to more so the garden, and then about Colin as well. By the end of the book, I noticed how less Mary seemed to be in the story and how more dominate Mr. Craven and his son were.

I was puzzled over the ending of the book because, from my having watched the movie so many times as a child, one of the parts I remembered most was Mary crying and running off upon Mr. Craven's return, and Mr. Craven and Colin joining her and they all sort of danced in a circle. I remember thinking it was because Mary had felt she was in trouble about the garden but once they joined her that it was not only okay, but that she no longer felt she wasn't part of a family but that she had her uncle and cousin for a family. This happy ending is not there in this book, but there is another that takes place in both the book and movie. I won't give away the ending so you'll just have to read it yourself.

Frances Hodgson Burnett: A Little Princess

This book tells the story of an incredibly amazing little girl, a true little princess at heart. Sara Crewe is just five years old when this book begins. She is incredibly kind, intelligent, and precious to her father.

Father and daughter must part as Sara must gain her education while Captain Crewe sails elsewhere, and he leaves her at a wealthy girl's school in England. Home is in India, but Sara has a unique and wonderful imagination to keep her happy. She adjusts to the school quickly, makes new friends, and is loved by many. Years pass. Sara is quick to catch the eye of what others don't notice and makes a forbidden friendship.

One day trouble arrives and Sara, who has always imagined herself as a princess to do the better good, struggles more than ever to keep her comfort. Life becomes hard in ways she never knew, and still this young girl doesn't fail to show her kind and generous side as she continues to dream up a world in which every girl is a little princess.

One morning Sara awakens to a dream. As things slowly begin to improve thanks to the kindess of a stranger, Sara finds the strength she needs to keep on going.

I really enjoyed this book. If you're considering reading it, I warn you that there are differences between the film versions and book. I didn't realize just how much till I read it, but I'll keep my mouth zipped about that.

This book has led me to seek The Secret Garden. I had loved watching the movie as a kid no matter how much teasing I suffered because of it, so I was happy when I learned the same author wrote both stories. I kind of want to go buy both movies so I can watch them over again.