The Motion of Puppets

by Keith Donohue
August 23, 2017


This book was on a horror display in the library. Of course the title and cover art caught my eye.  A big slow moving at first, but the story was compelling and as I got further in I couldn't stop.

Kay and Theo are living temporarily in Quebec while she works for a street circus and he translates a biography of Edweard Muybridge.   The old city is charming, especially its old buildings and shops.  One in particular, The Quatre Mains, fascinates Kay.  It is full of puppets and old toys.  Kay visits every day to see the old aboriginal puppet in the window.   But the store is never open, so all she can do is peer through the window into the darkness of the shop.  One night, while walking home from the circus, Kay notices a light on in the shop.  She is delighted to find the door open and enters to explore.  She is never seen again.  The book alternates between Theo's quest to find his missing wife and Kay's new consciousness as one of the Quatre Mains puppets.

The book is categorized as horror; occult fiction; and supernatural fiction.  I find that it's hard to pin down so easily.  It's a love story, a fantasy, at times a macabre story, supernatural, gothic, occult, and only a bit horrifying.   It is a horror novel in the same way that Ray Bradbury's books are horror.  To me it had a little bit of a Bradbury vibe.

I enjoyed this immensely.  It's kind of funny - the chapters dealing with the life of the puppets reminded me of books I used to read as a child - Five Dolls in a House or Five Dolls and the Duke  - in a macabre way.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

by Ransom Riggs
October 2011

I chose this book solely because of the cover.  Well.. not only the cover, but the whole design of the book. I didn't even read the plot summary.  When I opened it up and saw pictures like these:

I knew I had to see what it was all about.

The book isn't a creepy horror story as the cover implies.  It does have a creep factor and a few kind of scary scenes, but it is mostly a fantasy adventure story.

Jacob has heard stories all his life about his grandfather's peculiar friends.  As a boy he believed in them. As a teenager, he naturally thinks that they are make believe.  As grandfather gets older he begins acting strange. He gets paranoid and talks about the monsters coming.  One day he calls Jacob frantically asking for the key to his gun case. Of course, Jacob's father hid the key to keep his elderly father from hurting himself. But grandfather is so frantic that Jacob goes over to his house. It's there that Jacob's life changes forever. He sees (or thinks he does) grandfather's monster. And he sees his grandfather mutilated and left for dead in the woods behind his house. Before finally succumbing, grandfather is able to say a few last words to Jacob. But they make not sense:

"Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man's grave. September third, 1940."

Later, in going through his grandfather's belongings Jacob comes across a letter and photographs of the very people from grandfather's stories. This leads Jacob on a personal quest to solve the mystery of the stories, the photos, the monster, and his grandfather's murder.

In the book's endnotes, Ransom Riggs says that he wrote the book after seeing strange old vintage photographs collected by some of his friends.  Supposedly, all of the photos in the book are authentic and not staged for the book.  That makes the book all the more interesting.
There could be a sequel, and I hope there is.  This was a really fun story and a fascinating book.

Count Karlstein

by Philip Pullman
September 2011

 I checked out and tried to listen to  River Secrets by Shannon Hale, but was really very disappointed. The readers were miscast. They were simply readers, if that makes sense. They didn't make their characters live.  It sounded like a mediocre college production.  I couldn't make it past the first chapter. So, on to another full cast audio: Count Karlstein.

I've learned that this was Philip Pullman's first book for children and it was originally written as a school play for the school where Pullman taught.
Kind of funny... the book that originated as a school play became a fantastic audiobook while River Secrets sounded like a school play!

Count Karlstein owns a large estate and cares for his two orphaned nieces, Lucy and Charlotte. He cares nothing about them, however. It's revealed early on that he has made a pact with Zamiel, "the demon huntsman" and plans to leave Lucy and Charlotte in a locked cabin as an offering to Zamiel.

The demon huntsman rides through the land on the eve of All Souls each year. People fear him and parents use his name to discipline their children. He's a boogey man, but he's apparently real.
Karlstein bargained with Zamiel and agreed to let him hunt in his forest, taking whatever he wanted if he left Karlstein himself alone. But twenty years have passed and the pact is about to expire. Karlstein must give Zamiel a special offering or face his wrath. That's why he's decided to give up Lucy and Charlotte.

The plot sounds horrible and scary. But the book isn't that way (at least not until the end). It's actually a rather funny book.

