A GRREAT Book for Young Horse Lovers

Title: Twoey and the Goat
Author: Robbie Timmons
Illustrator:
Publisher and/or Distributor: Mitten Press
Publisher Website: www.mittenpress.com
Pages: 182
ISBN: 978-1-58726-517-4
Price: $15.95
Publishing Date: March 2008
Reader: Bob Spear
Rating: 5 hearts

This is great story for young equine fanciers. This fictionalized novel is based on a true-life story about a young racing thoroughbred and is friend and constant companion Captain Kidd, a billy goat. The story follows their whole lives from Twoey’s birth, the training he receives from his mother and advice he receives from a racing champion. He makes the transition to yearling and adulthood, winning race after race, with his ever present friend, Capt Kidd always there to calm him down. After a racing injury, we watch his slow but courageous decline into racing obscurity, always accompanied by Capt Kidd as he is sold from owner to owner. Finally, he finds redemption in retirement.

The author has done an excellent job of switching points of view to tell the horse’s story. She has an intimate style of writing that allows her readers inside her characters’ minds. We rated this book five hearts.

Into the Volcano

Here is our first graphic novel review. This one is focused toward 2nd grade and up:

Title: Into the Volcano
Author: Don Wood
Illustrator: Don Wood
Publisher and/or Distributor: Scholastic / Blue Sky Press
Publisher Website: www.scholastic.com
Pages: 175ISBN: 978-0-439-72671-9
Price: $18.99
Publishing Date: Oct 2008
Reader: Bob Spear
Rating: 4 hearts

This graphic novel for ages 7 and up follows two young brothers who are sent by their father with a strange cousin to a remote Pacific volcanic island to see their aunt Lulu. One of the brothers, Sumo, is afraid of doing or experiencing anything. His brother Duffy is just the opposite.

They are flown by charter jet to the island and there, they quickly involved with going inside an active volcano, trying to escape their so-called family. Their mother, supposedly doing research in Borneo, shows up in an underground cavern. She shows them a treasure trove of magical gems which may solve all mankind’s energy problems. Finally, the family comes back together and Sumo gains a modicum of bravery.

The artwork and the characters have a definite Samoan flavor. We rated this graphic novel by a Caldecott Award Honors winner four hearts.

Graphic Novel Category

Recently, I have been offered many more graphic novels for review than in the past. It's a sign of our times where so many people have become visually oriented in their communications due to the evolving technologies. Comic specialty store employees say that by far the age group of customers shopping for comic versions are adults in their twenties, not children. Many of the major publishers have begun producing Manga (Japanese comics) books.

For these reasons, I have decided to add a graphic novel genre to HeartlandReviews.com. Many of these graphic novels are appropriate for young adults, and I will include these reviews in this blog because many reluctant readers find they identify more with graphic novels. Please let me know your thoughts on this topic.

The Hunger Games

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Illustrator:
Publisher and/or Distributor: Scholastic Press
Publisher Website: www.scholastic.com
Pages: 420
ISBN: 978-0-439-02348-1
Price: $17.99
Publishing Date: Oct 2008
Reader: Bob Spear
Rating: 5 hearts

This YA is the best book I have read in the past year. In a possible future, America no longer exists. It has been replaced by Panen, a wealthy capitol surrounded by twelve districts. (It was thirteen districts until one was utterly destroyed as an example to the others) which are kept dirt poor and starving. To remind the districts they are totally under the control of the capitol, a unique levy is required every year. Each district must select one boy and one girl aged 10-17 to travel to the capitol to compete in the Hunger Games—a battle to the death of the selected youngsters until only one is left alive. The survivor’s district and the survivor are given vast rewards (money, food, and a life of ease ever after), so there is a strong vested interest in the districts participating willingly.

The tension is constant and the heroine, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, is an accomplished hunter (poacher) and survivalist who brings her outdoor skills to the games. The boy selected from her district, Peeta, claims to have loved Katniss since they were five, much to her surprise. What if they have to try to kill one another? The conflicts are multiple and deadly. The book ends with the perfect set up for a series. Its treatment reminded me of Stephen King when he wrote The Long Walk as Richard Bachman. It is a theme dating back to the days of the Minotaur. The author handles the violence in a tasteful manner, but it still is pretty intense—a book more suited to the older segment of the YA genre. This promises to be an exciting series and will be ideal for reluctant readers. We rated it five hearts.

GRREAT New SF/Fantasy Series

Title: Paraworld Zero
Author: Matthew Peterson
Illustrator: Matthew Peterson
Publisher and/or Distributor: Blue Works
Publisher Website: www.windstormcreative.com
Pages: 251
ISBN: 9781590924914
Price: $16.99
Publishing Date: 2008
Reader: Bob Spear
Rating: 5 hearts

Twelve-year-old orphan Simon Kent is a much abused nerd at school who wears glasses he doesn’t need in hopes that bullies won’t hit him. He has a whole drawerful of broken glasses, so that doesn’t work so well. All that changes when he accidentally meets Tonya, a girl whose hair changes colors like a giant mood ring and comes from a parallel universe. Simon discovers he can perform magic and uses it when he and Tonya find themselves running for their lives between parallel worlds.

This is the first in a wonderful series for mid-grade young adults that promises many more adventures. The author has mastered the formula for injecting a constantly increasing level of tension in his story. No, this does not replace Harry Potter. It’s totally different—it’s more SF than fantasy and definitely more American cultural oriented. This series should become a bestselling set of stories. We rated it an almost perfect five hearts.

Now It Can be Told

Most of my readers here and at my book review site http://www.heartlandreviews.com have probably notice I haven't written a review since November. Now I can tell you why. Once again, I was selected to be one of the judges in this year's Publishers Marketing Association's Benjamin Franklin Awards. I don't get paid for that, but it is a huge credibility booster and a chance to see some of the newest small press and self-published books for this past year. Imagine my dismay when I received two shipments totaling 54 books of popular fiction. This week I finished reading the last of these and rendering my scores. One book I had to recuse myself from judging because I had been its content editor (Ascent into Darkness).

Since I finished on Tuesday, I have read a wonderful YA SF Adventure novel, Para World Zero, which I will write its review later this morning. I also tried to read another book, but it was too poorly written to review. Despite our attempt to filter books offered, we still get substandard ones occasionally. That's when I prove my worth by sifting the wheat from the chaff.

You're going to see many more reviews of excellent books for gifted and reluctant readers now.

The Direction's the Reading World is Taking

I had an interesting conversation with a client in Arizona recently. I had suggested he might want to convert his novel into a graphics novel as well, to try and capture a share of that market. He was not aware of recent developments in the book industry, so the picture he had in his mind was of a series of 42-page comic books which would be serialized into a novel. He was shocked when I explained that now we have 300-page novels rather than much smaller comics. He was also shocked when I told him the cost of turning a novel such as his into a graphic novel would be between $75,000 and $250,000 just for the artwork, never mind the designing and printing. We immediately tabled that discussion.

Herein lies one of the problems in the reluctant reading field. Not only kids, but now many adults will only read something that is visually based rather than written word based. For a more detailed analysis of where this all is leading, you may want to subscribe to my FREE monthly newsletter. You can find a subscription form at any of the pages at http://www.grreatbooks.com .