"Beezus and Ramona" by Beverly Cleary

At first glance, one might say that this book is similar to Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. After all, they're both books about fourth-graders with annoying younger siblings.

But in asserting that, one would miss the crucial detail that Beezus and Ramona is much better.

Ramona, for instance, actually faces consequences for her misbehavior. Relatedly, the parents in this are much better than Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing's parents, hence their willingness to actually give Ramona consequences for her misbehavior.

Ramona is also not so consistently malevolent as Fudge from Tales, etc is. She acts out, but she's not as gleeful about it, possibly because (again) acting out has consequences for her.

I read both entire series with these characters (the Henry books and the Ramona books) back when I was in like fourth grade. Hence why I have occasionally wished to have grown up in the 1950s.

For anyone who hasn't read this (and if you haven't, you might want to), I should probably mention that "Beezus" is a nickname for "Beatrice".

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E.

4 stars.

(Endnote: Bingle-bongle-by!)

"Anne of Green Gables" by L. M. Montgomery

Behold, it's slice-of-life that I actually like.

Perhaps this is because it's not boring. As you may know, Bob, the main reason I don't tend to like slice-of-life is that it bores me to read about the everyday lives of these characters about whom I do not care; Anne of Green Gables manages to be interesting, and it also manages to have characters I care about. They have personalities.

I would like to live in Avonlea. It's full of people who seem like they'd be interesting to know.

During this readthrough, I realized that pretty much everyone in this book is happy. To greater or lesser degrees, sure, but they are. 

Anne talks like a book, so she will occasionally say things like "I swept her a look of withering scorn." It's implied she got most of her vocabulary from reading. As the person who once used the word "oscillates" in a paper because it legitimately did not occur to me that something like "switches" would perhaps be a better choice, I see a bit of myself in that. Anne also occasionally manages to talk for several pages at a time without a paragraph break, which... I don't think I've ever done that?

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    "Anne, are you killed?" shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. "Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me and tell me if you're killed."

    To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pye, who, in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible visions of a future branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne Shirley's early and tragic death, Anne sat dizzily up and answered uncertainly: "No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious."

    "Where?" sobbed Carrie Sloane. "Oh, where, Anne?"

    Page 301.

    The first person we saw was Moody Spurgeon sitting on the steps and muttering away to himself. Jane asked him what on earth he was doing and he said he was repeating the multiplication table over and over to steady his nerves and for pity's sake not to interrupt him, because if he stopped for a moment he got frightened and forgot everything he ever knew, but the multiplication table kept all his facts firmly in his proper place!

    Page 417.

(Endnote: My mom reviewed this, twice. And this review is part of my first completed quest.)

"The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I actually rather like The Secret Garden.

That may seem a tad weird coming from me, because I don't usually like slice-of-life or slice-of-life-adjacent things. However, most of the reason for my dislike of such things comes from the fact that I don't often care about the lives of the random people they revolve around. And I actually do care about Mary Lennox; she's a character I like to read about. The same goes for Dickon. I care less about Colin and his dad, but even without them it's still two characters who do interest me from the start, which is two more than most slice-of-life or slice-of-life-adjacent books can boast.

Having said that, I will now also say that I think the first half-ish of the book is better. The second half is where the kids (mostly Colin, but the other two as well) decide that Magic is a thing that exists (and must be capitalized). I entirely forgot about that, probably because I like the first half better.

To be entirely honest, I don't have much else to say. (Although I realize, writing this, that the previous two paragraphs were written under the assumption that you already know what happens in the book. If not, I'll take a stab at clearing it up a bit for you: Mary Lennox is the protagonist. Colin, Dickon, and Colin's dad are not the protagonist.)

Colin's dad is named Archibald. I know his last name is actually Craven, but my brain insists it is in fact Asparagus.

My mom reviewed this. Also, this review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E, probably.

4 stars.

(Endnote: This should not be confused with "The Secret Garden," by G. K. Chesterton, which I have also reviewed.)

"Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" by Judy Blume

I did not expect to like this book. Turns out, I don't like this book, so my expectations were correct. And that is entirely due to:

"Look for the other books about Peter, Sheila, and the irrepressible Fudge!"

     -the back cover

"Fudge should be repressed."

     -me to my family midway through reading this

Fudge is the protagonist's incredibly annoying younger brother. He is, as you may have guessed, incredibly annoying. So kudos to Judy Blume for making him authentically awful, but at the same time, he's so awful that he ruins pretty much the entire book for me. Much like he ruins pretty much the entire book for his older brother, come to think of it.

Really, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is a cautionary tale on how toddlers (in general) will be as awful as they can get away with, and if you parent your toddler wrong (i.e. letting them get away with things) the toddler will be awful. If you ever find anyone who doesn't believe in original sin, just point them at a small child who's been parented badly (i.e. allowed to get away with things).

But hey, fourth graders aren't twelve! So there's that, at least.

Note: To be clear, I have nothing against twelve-year-olds. It's just that they comprise approximately 96% of all middle-grade fiction protagonists, so I'm kind of tired of reading about them.

