Book Review and Giveaway! #MGBookElves

I don't usually review my own work...and I'm not. But I'll review the other 6/7 of the book!

Seven stories, seven situations threatening the festivities. Will the holidays be a disaster?  Will families be left out in the cold? Will there be tears before bedtime, or will there be happy endings all round? The MG BookElves group brings you its first anthology of tales to enjoy during the holiday season:

* Reliable Clooney Dockins delivered his town's mail on time for thirty-two years, until that strange and impossible Christmas Eve when he woke up late. M.G.King (Fizz & Peppers at the Bottom of the World, Librarian on the Roof)

* Max the Tonkinese cat finds Santa Claus on the roof and is whisked away to retrieve a very special message from another time and place. Wendy Leighton-Porter (The Shadows from the Past series)

* Shirley Link is an amateur sleuth who lives in a town that could use all the sleuths it can get! What is it about Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts that makes it such a hotspot for dastardly deeds? Even on Christmas Day? Ben Zackheim (Shirley Link Detective Series, The Camelot Kids)

*Champ may be a rescue dog, but he’s the best person around to stop the dognappers and save heartbreak at Christmas. Fiona Ingram (The Secret of the Sacred Scarab, Champ: My Story of Survival)

* When the railroad gets snowed under, the two bit town of Skunk Corners has to play host to a load of mighty difficult strangers.  Can Big Al and the Ninja Librarian keep the season of goodwill from breaking into a riot? Rebecca M. Douglass (The Ninja Librarian, Halitor the Hero)

*Far away on the west coast of a western Scottish island, Dylan and Dougall face yuletide in Castle Haunn with no heat, light or food.  Can Dylan get the message through to the mainland for help, or is there something nasty waiting for him in the hills? Jemima Pett (The Princelings of the East series)

*It’s Christmas holiday and Lily is stuck in a remote mountain village. With school out for a month and no internet connection, at first she wonders how she will fill the time. In this sweet romance, Lily discovers there’s more to gift-giving than just the giving.  S. Smith (The Seed Savers series)

Each tale weaves its own seasonal magic.  Each magician has already warmed the hearts of thousands of young readers with their stories. Enjoy these frantic races to meet the Christmas deadline while you curl up in your favourite reading spot this winter.

Details: 40,000 words (approx); 157 pages (approx, ebook)/ 184 pages (paperback) ; grade 4 +; ages 8 to 108.

Title: BookElves Anthology, Vol. 1
Authors: Jemima Pett, Rebecca M. Douglass, Fiona Ingram, M.G. King, Wendy Leighton-Porter, S. Smith, Ben Zackhiem
Publisher: Princelings Publications, 2014, 184 pages.
Source: I got to proof the book for our group!



My Review:

 There really is something in here for everyone. The stories are very different, but I enjoyed every one, and each had something to offer the reader: humor, inspiration, food for thought, and a faint whiff of candy canes and chocolate. Most of the stories are spin-offs or bonus tales from series, from my own Ninja Librarian to the guinea pigs that inhabit the world of the Princelings of the East to Max the Tonkinese cat and Shirley Link, kid-detective extraordinaire. I have read some of the series, and for others this was my first encounter, and all the stories read well as stand-alone stories, as well as tickling my desire to delve further into their worlds. It's nice bunch of stories to curl up with as the holidays approach!

Recommendation: 
It really is for kids from 8 to 108, though some stories skew more to the younger or older child, largely through variations in reading level. I recommend this for anyone, of any age, who just wants to spend a little time with some heartwarming holiday stories!

Like it? Buy at Amazon in paperback or Kindle, or enter the Goodreads Giveaway for a copy all your own! 

And while we're on the subject of great new books...

 

Split Second: A Xavier Xanthum Story

It's Flash Fiction Friday, and I've taken up another of the Douglass-Pett challenges. The title for this week was "Split Second," and the comment that it had been a long time since Xavier Xanthum had made an appearance gave me direction. Kitty Comet made his first appearance around Christmas time last year...

