mxhermit's reviews
949 reviews

Cautionary warning: racist language in the context of 1800's American society, particularly toward black and East Asian people
I loved stories of dinosaurs as pets growing up. There were movies like Prehysteria and We're Back! that had adventure, emotional turmoil, and lessons, all good and bad times that showed that while dinosaurs in our time probably wouldn't be a great idea, they were fun to imagine.
That's why I thought that Scott Eric Barrett's book The Guttersnipes would be a wild ride full of not only the trials of having a pet dwarf triceratops, but also time travel, mystery, and a look at a famous circus.
Let's start with what I liked about this book.
Lots of good ideas came up in the course of reading it and you could feel the energy that the author had when writing. I think, though, that it's possible some of that might have gotten away from him because while there was some good, there was also some not so great that made the reading experience less than enjoyable.
The visuals were interesting. The creatures that Barrett introduced, like Jack, Ms. Navideh's companion/pet, the technology that was found in the house on Hamburger Lane, etc.
As for the not so good...
The friendship, if it could be called that, between Charlie and Arty was weird. I never got the sense that they were really good friends the way that Arty seemed to believe in the beginning, particularly when he referenced their group name, The Guttersnipes. Even when they were about to go back to 1865 and Charlie calls Arty a close friend, it didn't ring true.
The scenes were quickly dispatched with, eager to move from one place to the next. I feel, with further development, they might have been more engaging. I didn't get enough time with the characters at school, at Nick's arcade, at Charlie's home with Trike.
There were also some difficult sections, some inconsistencies that had me confused and/or questioning what was really going on in the book; things that weren't resolved/addressed on the page. For example, why Charlie & Arty are a thing in the first place. They aren't really friends, so what was with the arcade scheme in the opening? Why doesn't Charlie ever question why Arty knows so much about Ms. Nedivah and Jack?
There are also times when conversations are overheard and things are described, i.e. Ms. Nevidah's phlegm, that Charlie & Arty couldn't know because just a moment ago they shut themselves in the bathroom; or names are given as if we've been told them when in the context of the narrative we sinply haven't yet. These careless details were not handled well and thus were irritating.
I also had some trouble with Charlie with regards to his character in two respects. It's stated multiple timea that he's highly allergic to a lot of things and his dad gives him a "magic" suntan lotion that lasts a week and allergy pills that cure all? His allergies have nothing to do with this story, being mentioned in the modern day and then never again as far as I could tell. It made his entire time in 1865 odd as he had no allergic reactions, no real concern that he might run out of medicine, etc.
The second respect has to do with him and Arty. This book's writing and categorization didn't match up. It wasn't a simple matter of being written YA and shelved MG or vice versa. It ran deeper. Charlie and Arty are supposed to be 12, but neither felt like that at all. I would've pegged them as 16, based on their actions, attitudes, etc. The ideas behind the book could've been a great middle grade, but Charlie and Arty didn't fit into their own tale.
The editing needed some work as well with regards to punctuation, as I noticed multiple instances of speech missing beginning or ending quotation marks and the like. The formatting of the cover was askew as well, though that oddity didn't affect my rating of the book, rather just struck me as something to be noted on top of it all.
I think the biggest problem The Guttersnipes suffered from, and the one the really sums up the reason it doesn't succeed as a whole for me, is that it tried to be too much. There were a lot of pote risk threads here that for pulled on, but none were woven into a complete or satisfactory project. Billed as a fantasy middle grade booked on Goodreads, I was sorely disappointed as there was hardly any fantasy here once Charlie went back in time. What fantasy there was felt like a plot device to get him to 1865 NYC and then it was dispensed with.
The ending leaves the way open for Charlie's continued literary life. Perhaps, with a lot of editing and streamlining and a good, hard look at what kind of story the sequel is meant to be, there's possibility in the future for The Guttersnipes.



I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

A companion book to the Girls Who Code novels and Girls Who Code itself, Code It! Create It! is a book that will appeal to those already familiar with the subject and those that have only a passing glance idea of it.

This activity book is a good addition to the Girls Who Code line because it's accessible to it's core audience. The text isn't dense considering the material addressed and it's broken up with typical fun things like word searches and mazes. There are a couple of pieces of information in the first half that feel a bit repetitive, which detracted from the main goal for me a bit, but overall the flow of the book was good.