I expected to dislike this, because I expected it to be a ten-year-old girl having school drama. Instead I disliked it because it was a nine-year-old boy having family drama with his incredibly annoying younger brother. I've never had an incredibly annoying younger brother, but I'm glad of that fact and have no desire to experience such a sibling vicariously.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for Fudge.

2 stars. Which rating it only manages because I generally reserve one-star ratings for things like "wildly inappropriate content" or "portraying Satan as a good guy".

(Endnote: I'm starting a petition to put Fudge in a timeout and ignore him until he behaves.)

"The Wednesday Wars" by Gary D. Schmidt

The Wednesday Wars is a book about a 1960s schoolboy who has interpersonal interactions, makes friends, and discovers that Shakespeare doesn't have to be boring. That's one of the most stereotypical book-review sentences I've ever written, but I couldn't figure out a better way to start it, so there you are.

 

The titular Wednesday Wars refer to the fact that our protagonist Holling Hoodhood is the only person in his entire class who's neither Catholic nor Jewish (he's Presbyterian) and therefore doesn't have a reason to not be in school on Wednesdays. So he's stuck in his English class with a teacher who (at least at first) he's pretty sure hates him; after all, what other reason could she have for making him read Shakespeare outside of class? 

 

They're not super antagonistic for super long, although there are some clashes over Shakespeare when the teacher wants Holling to read it for the Literary Value, and Holling wants to read it for the murder and the interesting new things to shout at people. Most of the plot comes from Holling's day-to-day interactions with the people around him (the teacher, his classmates, his parents, his attempted-flower-child sister) and the world around him (his school, the escaped rats in his school, a school bus, et cetera). Though when I say "plot" that should really have some air quotes around it, because this is slice-of-life so it doesn't really have a proper plot.

 

(Not that that's necessarily a bad thing; not having a properly plotty plot is pretty much the entire basis of slice-of-life. Which this is. Just because it doesn't have a plot per se doesn't mean it's bad.)

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some violence.

 

4 stars. 

 

Favorite lines:

 

    I mean, a potion to almost kill you? She drinks a potion to almost kill you? Who would drink a potion to almost kill you?

    Page 134. It's Holling describing his low opinion of Romeo and Juliet.

 

(Endnote: Toads, beetles, bats light upon thee!) 

Mini-Reviews 17: Again

Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers

My mom reviewed this, here. Go there for some actual thoughts on the book.

I honestly wouldn't have done even this utter placeholder of a mini-review normally. However, this (sad excuse for a) review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+.

3 stars.

Tags for this one: 3-star, classics, junior fiction, magical realism, rated E10+

Quaint Creatures by Andrew D. Meredith

This is a book about a veterinarian in what's basically a D&D world. It's quite fun and I wish it were a series so I could read more of it.

I think it balances the slice-of-life aspect with the plot quite well. That, however, is my personal opinion; other people might think it needs more plot or more slice-of-life.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for fantasy violence. It could be a reasonably good videogame; I'd play it.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, fantasy, rated E10+, slice-of-life

The Strange and Deadly Portraits of Bryony Gray by E. Latimer

This book involves (posthumously) Dorian Gray, of The Picture of Dorian Gray fame. That would be a spoiler, but come on, the book's about spooky magic paintings and the protagonist's last name is Gray.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for scary scenes and {T15+ implied past homosexuality, thanks to the subject matter involving Oscar Wilde. It's pretty veiled, and if you didn't know about Wilde you probably wouldn't notice it, but it's there and it bugged me. It was also kind of sprung on you near the end, so I'd already read most of the book before I noticed.}

1 star. Honestly I probably should have quit reading it, but I wanted to know how it ended. It's rather a shame about the above-mentioned redactedness, because Bryony herself could have been quite a compelling protagonist.

Tags for this one: 1-star, magical realism, rated T15+

(Endnote: Zac Efron is in none of these books.)

"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott

I probably wouldn't have read this again for another decade at least if it hadn't been for my first completed quest. Yup, I've started that up again, mostly because I was running out of ideas for things to read. Maybe I'll finally make some headway on it.

This is a classic of slice-of-life, and as such, it is boring as nouns unless you care about the characters. Who did grow on me, eventually, but for the first third or so of the book, it wasn't a terribly enjoyable read.

Now, if you do care about the characters, it's pretty good. Once I got past the first third of the book and got invested in these people's lives, the book went pretty fast.

Oh, and did you know |Beth| doesn't die in this? That's actually in the sequel, also titled Little Women (or Good Wives in Britain), which usually gets smushed together with this one in a single volume. Faced with the daunting prospect of this already long book being twice as long, I decided to just go with the first one.

In case you hadn't guessed, this review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E. Nothing objectionable. Old books are nice like that.

4 stars.

(Endnote: I was three days ago years old [when I wrote this post versus when I published it] when I realized I didn't have a slice-of-life tag on this blog and should probably make one.)