Split Second

Xavier Xanthum, Space Explorer, lounged in his PT pod, watching the nearby planetoid and playing with his cat. The pod had the best view window on the Wanderlust, and made a nice place to help Kitty Comet learn to cope with low gravity. And if watching a kitten play on a planet’s surface was amusing, watching one play in free-fall was even more so.

“Just one more try, Kitty,” he encouraged.

Larry’s voice came over the speaker. “You need to exercise in at least ¾ Earth Gravity, Xavier.”

Xavier looked around and spotted Larry. The disembodied eyeballs that were the computer’s manifestation floated behind him. “I’m helping Comet adjust to Zero G.” Xavier held up a string, which followed his hand in a lazy ripple. The cat leapt from the wall, trying to grab the string before she floated on to thump gently on the opposite wall. “I didn’t come in here to work out. I came for the view. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Xavier gestured at the view window, and Larry’s eyeballs rolled a bit in that direction.

“Under the definition of ‘beautiful’ constructed from your preferences and those of others, yes. Are you going to land?” Larry never could quite forget that he was a computer, though a thoroughly self-willed computer.

“Don’t know. Is it mapped?”

“Negative. It does not appear to be included in the quadrant maps for this System.”

Xavier sat up, interested. He let go of the string, which began a very slow drift toward the recirc intake. Comet snatched it, and kitten and string tumbled in mid-air, tangling together. Xavier watched with a smile, but his mind was already on the possibilities the planet presented.

“This could be our big break, Larry,” Xavier said. “Who knows what might be down there?”

A silence ensured, during which Larry ran something through his electronic mind. He liked to pretend that he thought at human speeds. “I wish you hadn’t said that,” was his eventual and un-computerish response.

Xavier noticed his computer’s odd response, and didn’t rush. He did find that thinking first increased the chances of survival, in any case. Scooping up the kitten, he pushed off toward the control room, thinking. Whatever Larry had noticed, it hadn’t been definite enough for him to say right out. But he’d seen something.

An hour later, Xavier gave up. “Larry, I can’t find a thing wrong with this planet. What has you so jumpy?” He maneuvered the ship into a somewhat closer orbit, in hopes of learning more without actually landing.

“I'm not sure, Captain.”

Xavier whistled softly. Larry calling him “Captain” was a bad sign. Larry admitting to not knowing something was worse.

“Look at the cat,” Larry commanded suddenly. Xavier spun around, grabbed a grip-bar to stop his spin, and spotted the cat. Comet was staring at the small view window, and her fur stood up all along her back. Her tail was twice as big around as usual, which made it huge, because in low gravity her fur stood out a lot in any case.

“You don’t like it, Comet?”

“Meow!” The fur-ball turned her back on the window. The control room had just enough gravity for her to sit, raise a hind leg, and wash her unmentionables, in a clear act of defiance. Her fur did not settle down.

“Wow.” Xavier wasn’t sure if he’d said it or Larry. The cat had never reacted like this before, and both the human and the computer eyes lingered on her before turning to consider the orb beneath them.

“Still, I’d like to go down,” Xavier said. “I can’t really let a cat make my decisions for me.” He looked at the cat again. “Full scan of the surface, Larry, with everything we have.”

Man, floating eyeballs, and cat stared intently at the views and data that filled every screen in the control room. Then the cat backed up, fur again standing on her back, a low growl coming from her throat. A bit later, Xavier thought he saw something. Again, the cat growled.

“Larry, did you see what it was? I just caught a flash—something on screen 3B for a split second—out of the corner of my eye.”

“I will replay that segment.” It was as close as Larry would come to saying he had missed something. A computer ought to be able to see everything, but computer scan was not the same as the old Mark I eyeball. Even if the eyeball was disembodied. This time, as the scan ran, Larry kept one eye on the cat, and the other tracked where the cat was looking. Nothing happened.

“Okay, we might have to go down just to see what’s happening.” Xavier had a hunch they shouldn’t, but he couldn’t run from a planet because something down there scared his cat. He began the descent sequence, while Larry and Comet kept watching the surface.