There's a glance at basic programming languages, ideas as to what coding is for and how the process of learning coding can be applied not only to it, but to everyday activities as well. These parallels are part of the reason I think this book will be a success both with girls heading in with coding interest already and those that are looking into developing a new hobby or skill.

Plenty of room is left for the owner of the book, and anyone that they invite to help (as the book is big on working by yourself or with a group of friends, totally up to you), to come up with ideas, draw plans, doodle, etc. There is so much room to breath in the book alongside the learning in what I would typically consider a rigid subject. The nice thing about the binding of the book itself, besides the content, is that it's hard bound and the covers lay flat, making it easier to draw on the provided pages.

I'm excited that books like this are being published, especially for younger girls. Coding, web and app development, etc., is not a single gender field field anymore like it might have been considered going back decades. Women have made incredible strides, including some mentioned in this very book. Hopefully the readers the pick up this book will find a little inspiration to start their own journey.



I received a copy of this book from Penguin Young Readers for promotional purposes and an honest review.

Race to the Finish brings Sophia's perspective front and center in the confines of the girls' coding club. She not only has the difficulties of varying personalities within her club to maneuver, especially with the hackathon coming up!, but with regard to her family. So many expectations, so much pressure, so little time.

There's a lot of energy in the girls with respect to the things they love outside of coding, such as sports, jewelry, etc. This translates better for some than others into coding club activities and it shows. 

There's definitely a strong leaning toward moral fortitide here which I think is the ideal rather than the strict norm but hopefully the readers that are the age of the main characters will see that as something to work with that lay down for or ignore entirely.

I would have loved to get more time actually spent at the hackathon. More time seemed to be concentrated on Sophia's problem getting there than actually competing. Another thing: her parents were by far and away the most lax parents when it came to her and her friends changinging plans at the last minute. Even if the change was something that they would've done prior to a last minute emergency, the escapade of the Rocking Robotics Club was a bit how in the heck to me.

The cast seemed pretty diverse, but going from my experience of this book alone, I'm not sure how well I'd say the series does it overall. There are small inclusive pieces, such as Sophia's abuela and Leila's hijab, but in Sophia's case at least, since we spent so much time in her point of view, it felt dismissive.

As for whether you can read this book out of order from the other books, I'm not too sure about that. I feel like there's some personality set up for the characters that would have been beneficial. From the point of view of someone who has only read book two, there were times when they seemed a bit much.

Team BFF: Race to the Finish seems like a good companion to Code It! Create It! as well as a further addition to the Code Girls series. It's an encouraging novel for girls looking not for role models, exactly, but for girls very much like them that are interested in coding and other things and how those differing interests meld together.

Reshma Saujani's organization and continuing work opens doors not only fictionally but in the real world for girls that might still be looking for their place, that might have been told their place isn't available because it's "boy" territory. Never be afraid to explore your interests, like Lucy, Sophia, Maya, Erin, and Leila!

 

 

 

 

I received a copy of this book from Penguin Young Readers for promotional purposes and an honest review.

A tale of lost memories, time travelling cars, and lots of cake, Gertie Milk and the Keeper of Lost Things has all the adventure one could want in a middle grade fantasy in which the heroine must return lost artifacts to historical figures and attempt to recover her memory.

The story opens with 12-year-old Gertie waking up on an island with no clue as to her identity, other than (presumably) her name embroidered on her dress. Stumbling away from an incoming tide and up a cliff, Gertie meets Kolt, a Mad Hatter-esque character that introduces her to her destiny as a Keeper.

The strange things he introduces her to are whimsical and sound like just the thing a young child would like. Cakes of all kinds, jams, tea, and a convoluted house with towers and hundreds of bedrooms to house the Lost Things.

Beneath all this wonder is darkness, however, and more so than that of the enemies of Keepers, the Losers who want to destroy the Keepers and their work. There are questions that pop up in regards to Keepers, like who are they? Kolt, who has been a Keeper for at least 100 years, can't even remember his real name (Kolt is made up from the initials of Keeper of Lost Things). It's revealed that all Keepers lose their memories when they're "chosen" so that they can more easily accept their fate. 

Chosen here means kidnapped because the B.D.B.U. (Big Dusty Book Upstairs) deems them necessary for the mission of protecting the knowledge of human kind. Children being dragged into this kind of work with no choice, losing everything that made them themselves, is a rather dark aspect of this book's mythos.

Gertie bears her journey well. She has many questions for Kolt, and even when he doesn't answer them directly she soldiers on. I honestly would have expected her to fight back a bit more.