One of the household servants in Castle Karlstein is named Hildi. She learns of the plot and sets out to foil Karlstein's plan. Helping her is Max, the assistant to a traveling magician, and Miss Augusta Davenport, the girls' former teacher.

As I said, it's kind of a funny book, made more so by the great performances in the audiobook. The scene when Zamiel arrives is very scary (at least listening to it is). But there's a happy ending. I don't think it spoils anything to reveal that. Count Karlstein reads a lot like a fairy tale.
I really recommend listening to this book. Philip Pullman is a good storyteller and his first children's book is made all the better by the excellent cast of readers.

Wait Till Helen Comes

by Mary Downing Hahn
September 6, 2011

Another short audiobook to listen to until I can get to another Pitt mystery or the third installment of the Lionboy series.


Wait Till Helen Comes is a ghost story for junior high aged readers (give or take a few grade levels).  This would make a good movie and, in fact, I was surprised to learn that it had never been a made for TV movie.  I can just imagine watching it on the Lifetime channel on a Saturday afternoon.  It will become a movie next year, however. Jennifer Love Hewitt is set to direct a movie for the big screen based on the novel.  I hope that it doesn't become a modern horror movie with more blood and suffering than real suspense.

Wait Till Helen Comes is about a blended family who moves into a charming house and old church which has been converted into an art studio.  Mom (Jean) has two children, Molly and Michael. Divorced from her first husband, she is now married to Dave who has one seven year old daughter, Heather.  Heather's mother (Dave's wife) died in a fire four years earlier and Heather is still dealing with the trauma of the loss.

When the family moves to the former St. Swithins, they discover a small graveyard on the property, along with an old abandoned house called Harper House.  In the graveyard, Heather discovers a long forgotten grave with the initials H.E.H.  Heather's initials just happen to also be H.E.H. and she is exactly the same age as whoever is buried in that grave.  It's easy to see where this is going.

The tension that has existed by bringing the two sets of children together in one household escalates as Heather begins talking to someone named Helen.  No one notices Heather's new "imaginary friend" except Molly.  And, it's only Molly that realizes that something more sinister is happening than pure imagination.

Heather constantly accuses Molly and Michael of being mean. Dave, of course, sides with his daughter.  Jean defends Molly and Michael, which begins to drive a wedge between her and Dave.  Molly can convince no one that it isn't step-sibling rivalry that is causing the bad feelings.  She's on her own to save Heather from the lure of the ghostly Helen.

The book is predictable, but fun. 

Other Kingdoms

by Richard Matheson
August 2011

I was wandering through the new books at the library. A Richard Matheson book! And it was in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section! I loved Richard Matheson and read lots of his stories and books when I was a teenager: the Shock! series of short stories; Third From the Sun; The Shrinking Man; I Am Legend and so on.

Several years ago I read a suspense novel of his called Seven Steps to Midnight. I think that it had a fantastical element to it, but I can't remember for sure. It was awful. I was so disappointed and wondered if my memory of those Matheson books I'd read as a teen was wrong. Was he as good as I had remembered?

I was hopeful when I picked up Other Kingdoms. I wanted to like this book so much.

No good. I couldn't finish it. The story seemed promising. Narrated by an old man, a writer of horror fiction, the story goes back to World War I. The narrator learns of a beautiful place in England from one of his fellow soldiers in the trenches. After the English soldier is killed, the narrator goes to that beautiful place. He had been warned by the Englishman to "avoid middle..." but he never heard the end of that phrase. It had been the man's dying words. What could it mean? The narrator finds out. It's Middle Earth - the place of fairies and magic.

That's about as far as I got. The writing style in this book is highly annoying. Now, I like to use parentheses and dashes. Perhaps I learned to use these in my writing from reading Richard Matheson in the past. I can't remember if he wrote this way in his older books. But in Other Kingdoms, Matheson uses so many parenthetical asides and phrases set aside by dashes that I wanted to scream, "FOCUS!!"

"The book was fifty-seven pages long, and that was too much. Review? One word. Godawful. I planned - eighteen and brainless - to submit it to the primo publishers in New York - I'd show the damned Captain! - or, if necessary (most unlikely, I truly believed) London. Fortunately - thank God for the literary world - I never sent it anywhere. Rats (I'm not sure now, it was rats) chewed up the manuscript. Breaking my author's heart, but now at eighty-two, a source of profound gratitude. I will say that the wheels did begin to turn, later installed on the Arthur Black hearse. The rats - was it rats? - did me a favor."

