The Book Search

I just finished reading a not very new book called "The Akhentaten Adventure" which is part of the Children of the Lamp series by P. J. Kerr.  I liked the story a lot, which is about twins, John and Phillipa who discover that they are genies, or djinn.  Djinn have a different kind of magical power (one that is depleting to their bodies, so they are instructed to use their powers carefully) and in this book, they spend a lot of time learning about their powers as well as the history of the djinn, both from a historical and a literature perspective.  It got me me thinking about magic as a genre of fiction and why it's so common. There have been a lot of books about magic in the last few years, most notably Harry Potter, but there have been others like Charlie Bone and Percy Jackson.  The overarching theme to me is most often good versus evil.  I mean it's really cool to be able to do magic and make things happen outside of the world of reality, but if there isn'...

One of the "it" books this year for middle grades is called "Rump" by Leisl Shurtliff. It's a chapter book with the back story of Rumplestiltskin, how this little guy learns to spin straw into gold and why he wants a baby (it's not as creepy as you think). It's a great story filled with interesting characters and great writing and good lessons about believing what "everyone says", the power of our choices, and what is destiny. I really liked it. I thought it would be great to pair with Paul Zelinsky's version Rumplestiltskin (and there is a Reading Rainbow episode based around it!). It would also be great to compare with a story like The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by John Scieszcka and any other version of the Three Little Pigs or if you wanted to go bigger, compare it to the Wizard of Oz and Wicked. Here's book trailer about it. I really love fairy tales and there are some great ones out there that you might never he...