Xavier’s hands were on the controls to bring them into the final swing around the planet when Larry said, “Pull up now. Now.” His voice had lost all human tones. That, combined with Comet’s yowling, convinced Xavier. With less than a second to spare before he was committed to landing, he grabbed the direct controls, breaking the orbit just as…something…reached for the ship.

Shaken, Xavier stared at the vid screens. “What—what was that? And how did you know?”

“The space body appears to be sentient, not planetoid,” Larry’s flat computer-voice reported. “The cat saw it blink. It reached for us. It is good you have quick reflexes.”

“And that gave me a split second to pull out,” Xavier said. He buried his shaking hands in the cat’s fur. “That was close. Thanks, Comet. Larry, file a report with the proper authorities, and take us out of here. Comet and I are going to take a nap.”

The cat was already curled up on nothing, nose to tail, ready to sleep off the effects of so nearly ceasing to exist.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2014

Redwall Audio

        

This isn't a conventional review. No one needs to be told that Brian Jacques' Redwall books are fantastic for older children, especially those who like adventures, battles, and all the other trappings of high fantasy (including death-or-glory charges and the loss of some good beasts, thus the "older children" label). But I hadn't done the audio books until recently. We tried once on a car trip, and the road noise made it too hard to understand some of the undeniably challenging (for this west-coast US sort, anyway) accents some of the animals use.

[Okay, a note just in case someone is unfamiliar with these great books. The world of Redwall is something like Narnia, in that it is full of anthropomorphic animals, though without the pesky humans than show up in Narnia. These mice, hares, hedgehogs and other good British animals (and make no mistake; the good animals ARE British) are frequently under attack by hordes of evil and violent weasels, stoats, and above all rats--you see how we get an easy good and evil divide, though I could go on a bit about vilifying predators! Each type of animal speaks with a different accent, some very thick.]

Recently the topic of audio books for road trips came up in a Goodreads.com discussion Forum in which I participate, and I remembered our difficulty listening to Redwall, as well as how much we enjoyed reading the books aloud with our boys (I'm sure our attempts at rendering the accents--which Jacques indicates very clearly with spelling, etc.--would have had any British listener rolling on the floor). I thought I should give them another try, without road noise--and got hooked! I've now listened to three of the books, which are done with a full cast (though in many, including Redwall, Jacques himself is the main narrator). A fourth somehow got started this week...

These audio productions are wonderful! The accents do cause some issues, but the majority of voices use more standard speech (what we recognize from British TV shows and the BBC), and the reading is excellent. Music adds a nice touch, though the songs (the books are full of songs sung by the beasts) don't quite fit my mental image (what is the word for an auditory image?) of them. It can be very hard to stop listening once begun! That is of course a tribute to both the writing and the performance, and I have to say that both are fantastic.

One note about the series: I felt when we first read them, and that feeling was confirmed this go-around, that the first book, Redwall, is the weakest and one in which Jacques was feeling about for just how the world would look and feel. Even by the end of that book I think he had it down better than at the start, and the other books in the series have a much more consistent and convincing world. Although by the last book in the series there is a certain feel of sameness--the general structure of each, with its dreadful threat to goodbeasts from an evil Horde, is predictable--the adventures and characters are so compelling that you really don't care!

A second note on the series: as mentioned, these are not for young children. The fighting is not precisely graphically depicted, but it's pretty violent. There is a lot of death and not just of the evil creatures. There is no sexuality, however (maybe an occasional bit of falling in love, but it's pretty much passed over, and animals seem to largely appear as dibbuns--youngsters--without any process for getting there).

Recommendation:
I give this series a hearty two thumbs up whatever form you take it. I'm a bit dubious about the video and graphic novels, but I've seen some testimonials that those made people start reading, so I won't judge.  But if you like listening to books and want some rousing adventures, check them out on audio! Just don't try it in a noisy car :)

Full Disclosure: I checked the Redwall books out of my (digital) library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

©Rebecca M. Douglass