I looked for reviews on Amazon to see if I was being too hard on Richard Matheson. Maybe I was just not in the mood for this style book. Maybe I should try it again later. Nope, the bad reviews pretty much summed up my own thoughts:

"Other Kingdoms is a far cry from Matheson's other works. The themes, characters, and overall writing style bear little to no resemblance to I Am Legend or Hell House. The narrator is annoying to no end, constantly making alliterations and drawing attention to them like a child showing off an awful drawing. The suspense, action, and eerie feel usual to Matheson are almost completely absent, replaced by dumb humor, an often disgusting and repetitive eroticism, and a bland paganism that can't be taken seriously, even in the context of a fairy story. It was so bad, I couldn't even finish the last quarter of the book. "

Here's part of another review:

"I am so disappointed in this book. I wanted it to be everything it promised to be! A fairy story by the Master! I mused in delight: "What ingenius twists and novel ideas will Matheson inflict on fairy lore?" The answer . . . is nothing new. Nothing fresh. And on top of this, the writing is amateurish at best. The overuse of parentheses and personal asides and apologies to the reader were so annoying that I almost flushed this book down the toilet page by crumpled page! You literally are interrupted and pulled out of the narrative flow EVERY FREAKING PAGE! Or just about. "

I looked online for a bibliography with timeline of Matheson's works. All of his great books were written between about 1954 (I am Legend) and 1975 (Bid Time Return). He published hardly anything in the 1980s and then began publishing again in the 90s. As I said, Seven Steps to Midnight (1993) was junk. Now Other Kingdoms in 2011.
What happened to Richard Matheson? Should I read more of his post 1980s books and give him another chance? Maybe third time will be a charm. Or maybe I should just go back to re-read those great stories that I loved all those years ago.

Seer of Shadows

by Avi
Finished July 10, 2010

I've never read an Avi book I didn't like. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle and The Book Without Words are my favorites, so far. This one is just as good.

It's set in the 1870's during the time when "spirit photography" is becoming popular. Horace Carpetine is apprentice to a photographer named Enoch Middleditch. Horace has been raised to believe in reason and science. He has also been taught to be ethical and fair. Therefore, when Mr. Middleditch decides to insert a spirit image into the portrait of the grieving (not so much) Mrs. Von Macht, Horace is upset. But he is convinced that the trick will give Mrs. Von Macht comfort. And besides, if he doesn't cooperate he will lose his job.

The venture takes a bad turn when Pegg, the Von Macht's servant girl hints that the relationship between Mrs. & Mrs. Von Macht and their departed daughter Eleanora, was not what it seemed to be. And the ever reasonable Horace discovers that there might actually be a ghost in the house.

This is a good and often creepy historical novel. I listened to the book on tape narrated by Steven Boyer, who did an excellent job.

The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman
Finished June 11, 2010

This book received the Newbery Medal for 2009. That was surprising, since Neil Gaiman is British and the Newbery Medal is for "the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children." But, The Graveyard Book was published in the United States and Gaiman now lives in this country. The book is still very British in flavor - one of the reasons I liked it. It's set in modern times, but has a very old fashioned feel because the ghostly characters are of all historical eras from pre-Druid to the 1950's.

It begins with a murder: "There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife." A man, woman and little girl are killed by "the man Jack." Only a baby, "barely a toddler," escapes. The baby is old enough to walk and he does walk - all the way to an old nearby graveyard. The man Jack follows him, but is unable to finish his job because the toddler is taken in by two kindly ghosts - Mr. and Mrs. Owens. They promise the child's mother (now a ghost and on her way to her own graveyard) to keep the toddler safe and raise him. Silas, neither dead nor alive, becomes his guardian and provides the child with food.

The plot of this book is often summed up with the paraphrase, "it takes a graveyard to raise a child." Bod (the child is named Nobody) is given "the Freedom of the Graveyard." As such, he is able to live within it's walls, see and talk to all of it's residents. He even learns to do such things as "fade," "dreamwalk," and cast fear into people's minds.

Bod lives a happy but sheltered life in the cemetary. But he can never hope to ever enter the outside world as long as the man Jack is still looking for him.

The Graveyard Book is part Harry Potter, part Jungle Book. In fact, Neil Gaiman says in his acknowledgements, "First and foremost, and forever: I owe an enormous debt, conscious and, I have no doubt, unconscious, to Rudyard Kipling and the two volumes of his remarkable work The Jungle Book. I read them as a child, excited and impressed, and I've read and reread them many times since."

