Tag Archives: childrens

Book Review: Of Mice and Fairies by A.R. Geiger

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Some of you may remember that a while back I posted a mini-review of A.R. Geiger’s Birdwoman, a collection of short stories. Well, Of Mice and Fairies is a second collection–very different from the first!–of short stories put out by Geiger, and it doesn’t disappoint.

Of Mice and Fairies is a collection of inter-connected stories in which a very endearing and old-fashioned kind of narrator tells us of the adventures of her woodland friends — mice, fairies, gnomes, and the like. It’s a short, delightful read – really! I sort of laugh at myself for typing “delightful” but it’s the best word for it. The stories are fanciful and fun and contain little, not-overbearing moral lessons. It’s very light reading and was perfect for my grouchy, I’m-mad-about-being-on-bedrest mood that pervaded the last couple of days (yesterday especially). Its style is old-fashioned and charming, and I’m thinking about reading it aloud to my kids (my oldest LOVES fairies – we just had a fairy-themed 7th birthday party for her). I love that peppered in through the stories are also profound truths such as, “Lumpkin is an adventurer at heart. And an adventurer is never quite happy at home for too long (Kindle Location 479).”

I read the whole thing with a smile on my face — both for the adventures of Lumpkin, Belinda, and associates and for the beautiful way Geiger describes the scenery, giving life to such things as shadows as they dance and hide among the grasses. I should also note that I loved the illustrations! There are beautiful, black-and-white drawings throughout the stories done by Geiger’s sister, E. Noel. I couldn’t help but think that they’d make a really fun adult coloring book!

Geiger’s biography at the end says she’s working on her debut novel – I’m eagerly looking forward to it, because through these two very different collections of stories I can clearly see her talent for writing and I’m eager to read what she comes out with next!

Four stars!

Book Review: St. George, Rusty Knight and Monster Tamer by John Powell

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When I requested John Powell’s Saint George: Rusty Knight and Monster Tamer from NetGalley sometime last year, I confess I totally thought it was going to be a story of the legend of St. George, who is often portrayed as a slayer of dragons. That, of course, wasn’t the case at all (ha, oops!), but it was a really enjoyable read. Part of the novelty for my daughter was reading together on my Kindle (ooohhh! exciting!), but she really did enjoy the book and so did I.

The Goodreads synopsis is super short:

Humorous tales about an impoverished knight in old England who discovers a way to tame the great variety of monsters that roam the land in the days of Good King Freddie the Umteenth and his prime minister Merlin the Whirlin.

“Humorous” is the perfect word to describe the story. If I remember correctly, Powell says in the beginning of the book that he originally came up with these stories as bedtime stories for his kids – and you can tell! They’re just funny and perfectly geared toward little kids. They follow a predictable structure (all of them start with “Now it was in the days of Good King Freddie…”) and in each story Saint George has to take on some ridiculous monster problem or another – which usually can be solved by providing the monsters with the magical, monster-taming marmorguglehupf cake (my daughter thought that word was hilarious).

The stories are full of all sorts of absurdities with names just as outlandish as marmorguglehupf cake, ideas like George’s “armor-on week” and “armor-off week” (during which he sleeps – for the whole week!), and other silly, non-sensical things (like a king who can’t read!). The crazy names and nonsense action reminded me a good deal of Roald Dahl, and prompted the same kind of laughter from my daughter as did The BFG. There were only two drawbacks for me with the books: 1) each story was a little too long to be a bedtime read-aloud but it didn’t work to break them up so we just pushed through a whole story in each sitting; and 2) there was one entire story that REALLY is not suited for American kids – or their parents! We just couldn’t follow the thread on playing cricket (our loss, though – I’m sure to a British kid the story would’ve been as hilarious as the rest).

All in all, I’d give it 4 stars and definitely recommend it! I think it’ll be another year or two before my next daughter is ready for it, but I’ll look forward to rereading the silliness with her when she’s ready!

A Rock Can Be… – Picture Book review!

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We recently checked this book out from the library – I’m not sure who picked it out, because when it comes to my 4-year-old, it’s a big hodge-podge of stuff she likes the covers of and things my husband or I intentionally seek out for her. However we got our hands on it, I’m glad we did!

To be honest, I’m not sure if my kids are nearly as taken with the book as I am, but I have really enjoyed reading it to them a handful of times over the past two weeks. Essentially, the author takes a simple object — a rock — and shows how many diverse ways we see it around us, from the natural (lava!) to the man-made (stepping stones, stone fences for pastures). I might argue she left out “playground” with a picture of a rock climber, but I can let that one go 🙂

The artwork throughout is beautiful and eye-catching, and the text is beautifully simple; it’s easy enough to read to my toddler. At the end of the narrative, there are several pages over which the author explains each iteration of the rock throughout the book, which was wonderful to read/talk about with my 4-year-old. There’s also a glossary of terms at the very end, and I’m working on convincing my almost-7-year-old that she would actually find the book interesting (she’s skeptical of most anything she doesn’t pick out herself).

Also, I just discovered that this is part of a series! So now I’m excited to take a look at the author’s other books, too 🙂

5-stars, highly recommended!