The various historical figures that are introduced were interesting in their variety. There were mathematicians, philosophers, athletes, and more. Some I had to look up as they were name dropped rather than introduced as an essential part of the plot, which detracted somewhat from the story.

With an open ending that could lead to at least one more book, maybe more, Gertie Milk turned out to be a fun story with fantastical, crazy elements mixed with figures from the past that prove essential to the way our world is now in terms of knowledge. This book will, I think, entertain not only children old enough to read on their own, but parental figures and their charges, with a narrative that flows and action east enough to follow along when being read aloud. 

Remember...it could always be worse.



I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Rating:  3.5 Stars

With the goofy looks on those dragons faces and the fact that I'd very much at least entertain the notion of having a pet one (before realizing how very bad an idea that would be), I had to read The Dragon of the Month Club, a middle grade novel by Ian Reading in which Ayana and Tyler find themselves in possession of the ability to summon dragons, some inspired by the holidays. 

Of course, what would the fun of it all be without a little mischief and mayhem? The dragons themselves aside, things go awry when a spell goes wrong and they find themselves book hopping, sucked into the worlds of the books that Tyler has in his room. It's a bewildering adventure that could easily be a mini-series or Disney epic adventure on Saturday afternoons.

While some avenues might classify this as a young adult, and I certainly wouldn't discourage young adults from reading it, I'd probably nudge this more towards middle grade for shelving purposes in terms of the voice of the book. Ayana and Tyler, the way they interacted and moved through their story, it seems to fit better in middle grade.

Visually I think you can really get a grasp on what the dragons might be like when they appear to the conjurers. If this got a special edition I would have loved to see pop-up portions or something like that to really highlight their characteristics. It was fun imagining their natures and what they were like in our world, with these two kids that said some words and pop! Here there be dragons!

Now, there are a lot of characters in this book aside from the two main ones, especially once they get to book hopping. That makes things a bit muddy in a sense towards the middle, but I didn't mind it terribly. I've seen worse examples of huge casts crammed into tiny spaces and I think the author in this case handled them pretty well.

Readers of The Dragon of the Month Club might in the future like to check out The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane, beginning with So You Want to be a Wizard. 



I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 Stars

'Everything has to come to an end, sometime.'

L. Frank Baum, The Marvellous Land of Oz

So begins the final story in the Hobbes End trilogy, with a foreboding quote followed by leaping right into the machinations of Lilith, the villain of the piece, monologue-ing as all good villains do, to one of her minions.

With the Universe coming to an end, it may seem an odd time to join our hero Jonathan on his quest to save the world, but luckily Michael's Spear can be read as a standalone novel. While Gabriel's Clock and Sammael's Wings would, of course, expand upon his adventures and journey to this point, I don't think readers coming in at this point will have difficulty picking up with the half-demon, half-angel on his final quest. There are some comments made in conversation, some allusions to previous events that I wasn't quite sure about, but overall was able to cobble together from context and reading onward a bit. 

I have to wonder if more familiarity with the series would help with the odd feeling I had that this book wasn't quite middle grade. The original press release I got for Michael's Spear identified it as such, but had I not known that I would have been hesitant to place it there myself based on the voice of the characters. They seemed older somehow.

Moving on from that, as to what I read solely in this story, I loved Elgar the cat. He was a snarky pet who washed up in the sink and was quite mischievous, a demon of sorts that seems like he was voicing quite a lot of what ordinary cats would if they had human speech abilities. 

There was a good amount of humor coming from all corners. Even the baddies had a quip or two, which I liked because it helped keep the tone pretty light. It balanced out the other, more intense moments, for there was also loss and sacrifice, moments when it felt like not everyone would see the end. There was a lot to learn from the characters and their choices and one lesson in particular?

Never underestimate the power of a good cricket bat. ;)

Rating: 3.5 Stars

I've come to realize that family sagas are one of the most interesting types of books that I read this year. There is, of course, my favorite: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith; too there was Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. As the year draws to a close, I was able to read/listen to Evanthia's Gift, a story of Greek immigrants and their family as they move back and forth between Greece and America and, finally, raise their children as Greek-Americans in a time when identity is something hard to pinpoint, particularly one that has dual countries contributing to who they are.