This is an exciting, funny, somtimes spooky, always charming story. I've heard that the audio book version, narrated by Gaiman himself, is fantastic. There are plans to make it into a movie, which is easy to imagine as you read the book. Gaiman has an excellent way of bringing his story and characters to life in the reader's mind.

The Tale of Halcyon Crane

by Wendy Webb

Finished April 11, 2010

I finally read another book! This one was a good choice for a return to reading. It's a ghost story - a modern gothic. It just caught my eye as I walked through the new book section at the library.

The Tale of Halcyon Crane is of average quality, but I enjoyed it greatly. It's a lot like a Lifetime Movie: a good thing for an afternoon's pastime.

Hallie James receives a letter from a lawyer on Grand Manitou Island informing her that her mother, Madlyn Crane, has just passed away and that she has been named in the will. Included in the lawyer's envelope is a letter from Hallie's mother. This is a real shock for Hallie because she had always been told that her mother died in a fire when she was five years old. Hallie is only able to confirm the existence of Madlyn from her father who is suffering from Alzheimers. He dies the day after revealing this to his daughter.

Hallie goes to Grand Manitou to learn her family history. There she finds out that she is the sole heir of Madlyn's fortune which includes a big Victorian house and estate. Madlyn gives instructions that the house is not to be sold. Perhaps it's this as well as Hallie's desire to learn her history that keeps her there, even after eerie things begin to happen.

Hallie's inherited housekeeper, Iris, tells her (and the readers) stories of each generation of her cursed family.

There's murder, ghosts, romance, storms and creepy cemetaries. Just the kind of book I needed.

Twilight

by Stephenie Meyer
Finished December 7, 2009

What an excruciating book. My theory: this book is meant for teenagers of the social networking age. If you like teenagers telling you about what Jessica said and then what Angela said and then what Mike said and then what Tyler said, this book is for you. The book would have been half the size if Stephenie Meyer had cut down on Bella's blow-by-blow account of making breakfast, doing homework, thinking about Edward. Conversations between the two gooey young lovers are recounted word for boring word.

I suppose that if you're a high school or middle school girl, this is your life, plus vampires.

Things I hated about the book - the boring narration by first person Bella... the boring conversations...the teen girl type mythology of vampires.

They drive cool cars! They are incredibly good looking! They smell great! They can be noble and good if they want to! They can stop you from becoming a vampire by sucking the vampire venom out of your veins with their venomous mouths! They sparkle!

More things I hate....
I hate the way that Edward smothers Bella. He wants her to live a normal life and takes her to the prom so that she can experience it like any other girl, but during the prom, he takes her outside to sit on a bench alone with him.
Bella describes herself as clumsy and lacking balance so often that I wondered if she had some medical condition.
The vampires play baseball in thunderstorms so that people can't hear the thunderous noise that occurs when a vampire hits a ball with a bat or when one vampire collides with another. Somehow, I think that the crack of a bat wouldn't be any louder with a vampire than it would with any other player.

I stuck with the book until the end because I wanted to find out what happens. The story ends abruptly. Instead of reading the next book, I went to Wikipedia and read a synopsis of the three sequels.

Team Edward? No. Team Jacob? No. Call Van Helsing, somebody!

An Enemy at Green Knowe

by L.M. Boston

Finished reading September 23, 2009

I called The Children of Green Knowe a creepy book, and so it was. An Enemy at Green Knowe is also a creepy book, but in a very different way. In the case of the first book, creepy meant disturbingly odd. This last book -the fifth in the Green Knowe series - is creepy! It's even pretty scary at times.

Tolly has returned and has become fast friends with Ping, who is now living at Green Knowe as well. One afternoon, Mrs. Oldknowe tells the boys one of her stories about the past inhabitants of the house. In 1630 Dr. Wolfgang Vogel, a famous scholar and alchemist, has been called to Green Knowe to tutor Roger, the sickly son of Squire and Mrs. Oldknowe. Vogel is a mysterious, disturbing man and Roger comes to dislike him. He wishes for his old tutor, the vicar Piers Madely. Stories about Dr. Vogel begin circulating among the locals. Some say that they've seen him lurking about at night. Others say that a hooded figure had come to a woman, offering to buy her stillborn baby for a piece of gold. Has Vogel been looking for bodies to use in his black magic? Roger's illness becomes worse and he tearfully begs his parents to take him away from Dr. Vogel. They finally relent. A week after Roger's departure, Dr. Vogel sends for Piers Madely to come to him immediately.

