I hope everyone has a happy 4th of July day today. I plan to spend it the American way of drinking American beer, swimming, and grilling out! Happy Day!
7.04.2008
Happy 4th
I hope everyone has a happy 4th of July day today. I plan to spend it the American way of drinking American beer, swimming, and grilling out! Happy Day!
7.02.2008
Ocean's Olive
Agent99 loves herself the mouse books by Kevin Henkes (who can resist Lilly or my fellow worrier Wemberly?) so I was a bit surprised that Mr. Henkes had penned novels for older kids. One of his efforts, Olive's Ocean, was deemed a 2004 Newbery Honor Book, beaten out by The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread by Kate DiCamillo which I haven't read at this point but will eventually. Reading the summaries for Mr. Henkes's other novels on his website, it appears as though they all deal with tragic loss.
That's a thread woven through Olive's Ocean. The protagonist, Martha, has her world jolted a bit when the mother of the recently deceased classmate Olive hands her a journal entry in which Olive writes about a desire to become friends with Martha. First off, I do not like the name Martha. It reminds me of Martha Washington, Martha Stewart, and a friend's mom. Just sounds archaic. I'll let Olive slide since I love to eat olives, and it was the name of the girl in Little Miss Sunshine. Ruminating on what could have been slightly mars Martha's family vacation with her grandmother on idyllic Cape Cod and gets the gal all mopey. Hormones, no doubt.
We're definitely not in children's picture book land anymore, with the inclusion of parental MSB (morning sex behavior) and a Martha's brother referring to another teenage boy as a "prick." The foulmouthed sibling also uses the adjective "shitty." Scandal!
The writing is a bit choppy, and the sentences don't flow well. A couple of chapters are even less than a page long. Mr. Henkes, don't follow the Dan Brown method of book composition! Martha simply is not compelling and lacks character. She's about as exciting as cucumbers. Do we really care that Martha wants to properly pay tribute to a girl who she knows nothing about? Though I have fallen for a particular description used by wannabe writer Martha: "[The sparklers] were like white hot chrysanthemums dripping onto the sand." It's beautiful because it's true.
That's a thread woven through Olive's Ocean. The protagonist, Martha, has her world jolted a bit when the mother of the recently deceased classmate Olive hands her a journal entry in which Olive writes about a desire to become friends with Martha. First off, I do not like the name Martha. It reminds me of Martha Washington, Martha Stewart, and a friend's mom. Just sounds archaic. I'll let Olive slide since I love to eat olives, and it was the name of the girl in Little Miss Sunshine. Ruminating on what could have been slightly mars Martha's family vacation with her grandmother on idyllic Cape Cod and gets the gal all mopey. Hormones, no doubt.
We're definitely not in children's picture book land anymore, with the inclusion of parental MSB (morning sex behavior) and a Martha's brother referring to another teenage boy as a "prick." The foulmouthed sibling also uses the adjective "shitty." Scandal!
The writing is a bit choppy, and the sentences don't flow well. A couple of chapters are even less than a page long. Mr. Henkes, don't follow the Dan Brown method of book composition! Martha simply is not compelling and lacks character. She's about as exciting as cucumbers. Do we really care that Martha wants to properly pay tribute to a girl who she knows nothing about? Though I have fallen for a particular description used by wannabe writer Martha: "[The sparklers] were like white hot chrysanthemums dripping onto the sand." It's beautiful because it's true.
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