The Amulet of Samarkand

Title: The Amulet of Samarkand

Author: Jonathan Stroud

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, a little Humor

Description: In this story, a very young magician named Nathaniel gets caught in the whirlwind of revenge and summons up an extremely powerful djinni named Bartimaeus. As the story goes on, his act of revenge turns into a much bigger problem and he must thwart a dastardly plot!

Isn't thwart a great word?

The Amulet of Samarkand is a captivating story, and the point of view of the character Bartimaeus is witty and full of life. You first hear of Bartimaeus’ humor when he tells of one of his previous summons: “One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror” (7). Comments like this will have you laughing through the whole book. Scattered through the pages are small footnotes. They are sometimes funny comments, other times pieces of information. He tells you that a Horla is “a power subclass of djinn. To a human, Horlas appear as shadowy apparitions that cause madness and disease; to other djinni, they radiate a malicious aura that saps our essence” (246). Bartimaeus is a tricky and unpredictable character, so you never know what will happen next. He makes surprising transformations. He says, “She stretched out a hand. As she did so I opened my mouth very, very slowly. Then she reached for the chain round my neck. In an instant, I was a Nile crocodile with jaws agape” (48). The Amulet of Samarkand will capture you attention with its story, but most of all with its witty character Bartimaeus who will keep you informed and on your toes. Happy reading!

P.S. This was a paragraph I wrote for school. I don't remember what score I got on it though.

Harry Potter--what we have to say about one of the world's most famous books

Title: Harry Potter!!

Author: J.K. Rowling

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, and a bit of Romance

Description: Harry Potter is an extremely famous wizard, but he doesn't know it. He lives with his mean aunt and uncle and his extremely fat cousin. Until he goes away to Hogwarts, a well-known wizarding school. Thus begins the amazing adventure of Harry Potter.

My sister and I have collected most of the Harry Potter books on tape. Jim Dale is an amazing reader. Did you know he does more than 40 different voices in all the books? Anyway, we've listened to the tape so often I wanted to say a few things about characters, favorite parts, and general observations. There are so many things to fidn in the amazing world of Harry Potter.

Harry Potter. The main character. First of all, it's amazing how you can see the character development. We listened to the fourth book, then the second. I really saw a change in how Harry looks at the wizarding world and challenges ahead. At my school last year, there was a Harry vs. Twilight thing. Twilight argued Harry never grew up. I totally disagree. (Harry won, by the way. Twilight died out this year but Harry lives!!) In the first book, he's new to being a wizard and all the characters are being brought into the story. In the fourth, especially after the turning point, characters views really defined and the story really starts to shape up and get more serious. Although my sister and I often say Harry needs some anger management classes in the fifth book. Really Harry, shouting at your best friends isn't going to help.

It always amazing me in series how the author can tie events in the first book right into the last of all. Harry Potter is carefully planned out from beginning to end. In the fourth book. Voldemort explains all about his life for the past 13 years and it matches up exactly with everything that's happened to Harry. I guess that's the way all large series should be, but I really notice it in this one. In the sixth book, Harry hides a book under a bust of a wizard, and puts a tiara on top to make it more distinguishable. In the seventh book, the tiara turns out to be a major piece of the story. When I read the seventh, I instantly made the connection to the sixth.

I've noticed a plot pattern that holds for the first six books at least. The seventh is different. But it goes like this: Harry starts out at Dursleys. He goes away from Dursleys. He goes to school. Something strange happens at school. Suspense builds. Harry begins to figure out why strange things are happening. Climax is at the almost end of the book, where Harry must fight a large battle alone. The beginning of the battle sometimes includes companions to help him. Harry wins. School ends. Harry goes back to the Dursleys. The End. If you look at it like a plot line, there is almost no falling action, but goes straight from Climax to Conclusion, like this. In the seventh book, there seems to be a million climaxes up to a HUGE one at the end.