The book opens with betrayal, but even in that Anastacia, the first main character, finds some hope: her daughter, Sophia. As the story progresses there is still much doubt and pain. Anastacia struggles with what to tell Sophia about her father and, with her friends old and new, the lingering effects of World War II in their homeland, Greece.

The movement from her earliest feelings of betrayal to the slow effort of healing, delayed as it was by self-doubt and trouble from the past, was a tender experience for Anastacia and her readers. There were moments of beauty, such as when she is walking through her hometown and by the sea during her later honeymoon. There were almost moments of personal pain, such as recovering from a late-term miscarriage and hysterectomy. Anastacia was a strong character, even at rock bottom moments, and her and Alex were a wonderful couple to read about.

There were reminiscences throughout that were painful and saddening. Anastacia remembering rationing and the black market. Alex recalling trying to find a beloved merchant and searching the place he knew him most likely to be: boarding a train, guarded by Nazis. Not to compare the heartache to these previous examples, but even the love of the young, the desperation in the relationship between Sophia and Dean, was hard to bear because of their young age, the intensity of such feelings, and the knowledge that there is heartbreak in their past and probably their future as well.

I wasn't a fan when the story turned from Anastacia and Alex and their generation to that of their children because it felt like two separate stories that were only loosely connected. Sophia was a bit difficult to like half of the time because of her infatuation with Dean. Her determination was almost admirable in that she knew what she wanted and held on to that, but I think it hurt her in some ways because she was pinning so much hope and almost her entire future on this one guy when she was still so young. There's an entire future ahead of her, but from the age of twelve onward she's sure that she would go through anything, wait forever even, if only Dean could be hers.

Anastacia and Alex's relationship was much more emotionally rich than that of Sophia and Dean. When things go wrong between them, primarily Dean's fault through some lies with Sophia, much weight is loaded upon her. Her melancholy is exaggerated, too intense, and yet Dean puts the burden on her, refusing to accept responsibility for his part. A textbook teen romance, something of Lifetime movies, once Sophia and Dean started dating, their relationship and the dissolution of it, was a serious downswing in readability.

Sophia states at one point that she has grown as a dancer and as a person; while I might accept her dancing ability, her growth as a person is debatable because of her pining for Dean, her insistence that he will be the only man for her ever, despite their separation and the pain he's put her through by keeping their relationship a secret.

Dean continued to be a disgusting character that I disliked more and more as time went on. His possessiveness of Sophia, even years later, was creepy as hell, especially since he kept insisting he'd evolved and moved on with a woman named Elizabeth. Sophia wasn't much better, frustrating as she was clinging to Dean, to the past, almost as much as he was. The callbacks to Romeo & Juliet were cringe worthy in their accuracy.

The way the secondary female characters Irini (Anastacia's sister) and Elizabeth (Dean's wife) were treated as "developed" characters was disgusting. They were set up as shrewish if only to bolster the primary ladies in their generation. Loading them down in favor of other women felt extreme and a bit hostile. While Elizabeth admittedly had some traits, some snobbishness, that made her unlikable, I think I understood some of her aversion to Dean's family. Considering how they treated her, his parents because she wasn't Greek and his sister because she wasn't Sophia, I don't blame her for sticking to the people she knew and was comfortable with.

The second generation in this family saga was full of people that couldn't figure out their own minds and kept making bad decisions regarding personal relationships. The silent treatment doesn't work and as much as the reader is meant to like Sophia, I kept rolling my eyes at her childish behavior. From seventeen to the end of the book, she in particular felt immature; at 41, her voice, her presence in the book, doesn't feel like she's grown from where she started.

Emily Lawrence was a very good narrator. The quality of her voice made the epic story a pleasant experience and that's essential, particularly when the book was so long. Her accent for the first generation of the story was, as far as I could tell, accurate and it set them apart from their children, who know Greek but have grown up primarily in the United States and thus have more exposure to American sounding voices.

The beginning of this book was far superior to the later two-thirds and while I disliked Sophia, Dean, and others of that time period, Anastacia and Alex's story is worth the read. The interludes of Greek recipes and of excerpts from poems and philosophy texts, while not always making sense in context, were a nice way to break up the monotony of the drier moments. I would not count this among my favorite family sagas, but I think it might reach others that enjoy lighter novel atmospheres, wanting to branch out.



I received a copy of this book from the Audiobookworm Promotions in exchange for an honest review.

