Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
I’ve been meaning to catch up on some reviewing backlog, because the to-be-reviewed pile doesn’t seem to be going down. I was saving some books for thematic reviews but the stacks have been driving me crazy, and I’m way off my target for this year, hence I’ve decided to write some flash reviews for the quick reads.
Here’s how it works: I give a summary of the book, my take on it, plus a rating.
Deep breath. Here goes:
I saw the Christmas Carol movie this weekend, and I have mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand the animation was amazing! Five years has certainly done wonders for 3D performance capture — compared to Zemeckis’ 2004 Polar Express, Christmas Carol looks phenomenal! The musical score (especially Bocelli’s God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen) was hauntingly beautiful too.
I’m glad Disney didn’t “cutesify” this movie, but for a holiday flick, it didn’t do much for my holiday spirit, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come terrified quite a few kids in the audience — a bunch of parents had to take their kids out of the theater because they started screaming and bawling. I think the film lacked the warmth and goodwill that the classic story evoked.
Anyway, this post isn’t the start of my Christmas posts, but it is related to A Christmas Carol.
I’ve been fascinated with postmodern picture books ever since I took a course in children’s books back in college. Since then I’ve been building up my collection of po-mo picture books, and I’ve now got over 20 of them, mostly from rummaging through bargain bins.
I love how po-mo picture books challenge the reader to look at things in a different way, offering an enjoyable experience to both the young reader, the parent reading to the child, and even an older reader randomly picking up the book and flicking through the pages.
The multiplicity of meanings also encourages creativity and imagination in constructing the meaning of the text or illustrations, as well as the interest to reread a book.
I also marvel at the writers and illustrators’ creativity in taking the craft of picture books one step further, defying convention and structure
I have several books in this picture book roundup: The Story of a Little Mouse Trapped in a Book by Monique Felix; Wolves by Emily Gravett; Zoom and Re-Zoom by Istvan Banyai; Bamboozled by David Legge; and Pinocchio the Boy, or Incognito in Collodi by Lane Smith (books 175-180 for 2009).
(In case you missed it, I previously discussed the characteristics of po-mo picture books in the post I did on The Three Little Pigs.)
Continue reading “More Po-Mo picture books (Picture book roundup 10)”
Impulse buying at the bargain bookstore has gotten me a lot of books I have no earthly use for (as you probably know), but I like buying them anyway (as you probably also know).
This is another one of those books — Famous Faces by Norman Messenger (#174 for 2009). I found among the stacks of children’s books at my favorite bargain bookstore, and it was a bit more than I’d normally spend at the store (well, fine, it was P120 — a little over US$2) because it was a bad day and I needed some cheering up (haha!).
Famous Faces (#174 for 2009) is a novelty book featuring celebrity faces such as Groucho Marx, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Charlie Chaplin, Elvis, and even Prince Charles and Princess Diana (before they separated).
(Incidentally, I found out this book has been a collector’s item after Diana’s death!)
Each face is divided into four flaps – hair, eyes, nose and mouth, and clothes. You can mix and match these celebrity features to create new faces — e.g. Chaplin’s hat, Marilyn Monroe’s eyes, Diana’s smile, and Margaret Thatcher’s clothes — and get absolutely hilarious results!
I discovered Lauren Willig while browsing through a bargain bin and unearthing a hardcover copy of The Masque of the Black Tulip. The story summary appealed to me, so I bought it and looked it up online, only to find that it was the sequel to The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, which meant compulsive old me could not get started with Black Tulip, as I wanted to read Pink Carnation first.
After months of unsuccessful mooching, I found a trade paperback copy of Pink Carnation in another bargain bin and thus moved both books up the TBR pile (#172-173 for 2009).
These two novels by Lauren Willig make up an interesting set of genre-bending books, combining chick lit, historical mystery, and adventure. The Pink Carnation series runs on two storylines, one featuring present-day London, where Harvard grad student Eloise Kelly is doing research on English spies in the Napoleonic wars. This leads her to uncover the second storyline in each novel: tales revolving around these swashbuckling heroes.