"He found Dr. Vogel in a lamentable state, hardly recognizable. He had had no sleep for nights on end. He was unbrushed, and his clothes were torn as if from a fight. He said that he wished to make a confession, and as he stammered it out, he behaved as if the room were full of threatening enemies..."

After Vogel tells Madely what's troubling him, the vicar tells him to burn all of his books and certain of his belongings. They begin burning the books.

"Dr. Vogel repeatedly cried out, 'Make haste! Before the moon rises,' and he poured pitch and tallow into the fire...Once Dr. Vogel saw in the firelight a book lying open and unburnt, showing a page of intricate diagrams, and he let out a scream and pitch-forked it into the heart of the flames. Finally there was nothing but a glowing mass. The Doctor sank exhausted on the threshhold of the vault, his head in his hands. Piers managed to say a compassionate, 'Now peace be with you as your trust is in God'... 'Alas!' groaned Dr. Vogel, pointing at the smoldering books and looking not less woeful because his exhausted eyes were straying separately. 'What's thought cannot be unthought.' "

Two hours later, Piers Madely hears a scream coming from Green Knowe, across the meadows from his house. Dr. Vogel was never heard from again.

As with many of Grandmother Oldknowe's stories, this one comes back to them in the form of Melanie Powers, a scholar researching English private libraries. She has come to Green Knowe to find a certain very rare old manuscript belonging to Dr. Wolfgang Vogel. Grandmother invites her to tea, but tells her that Vogels books were all burnt. Powers won't be dissuaded. Her curiosity about the house and her strange manner disturb Tolly and Ping who suspect her of being a witch.

Melanie Powers becomes less friendly and begins to show her true colors as she stops at nothing to find Vogel's missing volume. Curses befall the Green Knowe household and Tolly and Ping begin to fight back.

This is an exciting chapter in the Green Knowe series. Melanie Powers is genuinely a creepy, eerie character. Tolly has grown out of the milquetoast boy of the first two books. Ping, as always, is an interesting character. Even Hanno makes somewhat of an appearance.

There's something for everyone in the Green Knowe series.

The River at Green Knowe

by L. M. Boston

Finished reading September 15, 2009

This is the third book in the Green Knowe series.

Grandmother Oldknowe and Tolly are absent. Perhaps they went to Cornwall, as was mentioned at the end of Treasure of Green Knowe.

The protagonists of this book are Ping, Oskar and Ida. Dr. Maud Biggin and her old friend, Miss Sybilla Bun, have rented Green Knowe. They invite Dr. Biggin's great niece (Ida) and two refugees from the Society for the Promotion of Summer Holidays for Displaced Children (S.P.S.H.D.C) to spend the summer with them.

Interestingly enough, the two women leave the children to their own devices as Dr. Biggins is too busy writing a book called A Reconstruction of the Habits and the Diet of the Ogru: A Summary of Recent Discoveries. Apparently, ogru are giants. Sybilla thinks only of cooking. Thus, the children are able to leave the house at any time of day or night to explore the river and it's many islands near Green Knowe.

The Children of Green Knowe involved ghosts of past inhabitants. Treasure of Green Knowe seemed to have a time travel element. Rivers introduces an even more fantastical theme of magical creatures, including winged horses and giants. There is one kind of frightening scene that brings back the time travel element when Ping, Oskar and Ida witness a pagan moon dance or celebration.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It's obvious why the series has been revived over the past several years. Thanks to the popularity of Harry Potter classic fantasies like the Green Knowe series as well as books by E. Nesibt, George MacDonald, Edward Eager and the more recent Susan Cooper series have been given new life. By design the cover art of these new editions of "The Green Knowe Chronicles" by Bret Helquist connect this series to others such as The Spiderwick Chronicles, Chasing Vermeer and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

So far, each of the three books has had a different flavor. The first was a dreamy ghost story. The second was almost a historical novel with a very few fantasy elements. This was an adventure fantasy. I can't wait to read the next.

One of the most interesting things about this book was the abrupt ending. It was startling, but carried out Boston's theme of the imagination of children and the inability of adults to see past their own assumptions.