Snape and Malfoy. I feel so sorry for Malfoy. When you learn about the trouble he's going through in the sixth and seventh book, it makes you feel so sorry for him. Looking back, he's never shown much kindness to Harry Ron and Hermione (HRH), but they were always mean to him every chance they got too. Malfoy doesn't have many friends and his whole family is Dark Wizards. He doesn't have a lot of options for a great future. And he's a bit of a wimp. Snape is the same. Harry and Snape hate each other from the moment they meet, and Harry doesn't realize the truth until the very end. Harry always thinks Snape is behind every Dark thing at Hogwarts (Snape, or Malfoy, or some Death Eater) and he is ALWAYS wrong. You'd think Dumbledore would get impatient with him always jumping to conclusions. I recently read To Kill a Mockingbird, and one of the lessons was, you never truly know someone until you walk around in their skin. Harry never does this. Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater might be his motto. Snape is very complex and a really good character.

Sometimes Harry and Ron can be so misunderstanding. It's aggravating. When Harry can't understand Cho's feeling, Hermione explains, but Ron and Harry still don't get it. Again, in the third book they don't think about Hermione at all when they ignore her for a long time.

Why are Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle known by their last names, but almost no other characters are (except the teachers)? That's something thats been bugging me. Even Malfoy calls Crabbe 'Crabbe' and Goyle 'Goyle', even though they are his best friends. Harry doesn't call Hermione, 'Granger' or Ron 'Weasley'. There's too many Weasleys to call him that anyway. You could be calling Ron, Fred, George, Percy, or Ginny.

If you haven't read the seventh book, you may not want to read this part, if you are the kind of person who doesn't like the ending told to you before you read it. I have a friend who got really mad at someone else for telling her who died at the end of the book. It was a week long feud. Anyway.

Why do Ron and Hermione get married? They argue through all the books, and Harry often says he can't stand them bickering at each other all the time. Ron shows no interest in Hermione until she goes out with some other guy and same with Hermione. They aren't really great friends. Hermione seems like an outsider so often. In the third book, Ron and Harry don't talk to her for a long time because something that wasn't her fault. I can't remember his words exactly, but my dad said it was because that's how it was supposed to come out. I mean, who else could Ron and Hermione marry? If they married complete strangers that would be weird, right? They were meant to be a match even though they hate each other through most o f the books. In the end, every one's part of the Weasley family. Harry marries Ginny, and Hermione marries Ron. Hearing of the continued lives of these four people gets me curious. What happened to Fred and George? What about Hagrid? All the characters that were meaningful in the stories seem to have died or disappeared. It's a bit depressing when you think about it. Harry's kids have completely non-original names. Imagine being named Albus Severus Potter. Honestly, as Ron would say.
You may read beyond this point.

So those are our thoughts on the immensely popular, Harry Potter Series. Thank you. The End.

(I just hit spell check and all the character's names have big red underlining under them.)

Wicked: Revisited

Title: Wicked

Author: Gregory McGuire

Genre: I forgot the genre on my last review of this, but I am not quite sure what it would be. Fantasy, definitely, but I am not sure of what else.

Description: The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West. I suppose.

All right, now that that is all out of the way, I would like to treat you readers to the view of another distinguished reader. I received an email from this reader, who has, unlike me, finished this book and here is what they think: (ta-da!)

Dear Raindrop,
I finished Wicked. This is an adult book. Lots of promiscuous sex. Lots of boring political talk. Plenty of nasty violence. And some philosophical discussions on the nature of evil.

I picked out what I thought I would use to make this into a musical. Then we printed up the 18 pages that are available on Wikipedia so I could compare my ideas to reality. Well, I was wrong. Entirely. I guess it hadn't occurred to me that the musical would just use the idea of telling The Wizard of Oz from a different point of view than Dorothy's, and then just take the names and some of the personalities from Wicked and entirely rewrite the book. People who die in the book do not die in the musical. People important to the plot in the book never appear in the musical. The nature of evil is never particularly addressed. Some of the better dramatic moments in the book (that could translate well to a musical) are never used.

From the description, it sounds like the music is all one song instead of separate songs for separate characters or events. This reminds me of Willy Russel's Blood Brothers (which I really like and have seen twice in London, by the way, in different years), where all the songs are different words to what is basically the same tune. Unifying, I guess. Though I am more attuned to a structure like South Pacific or Oklahoma, what the Wikipedia article calls a leit motif for each character.

