Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: reading

  • How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories (The Folk of the Air series)

    How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories (The Folk of the Air series)

    Fantasy: It’s an interesting genre and by interesting I mean I have had an interesting past with it, growing up reading Harry Potter which I loved, didn’t mind the Hunger Games and couldn’t get into the Twilight Saga. As for the Song of Fire and Ice series, I struggled to get through one book a year, despite it being such a good read. So it’s fair to say I have a conflicted relationship with the genre and now I can add How the King of Elfhame learned to hate stories to the fantasy books I have read.

    How the King of Elfhame learned to hate stories is a fantasy book by Holly Black and is the third book in The Folk of the Air series. Now I will be honest, I haven’t read the other three books in the series therefore I struggled with this book. The book is told from the perspective of a certain Prince Cardan, who taking from the blurb of the book, eventually becomes a High King of the land of Elfhame. The book reads as a bit of an origin story and Prince Cardan is an unpleasant person; a trait he apparently carries with him into adulthood.  Elfhame itself consists of a series of large islands rather like the Philippines or Indonesia. The story is told in third person. 

    Unlike other fantasy books I have read How the King of Elfhame learned to hate stories dedicates a quarter of its pages to illustrations.  The artwork in this book is done by Rovina Cai and is quite good. I won’t comment on the style of the illustrations as I am neither an artist nor have any academic knowledge in art. However, though the illustrations make the book physically more attractive I feel that it would have been better to have used those pages to add more to the story.

    As I said previously I struggled with this book, although had I read the other books then perhaps this wouldn’t have been the case. However the story is good and the illustrations add a nice, if slightly unnecessary, touch. The book is not that long and can easily be finished within a day. From reading it I believe it is more geared to a younger audience such as early teens rather than adults or young children.

  • The Funny Life of Teachers

    The Funny Life of Teachers

    Reluctant readers and children who love humour and fun, will enjoy this book. The front cover gives a good indication of what to expect inside. The cartoon characters and suggestions of smutty fun, “Snot flying out your nose,” are certainly enough to encourage a further examination. On opening the pages, we discover that this is not factually accurate, and the reader is warned not to use it for a project.

    On further entry we are told that the book is only for four kinds of people. Are you one of them? The only people who shouldn’t read this is teachers. The next thing we discover is that this book isn’t to be read as an ordinary book. You start wherever you want and move backwards or forwards. Sometimes you are told to go back to a specific page to follow on a topic.

    The contents page has chapters such as School Map, The Office, Staffroom, and Toilets. There are also stories with a moral. The author retells his drama of trying to take frogspawn to school in a bowl and gradually spilling it all as he travelled. Seeing your teacher in the real-world taps into the surprise many children feel when they see their teacher out of the classroom and in a social setting, it just doesn’t seem right.

    James Campbell and Rob Jones have produced a book that may certainly allay anxieties about school for some children. Their humorous take on all matters relating to schooling will show children another side to that institution, as well as the teachers and customs that have developed around it. A fun read.

  • A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader

    A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader

    By the time she was in third grade Poet, naturalist and essayist Diane Ackerman already knew where to find heroes, monsters and so much more. Caroline Paul discovered books were a refuge and a source of great wisdom. Terry Teachout came to terms with the fact that in books you can be anything but ordinary. You can be a pirate, a King, an explorer or whoever you want to be; you simply do not need to be you!

    A Velocity of being – Letters to a young reader takes a journey into the lives of some fascinating people; writers, poets, scientists, journalists, explorers; people who have made a difference in this world, people like you and me who discovered books at an early age and the difference they made in their lives, both as children and adults.

    Each of the people that make up this charming anthology share a story about books; their love of reading, escapism, learning and pleasure discovered on the pages of a book.

    Born from a desire to keep books and the beloved pastime of reading alive and well in an age that was fast heading towards the extinction of books as we have known them since time memorial, Claudia Bedrick, an independent publisher of children’s books and Maria Popova, author and writer combined their talents, along with eight years of hard work and dedication, to build a work of memoirs from so many of the people who had influenced either their lives or others’ lives in some wonderful way or another. People such as Neil Gaimen, Jacqueline Woodson, Mathew Burgess, Lise Solomon and another 120 others who helped to create this treasure.

    Coupled with superb illustrations from celebrated graphic artists or illustrators adds a superb element to the stories as each of the invited contributors shares a special moment in their lives, when books offered solace, allowed them to escape to another world, offered a gateway to their future, bought laughter and adventures unimaginable.

    A Velocity of Being is a work born of love, full of love and offered with love to readers, young and old of this world, who still need to do all the things the generations of readers gone before loved to do; travel via the armchair to far flung places, escape on a secret mission to a save the world, at the very least, join an adventurer as they travel with dog-sleds across the icepacks of the world or learn more about the places, spaces and people who make up our world.

    Poetry, prose, simple letters, longer discussions, graphic, actually comic book tales, options to travel into space for just a moment or two, all rub shoulders to create a masterpiece of both children’s and adults reading that will become a treasure to be passed on through the generations.

    All the contributions that make up this wonderful, rich book have been offered with love and the desire to reach out to a new generation, to encourage reading. All proceeds from the sale of this book will go towards the New York public library system ‘because libraries are bastions of democracy and the oxygen for the life of the mind………….’

    David Bowies idea of perfect happiness was reading, What is yours……………………perhaps, hopefully, reading!

  • The Covers of My Book Are Too Far Apart! (and other grumbles)

    The Covers of My Book Are Too Far Apart! (and other grumbles)

    This colourful Picture Book begins with a rather startling statement! “Huh! Reading is rubbish!” So says a young man sitting on a park bench. Another young man flying a plane says that he loves stories because you feel like you are there. Other advice from a youngster suggests choosing books more carefully, and a Librarian offers help to find a book the boy will enjoy. More suggestions include Superman’s offer to read comics, and a dog who loves joke books. This is not a story book, but a book about choosing a storybook.

     Cleverly, Vivian French has given a negative point of view, such as “I’m too busy to read”, and countered it with suggestions such as “I read in bed before I go to sleep”, and “read when you are supposed to be working”. The comic preference is reinforced many times by Superman himself. Books that are for girls are not out of bounds either, as some boys read a few pages to see if they will enjoy the storyline, and likewise many girls enjoy boy type adventure books.

     Issues are discussed such as “Reading is hard…” and complicated too. Kids with Dyslexia explain how they find reading difficult and some children wear special glasses to help them decode. A wolf with headphones is thoroughly enjoying a story and happy about hearing it, while Picture Books are enjoyed by all ages. After all, you watch TV and that’s pictures. Bedtime reading is shown to be a warm and sharing time for all. The idea of having to finish a book you don’t enjoy is discussed, and most people say that if you have given it a few pages then still don’t like it then choose another.

     This is a great book to introduce to children who have become jaded with reading. Every excuse for not reading is looked at and answered (especially by Superman) who loves comics. Children and families often feel that there is no one in a story who looks like them, and suggest that authors take up the challenge of varying their characters.

      The clever illustrations by Nigel Baines certainly add to the text, and in very creative ways. The Librarian is a horse, and Darth Vader suggests reading about a favourite film.

      The text is on a cream background to assist those children with visual issues, and many concerns children have are addressed in a stimulating and humorous way.