Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts

Thursday, October 28, 2010

October Book Club: The Magic Half

The book selection for October was "The Magic Half" by Annie Barrows. This is a wonderful book--part mystery, part history, part fantasy, part realistic fiction. The main character is Miri, an 11-year-old girl with twin older brothers and twin younger sisters. Miri often feels left out, especially after they move to a new house on land that used to be a working farm. The best part of the old house is that Miri finally gets to have her own bedroom. One day as she is in her bedroom imagining how it will look with freshly painted walls, she spies a glass lens taped to the wall near the floor. Curious, Miri pulls the lens free and looks through it...and is immediately transported back in time to 1935! She is still in the same house but that's all that is the same. There's a different girl, Molly, living in her bedroom. Molly is badly in need of help to escape an abusive situation. Miri feels an intense connection with Molly and wants to help her. Molly, in turn, says she and her magical grandmother have "called" up Miri. Together, with many twists and turns and near-disasters, Molly and Miri construct a plan that eventually succeeds in bringing them both back to the present day where they find that history has been changed! It's as through Molly and Miri have always been twins. Only they have any memories of what really happened.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

May Book Club: Igraine the Brave

The month of May brings the final meeting of the Ashburn Kids Book Club for this school year. Our book this month is "Igraine the Brave" by Cornelia Funke. It is one of the books nominated for this year's Virginia Readers Choice Award. We don't often get a fantasy selection on the nomination list for VRC so it's been a fun change to read this book. Cornelia Funke is a gifted writer (often compared to JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame) and this book is delightful! It tells the story of twelve-year-old Igraine, the daughter of two magicians, who wants to become a brave knight rather than enter the family's magic business. Igraine has an older brother, Arthur, who is mid-way through his magic studies and still struggles with certain spells, i.e. the only food he is able to conjur up are dry biscuits and blue eggs. When their castle is attacked by an scheming neighbor bent on stealing their magic books, Igraine and Arthur each demonstrate their bravery in their own ways, which is especially crucial since their parents have been accidentally turned into pigs by a miss-spoken spell and have lost all their magical abilities. This book has come-to-life gargoyles, three-headed dragons, a sorrowful knight, a talking cat, an enchanted moat, a creepy dungeon, and much more! It is just the right mix of suspense, humor, and triumph over evil without ever being too dark or frightening. I really enjoyed it and I'm usually not a fan of fantasy.