December 2003     Vol.4 Issue 12

This month's book reviews

A teenager's fantasy novel that competes with Harry Potter on the best-sellers list

Christopher Paolini, at age fifteen, wrote the first version of "Eragon," which now edited and republished by a major publisher, is running near the top of lists of best-sellers for fantasy books for kids and young adults. The book is pretty typical of fantasy novels in general in that it is set in an unidentifiable location and era. The characters include humans, shades, dwarfs, elves, and Urgals. The hero in the epic fantasy is a teenager, Eragon, who happens to find a dragon's egg. The dragon, when hatched, bonds with the young man and together they make up a "Dragon Rider" team.

The novel is a coming of age story as Eragon goes from being an insecure youth to a powerful warrior who possesses both magical power and formidable skills with traditional weapons. He starts out with a goal of avenging the murder of an uncle who raised him and ends up fighting the evil ruler of the kingdom in which he resides.

The book includes a map of the terrain and a glossary of phrases from the varied languages of past and present groups that are involved in the plot. "Eragon" has an ending that sets the reader up for volumes two and three in a projected trilogy. Parents can safely encourage their eleven-year-old or older children to read this fantasy novel as long as they are pretty good readers for their age. It is available only in hardback and has 497 pages.

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Can a novel deliver a serious message
while presenting one hilariously
comedic scene after another?

Author Stephanie S. Tolan, in "Surviving the Applewhites," demonstrates that through lots of wacky characters and one side-splittingly laughable scene after another a serious message or two can be effectively delivered. Tolan's two main characters are Jake Semple, an apparently incorrigible delinquent, and E. D. Applewhite, a young girl who loves order and structure, both trying to survive in a family of non-conforming individualists.

The first order of business is trying to keep all the cast of characters straight in this 216-page paperback. Keeping the characters straight is important because this little novel is basically a celebration of diversity. Even the animals have names and each of them has a role in the celebration.

Through Jake Semple, the author illustrates the irony in teen-age behavior where they become stereotypes in their efforts to demonstrate their individuality. Jake becomes truly an individual when he rises above his affectations. In E. D. Applewhite, the author illustrates that being an organizer who can bring order out of chaos is a talent as valuable as that possessed by any artist.

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A kid's view of the federal government's
witness protection program

"Zach's Lie" by Roland Smith gives a fairly gritty view of what a kid might go through who finds himself a part of federal agents' efforts to protect family members of a witness from whom they hope to extract testimony to be used in breaking up a drug cartel. Zach, the young hero in the paperback novel, along with his mother and sister, are victims of crimes committed by the family's husband and father. The novel does a good job of showing the family's ambivalence. They are angry at what he has done to them in causing the loss of their comfortable existence, but they still love and miss him.

The author does a good job of telling a plausible adventure story while, at the same time, introducing young readers to the federal witness program. The ending is not sugarcoated. The family once again has to assume even a third set of identities in order to stay alive. There is no glamour or even a time to totally relax once the decision is made to hide.

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A prize-winning children's book designed
to scare the wits out of young readers

Neil Gaiman, the author of "Coraline," among his many other awards has won the Bram Stoker Award. As you probably already know, Bram Stoker was the author of "Dracula." This should give you some idea of the kind of 'fright" novel that "Coraline" is.

For readers who appreciate and enjoy being scared out of their wits, this is a delicious little paperback. As a reviewer of kids' books, it is clear to me that the kid population is just as eclectic in its reading tastes as the adult population. However, if your child is prone to nightmares, you just might want to read "Coraline" before you encourage him or her to read it. The good news is that in the end the child heroine is able to overcome her other world adversaries. She even manages to save a couple of grown-ups along the way.

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