Once Upon a Bookshelf

Rossamünd, an orphan boy with an unfortunate name, has lived in Madam Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls practically all his life. In this orphanage-of-sorts, the kids are trained for a useful career - usually on the sea. Rossamünd, however, has been passed over time and again until finally, he is selected, not for a career on the sea, but as a lamplighter. Foundling is the story of his journey from the orphanage to the place where he will train to be a lamplighter, and oh what a journey it is.

He gets into all kinds of trouble, and meets the most amazing people on this journey - plus, he not only gets to see and speak with monsters, but he also gets to travel with some people who kill monsters for a living.

I was sent an ARC of the second book in the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy, so had to go out and get my hands on Founding, the first book, before reading the second. I had no idea what to expect, so was pleasantly surprised when I found myself being sucked into the book right from the start.

The story was exciting, but it was the characters that did it for me (as per normal). They were all so vibrant and real - there were only a couple bit characters that seemed like they could have been developed more; with everyone else it was a joy to read about them and get to know about them, even if they weren’t the nicest of people. The transformation of Rossamünd through the book was fabulous to watch too - he went from a passive kid to someone who had a backbone and wasn’t going to let people push him around any longer.

I am most certainly looking forward to reading the second in the trilogy; I think I’ll be picking that up in a couple of weeks or so. I have a couple of suspicions about things that are going to be revealed about Rossamünd’s character, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing if I’m right or if the author will throw some curveballs my way.

I have a soft spot for stories about orphans. At the same time, however, I have extremely high expectations. Some of my favourite stories since I was a child have been about orphans, so it’s no wonder my standards have been set so high.

The Enchanted Riddle is the first book in The Scarlet Stockings trilogy. It tells the story of Daphne, an orphan who wants nothing more than to become a world famous ballerina. One day, while still living at the orphanage, she gets a package in the mail, the sender unknown, containing the book How to Teach Yourself Ballet as well as a pair of scarlet stockings. What Daphne soon finds out is that these stockings are no ordinary pair of stockings, but are magic, and can grant her wishes. She soon starts a journey that will take her from her orphanage, through the loving home of the Green family, into the life of actress Magda Magellan, to a large ballet company in Paris, where it seems her career has just begun.

Throughout the first third of the book, I thought this book was going to fall way below all my expectations. It was slow, and I had a hard time comprehending the fact that as soon as Daphne got adopted by a loving family, she was going to run off and become the personal assistant of Magda Magellan in order to further her career. As the book progressed past the first third, I started to enjoy it more but still didn’t like the way the scarlet stockings were making Daphne act towards those who cared for her. As with any magical object, they do have a darker side - it brings out Daphne’s snobbish, self-centered side.

Overall, the book was enjoyable. It didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but I liked it nonetheless. It was cute, and if I knew any, I’d pass it on to a young reader who was into dance.

You can’t get a bad book when these two team up. Remember The Stinky Cheese Man or The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs? (If you don’t remember - le gasp! - go out and find them right now.) Cowboy and Octopus follows suit, and I loved it. The book design itself wasn’t as cool as other books by these authors, but the story and illustrations were certainly on par. It was a simple book, aimed at a young audience, but can be appreciated by older people as well. It had me giggling at any rate. It’s the story of two unlikely friends - a cowboy and an octopus. Not that you couldn’t have guessed that from the title or anything.

The illustrations are, as expected, fabulous. Brilliant. They made the book for me. Lane Smith is, by far, one of my favourite illustrators. (Not seen his stuff before? Check out his website.) I especially loved the cut-and-paste look to the whole book. Totally awesome. To give you an idea of the feel of them, I’ve scanned a part of one of the illustrations:

The scan doesn’t do it justice, but it gives you a bit of an idea of what you’re in for with this book.

On a related note, I don’t normally go for book trailers, but the one for this book was seriously too random to pass up on mentioning.

This isn’t a book I would’ve thought to pick up on my own; but got excited about it when asked to review it for my blog, and have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Camp Creepy Time.

Einstein, a young kid who has spent most of his life blogging about government conspiracies, is being shipped off for 8 weeks to the desert for summer camp - definitely the last thing he wants to do for his summer. Especially a themed summer camp where the kids are supposed to be dressed up as their favourite monsters.

After being assigned to a cabin with a group of werewolves, it doesn’t take him long to discover that all of the kids are actually turning into the monsters they are dressed up as - except for the ones that have been going missing.

There is something rotten at Creepy Time, aside from just the food. A few desperate souls decided to make a break for it and have been missing ever since. The word is that someone or something ate the missing campers, but I suspect that camp management planted the story to deter future attempts at escape. If I survive my stay in the infirmary, I plan to get to the bottom of this.

This was a completely enjoyable book. Who wouldn’t love a book that included vampires, werewolves, ghosts and aliens? Plus, the majority of it takes place at summer camp. As a former camp kid, it totally brought me back to my childhood - well, minus the whole monster thing. ;) I can’t see how anyone who spent even just one week of their summer at camp wouldn’t get a kick out of this book.

The kids in this book were very real, too. There were those you felt sorry for, and those you were cheering the whole time for. (And yes, I was cheering for Einstein - with a name like that, how could I not? Plus, he’s a bit of a brat, and oh I do have a soft spot for those brats!) By the end, it gave you the feel good feeling that made you realize that even kids can take down evil aliens on their own if they just put their minds to it.

And oh, the book was amusing. Very humorous at times, especially for geeks who enjoy their scifi:

“The truth of the matter is that travel to this planet was banned over a thousand years ago. Alien tourists used to love to come here and party. Unfortunately, it got out of hand and was stopped after a few bad apples pretended they were gods and ruined it for everyone.”

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is or was a camp kid at some point in their lives.

Mirrormask is the story of Helena Campbell, a young girl who works at her family’s circus. After a fight with her mother, her mom collapses and has to be rushed to the hospital. On the night of her mother’s operation, Helena wakes up in a new world. A princess in this new world, who looks just like Helena, has used the Mirrormask to switch places with Helena - with dire results to both worlds. Now Helena has to go on a quest to find the Mirrormask herself in order to set everything right again and get back to her own world.

From a reader’s perspective, I did not enjoy this particular Neil Gaiman story as much as I did Coraline or Stardust. From a Graphic Designer’s perspective, it was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read since Lane Smith’s John, Paul, George & Ben. It was positively a delight! It looks like the designer had so much fun. How the font, the size and weight of the type, the baseline all are necessary parts of the telling of the story… I’ve uploaded two of my favourite parts here, because just talking about how awesome it is doesn’t do it justice.

I love how the text is constrasted with each other - black text on a light background to describe the city of light, and the white text on black background for the land of shadows. Look at how oppressive the white on black is - which is exactly what the land of shadows is like. I love how this was continued in the book too. Once Helena and Valentine enter the land of shadows, everything is white text on the black background.

This was my favourite… how the spaces between each word doubles, and so the sentence seems to drag on. It displays perfectly what the sentence is saying. Love it.

I’m in the mood for rewatching the movie at some point now…

Also, for those fellow Canadians… Happy Thanksgiving this weekend! (Mmm Turkey Day!)