Looking for a quick read to share with your little ones this holiday season? How about the newest reindeer on the block, Ronaldo! Anxious to be a good flyer and join Santa's team one day, this first adventure details Ronaldo's best day ever, including flying like his idol Vixen and eating carrot cupcakes to celebrate.

I think this would've been better as a picture book series than a drawn out book. There were moments that felt extraneous, such as lingering over Ronaldo's flying teacher and Ronaldo's bath fizz incident. However, Ronaldo was funny in his efforts and his misadventures during the brief time readers get to spend with him, like flying so long he gets icicles on his antlers and tripping into a flying formation and smashing a cake.

I thought it an interesting bit of trivia when we were told that there are traditional reindeer names and longstanding as it is, there are MANY reindeer with the same names as those in the beloved carol.

The illustrations were a somewhat adorable addition to the story. We got to see into Ronaldo's life, glimpses that made him more relatable such as posters in his room that depicted famous reindeer athletes and movie stars/singers. Some of them were better than others and some didn't really make sense, like Ronaldo's antlers looking more like moose ones than reindeer.

As long as not too much logic is asked of the story, it could be a fun one for young children to read or be read to, especially around this time of year as reindeer are prevalent in the delivery of Christmas presents.



I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

I love a good detective story as a general rule. When presented with the chance to read a book set around the time the Sherlock Holmes stories were published about a reader of them who admired them so much he desired to become a detective, I thought it sounded like a lot of fun. Add to that the fact that the fact that the summary promised one of his clients to be an Egyptian god and I was more than a little intrigued!

Barnabas Tew appears as something of a bumbling sweetheart, somewhere between a pitiable character and a bit of an annoying one. He was enraptured with the Holmes stories so much that, straight out of college, he set about opening up his own detective agency with the intention of being the best one in the country, nay, the world! Ten years later and things are not going as expected. He fears that he might be more suited to the Dr. Watson role in things and his own assistant, Wilfred, would be a better chimney sweep.

His admiration of Holmes is understandable, but I could see where his admiration and his imitation of his hero turned out to be his failing. He doesn't have the same need to pursue justice that I remember Holmes having, as evidenced when Barnabas arrives at the conclusion to at least two of his cases later and doesn't see fit to pursue them for at least justice without financial reward.

He does really keep trying though. How else would you explain still being at the game after ten years of, shall we say, less than stellar performance? Things certainly chance for our main character when he finds himself not of the living any longer and in the employ Anubis, Egyptian God of the Dead!

The absurdity of passing out and waking to find oneself first dead and second in a boat on your way to the Underworld is enough to make anyone rather upset, but I thought Barnabas took it rather well all things considered. From here on out we followed our intrepid detective as he endeavors to solve a mystery that is quite unlike anything he, or even the famous Mr. Holmes, has ever has the fortune to come across.

In this story the writing style was generally well paced. I think I found myself wishing certain passages were a bit shorter so as to get to the point, but overall it wasn't so bad. Barnabas, difficult as he was to love some of the time, was generally a goodhearted man and something of a bookworm.

The Egyptian pantheon was a good cast of characters. I think this story might be one for older fans of Rick Riordan's books, fascinated as he is with Greek, Norse, and Egyptian gods, and especially considering the new client that Anubis procures for Barnabas and Wilfred at the close of the book. Will there be a second book? I'd certainly like to think so; there's a cliffhanger that's got me wondering what sort of mischief Barnabas and Wilfred will be facing in the future.



I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

A picture book featuring thirteen American women in history that didn't let discouragement stop them from achieving their dreams, She Persisted highlights the stories of these individuals. Accompanied by the artwork of Alexandra Boiger, this book is a good introduction to history for young readers.

Chelsea Clinton's book offers two pages per person with a few sentences about their lives: where they came from and what they did that put their names in She Persisted. The book opens with children in a museum with portraits of these amazing women and ends with three standing beneath their favorites. Reading this together with a child may well inspire them to want to hear more about everyone from Harriet Tubman to Virginia Apgar to Oprah Winfrey.

I'm not sure about the cameo mentioned in the description, as the only woman not listed above was Virginia Apgar. Something else I thought might have been a good addition would've been time lines or a reference to the time period in which these women accomplished their discoveries, their appointments, etc. While these entries may well inspire further interest and research into the lives of these women, a rough idea would've felt better for the readers unfamiliar with the names Chelsea chose to include.

A great gift or even a simple bedtime story, She Persisted is a book about strength and pursuing your dreams despite the people that tell you otherwise.