Set in Regency England (the season of 1815, to be exact), The Season follows the first few months of the social debuts of Alex Stafford and her best friends, Ella and Vivi. In addition to the social pitfalls inherent to their status, there’s also a murder, spies, and romance. The story is full of the […]
The Penderwicks
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy is a sweet story about the adventures of the four Penderwick sisters—Rosalind, age 12; Skye, age 11; Jane, age 10; Batty, age 4—during their three weeks renting a summer house in the Berkshire Mountains with their father and Hound the […]
The Hunger Games
What a compelling, tension-filled, brutal, and difficult read. The Hunger Games is the kind of book that you have to read as quickly as possible because it occupies part of your brain even when you aren’t reading—it sat there in my mind like a reminder of something urgent that I needed to be doing. I’m […]
The Birthday Ball
The Birthday Ball is a cute farce of a fairy tale, with sketches by Jules Feiffer (you may recognize his distinctive style from The Phantom Tollbooth) throughout. It’s patently ridiculous, with exaggerated characters—there’s no attempt at realism. Although in most ways it’s a fairly standard princess-story setting, there are throw away lines about spandex and […]