So, where the book is X and R rated, the musical sounds like it is pretty generally G, and I think that is fine. Probably it is a better musical than it is a book. The book took forever to read (406 pages and not a masterpiece of writing) and I thought a lot of it was sad if not totally disgusting--and I wondered how the musical would deal with that. The answer is: it doesn't deal with it at all. It leaves it out.
-JCF

Thanks to our reviewer!! I hope you readers are all intrigued to go see the musical, but to put the book in up in the attic or the dumpster (anyplace will do) and pick up the Willoughbys(review coming soon). Here is my quick response:

From my experiences, I would say that all of Gregory McGuire's books are mainly for adults. I tried reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, (it was a birthday present from a friend when I turned 9 or 10) but it is along the same lines as Wicked. I think kids look at the book and think, "Wow, the true story of the Wicked Witch of the West. That sounds really cool." Well, guess again. They may also believe the book is like the musical. One of my sister's friends gave Wicked to her on her 10th birthday. Gregory McGuire's books must make good birthday presents, but they are not totally great as reading books.

Twilight

Title: Twilight

Author: Stephanie Meyer

Genre: Romance, Fantasy

Description: A girl (Bella) falls in love with a vampire (Edward).


Big deal. I have to ask you Twilight fans, why do you find it interesting? You can probably tell I was not impressed with this story. Maybe it's because I am not really into romance novels. Maybe it is because Bella and Edward take 300 pages, (at least) just to fall in love. Maybe it is because it gets exciting only for 1 page. Or maybe it is because Bella is so obsessed with Edward you can hardly stand it. I have to say that there wasn't really any part I liked. In the book anyway. I did go see the movie, and I do think they made the part where the vampires play baseball pretty good. So I liked that part, but just in the movie. Edward was an okay character, but I didn't like that even though he knows that he is a vampire, but he acts really dumb about it. For instance, there is one point in the story where Bella faints because Edward dazzles her so much, and he says, "Do I really dazzle you?" C'mon Edward, you are a vampire, and you said yourself that everything about you was designed to be attractive to humans. But he seems to really enjoy being fainted over. Speaking of characters, I really don't like Bella; she is a weak character. It seems like she wouldn't exist without Edward, and he is all she thinks about. But she isn't the only one. Edward probably has about 200 girlfriends at my school alone. My own friend is absolutely sure that Edward is her next door neighbor. Aren't there so many other better books besides Twilight??? I constantly ask this to Twilight-obsessed classmates. But they seemed to be incurably addicted to it. I hope you, reader, do not limit yourself to just one book in a world of thousands.

HP5

Title: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter 5, for short)

Author: J. K. Rowling

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure

Description: Harry is back for the 5th time!! In this book, Harry faces explusion from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, then battles with an evil Ministry Affiliate while forming a secret army under her nose, then finally faces Voldemort and his Death Eaters in intense combat!! It's filled with excitement, don't miss it!

I just had to throw that last comment in there. This is probably my favorite of the 7 Harry Potter books, 1) because it is full of action, and if there is anything I can't stand, it is a boring book where nothing happens. This is not true in Harry Potter 5. It is full of excitement just from the beginning. and 2) it has Dolores Umbridge in it! I don't like her, but she is a super evil villain, and where would the story be without her? If Harry lived happily throughout the whole book, you could sleep while you read it. Anyway, Umbridge also adds to the action part. She keeps the story alive in her own wicked ways.

The almost best part of this book (in my opinion) has to do with Fred and George, the Weasley twins. They turn on such a fabulous show of tricks, mischief, pranks and more; it is so entertaining! J.K. Rowling put some nice effort into creating the Weasley twins. Go Fred and George! May the fun go on forever!

Now, I often think the character Harry has a couple of flaws. At the beginning of the story, he is stuck at his aunt and uncle's house, and is feeling a little annoyed, but really wants to see his best friends. So when he sees them, he yells at them for 5 minutes for having a good time together without him, completely ignoring whatever they have to say. Then he loses his temper repeatedly throughout the book. Maybe he should take some anger management classes.