Archive for January 2012
- In: Humor | Mystery
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Gilda Joyce: Pyschic Investigator was another good book. Ms. Allison seemed to add her own twist to this mystery novel. It almost appeared that events were happening to our main character and she was not even sleuthing! Since almost any thing can happen in life, I was left to my own devices and trying to guess what was going to happen next…and I was wrong on more than one occasion. For a brief minute, I got bummed but that quickly passed.
In this book, Gilda Joyce is a 13-year-old who spies on many people (including her neighbors)! One day she receives a letter from a distant relatives (an uncle) who invites Gilda to come spend a few weeks with him and his daughter (Juliet). As soon as she arrives, Gilda realizes that her Uncle’s house is quite gloomy, almost as if a weight of regret is holding down the house. At first Gilda and Juliet did not get along well but as they get to know each other it got much easier. Juliet soon reveals that the “weight” holding down the family was that Juliet’s Aunt Melanie jumped out of the large tower in the backyard. Of course, Gilda decides she is going to “solve” this mystery.
After a bit of investigating Gilda discovers a few things. Aunt Melanie ”fell out” of the window the night before she was supposed to go to a retirement home … Aunt Melanie was going into the retirement home because she had a mental problem. Gilda continues to find out more information because Juliet speaks in her sleep and one night Juliet said that when the angel talks that is when the door will open on the tower. Juliet and Gilda go investigating and find a key in the mouth of the angel in the backyard. They open the door to the tower and discover that Aunt Melanie painted all over the inside of the tower. It is through the Aunt Melanie’s painting that we learn that she was sooo unhappy about being sent away that she threw her self out the window. She did not realize that her brother (Gilda’s Uncle) was sending her away because he loved her…she just thought that her brother was trying to get rid of her. That is the close to the mystery. Gilda goes home a few days later, but her mystery solving career has just began.
The author made this book very easy to understand (yet you did not feel as if the author was talking down to you). Ms. Allison also impressed me by using so many descriptive words that a picture of each scene was painted din my mind (kind of as Aunt Melanie painted the tower). This book also had quite a bit of humor in it.
The moral is that anything can be discovered by hard work. It is through hard work, that just about anything can be accomplished.
- In: Adventure | Fantasy | Mystery
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To Catch a Mermaid by Suzanne Selfors was a book that just about anyone could savor. It was a book which contained a bit of humor, a bit of mystery, with a bit of fantasy weaved in there. Ms. Selfors created a book about self-discovery and the feeling that comes from achieving a seemingly unreachable goal.
Boom Broom thinks his life can’t get any worse. The nightmare all began for him when his mother was swept away by a twister and his father locked himself in the attic, leaving Boom to care for his little sister Mertyle (who has acted out every possible sickness including spots, the common cold and even brain farts). She did all of that just to avoid school. Low on money, Boom brings home a feisty, seaweed covered fish home which had been reject 
seafood market but when Boom puts it on the table, he and Mertyle find that it’s actually a living, breathing, foul-tempered merbaby.
Boom wants to use the creature to get rich, but Mertyle won’t hear of it. She loves the mud-scented baby and wants to keep to herself. But when strange things began to happen … one of those being Mertyle begins to grow a white fuzz all over her arms and legs … they realize that may not be possible. The siblings soon rely on their viking housekeeper, Halvor and his secret society to navigate them to an almost unknown island where the fisherman probably caught the merbaby. By the time they get to the island, tt is midnight and they quickly fall asleep. While they were all asleep the mother of the merbaby comes and takes away the fuzz on Mertyle . The group then returns home and Boom and Mertyle’s father decides comes out of the attic and they all go on happy.
I enjoyed the book because Ms. Selfors made it so that you couldn’t tell what happened next. I also enjoyed how the author used the humor in the story to her advantage because right during a sad part of the story she used humor to enlighten the story.
The moral of the story is that if you can find the will to do anything you can do anything. Boom made a fantastic demonstration of that when he found the will to save his sister to care for his sister/family when he was still a child himself. This week, I am going to find one selfless act and do it – I don’t know what it is yet but I will do it!
- In: Adventure | Fantasy | Mystery | Romance
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Kat, Incorrigible was a good book … if it were food it would have been chocolate cake under a dark chocolate fountain (I am not the biggest fan of dark chocolate but I am of chocolate cake!)
Picture this - its nineteenth centry in England it is the ages of big dresses and every girl MUST be proper and presentable. This is not the time to be practicing witchcraft or magic. But that is what Kat must do if she is to help her family. Her older brother gambled them into a huge debt and her family has seemed to lost hope and is very unhappy. Kat thinks the only way to help the family is to use her magic; unfortunately, her 
stepmother has other plans. Her stepmother believes that if Kat’s older sister is to marry the mysterious Sir Neville (who murdered his last wife) it will fix all of the family’s problems. After hearing this, Kat is determined to make sure that her sister won’t have to married to Sir Neville.
Fortunately, Kat gets her chance almost immediately. It happens when Kat’s stepmother’s cousin is hosting a ball and Sir Neville is attending and she uses this to her advantage. Kat is going to attend the ball. On the first dance, Kat accidentally rips a woman’s dress by stepping on the hem. Kat soon discovers that Sir Neville has some magical powers of his own (which he got his from his late-wife). As soon as she find out about this it dawns on her Sir Neville will take her sister’s powers. Kat confronts Sir Neville, his plot is uncovered, they battle and, of course, Kat wins. She and her family live happily ever after.
I enjoyed the book because it has a bit of magic and the happily ever after. I also liked how Author Burgis used a bit of modern thinking … if I had an older sister I would probably try to save her. Some dislikes I had were that the Author used some words that I didn’t know off the top of my head (such as a “reticule”…. which I now know that I do with my little sister). Another was that once or twice the story felt as if it was moving way to fast and I had to stop and take a breath.
The moral is that you sometimes have to take in guidance because in the beginning of the story Kat always hated for people to even try to give her guidance but in the end she was almost always ready to take in guidance and since she realized the more she took in the wiser she got. I may need to practice that too.