Treasure of Green Knowe

by L. M. Boston

Finished reading September 13, 2009

Originally known as The Chimneys of Green Knowe, this is the sequel to The Children of Green Knowe. Tolly returns to Green Knowe on his Easter holiday. He continues to explore the house and gardens, learning things about its past inhabitants. Grandmother Oldknowe is mending a patchwork quilt and each bit of fabric inspires her to tell a story from the end of the 18th century when Captain Oldknowe, his wife Maria and children Sefton and Susan lived in the manor.

This book is much better than the first. The activities of Tolly and Grandmother Oldknowe are simply a frame that holds the wonderful story of blind Susan who has been stifled by her indifferent mother and her well meaning, but woefully misguided Nanny Softly. Captain Oldknowe is devoted to his daughter and is the only one who doesn't seem to treat her as an imbecile or a helpless, fragile doll. Unfortunately, he is most often away at sea on his ship the Woodpecker. While in Barbados the Captain meets a young black boy named Jacob who asks him, "Captain, buy me?" Captain Oldknow despises slavery and refuses to buy the boy. But he finally relents in order to give Jacob a free life. He brings Jacob home to live at Green Knowe and to be Susan's helper and guide. Jacob opens the world to Susan. Through him, she begins to explore the house and gardens.

L. M. Boston has a lot to say about justice, fairness and human decency. Her depiction of the family's treatment of blind Susan and black Jacob is heartbreaking.

The treasure referred to in the title is a collection of jewels belonging to Maria, Susan's mother. Tolly spends his vacation searching for the missing jewels so that his Grandmother won't have to sell the painting of Toby, Linnett and Alexander (from the last book). Tolly is less annoying in this book than the last. He still seems to take the presence of spirits in stride, although the spirits don't appear as often in this book. There is almost a time travel element to this book rather than a haunting.

This book was so good that I plan to read the rest of the series.

The Children of Green Knowe

by L.M. Boston
Finished September 9, 2009

What a creepy book! It wasn't scary and it wasn't really eerie, but it was just an unusual, sweetly creepy book.

I've known of this book for years but never thought to read it until I came across the description for A Stranger at Green Knowe" which is about a Chinese boy who befriends a gorilla at the zoo. I decided to read the first book in the series before reading A Stranger. I'm not really sure this is a series of continuous stories. It seems to be a series of stories which happen to be set in the English manor called Green Knowe.

The Children of Green Knowe is about a boy named Toseland (Tolly) who goes to spend the Christmas holiday with his great grandmother at Green Noah (aka Green Knowe). His mother is dead and his father lives in Burma with his stepmother who insists on calling him Toto.
Tolly usually has to spend the holiday by himself at boarding school. All of the other children get to go home. Tolly must stay with the Master and Mistress of the school who pretty much ignore him.

Green Noah is a welcomed change of pace for the boy and his great grandmother is warm and gracious and loving. Tolly feels immediately at home. This is where it gets creepy.
Tolly begins hearing sounds of children laughing. The rocking horse in his bedroom seems to move on it's own. Little unexplainable things happen. But none of this seems to bother Tolly at all. He takes it all in with an insipid childlike wonder. The book never tells Tolly's age, but he seems to be around 8 or nine, with an emotional age of four. I don't mean that L.M. Boston wrote about an emotionally stunted boy. He had a cloying, immature personality .

The children that Tolly hears turn out to be the spirits of Toby, Alexander and Linnet, three children from four hundred years past. Tolly longs to meet them and to see Toby's horse Feste.
Magical things happen throughout the book as little by little, the children trust Tolly enough to reveal themselves.

There's a slightly scary incident with a hedge man called "Green Noah" and a statue of St. Christopher.

The book reads like a foggy dream. It was difficult to read for me. It's not that the text was complex or difficult. It's just that I felt in such a fog reading it. Someone else could take this book and make an excellent novel out of it. As it is, The Children of Green Knowe is a good idea for a book.

L.M. Boston wrote the Green Knowe books for herself, not any audience. She was inspired to write this one after renovating an old manor house. In that case, this book is exactly what she wanted. I wanted more, however.

You Tube has a clip from the 1986 BBC series based on the book. I was able to see the first 9 minutes of the show. It looks to be very good and Toseland (Tolly) in the series isn't the insipid, pasty little boy I imagined him to be. I would love to see that series.
I will read the other Green Knowe books in hopes that they are better than this one.

Coraline

by Neil Gaiman

Read November 2008

This was the second time I read Coraline. I wanted to re-read it before I saw the movie. The first time I read it, I found it to be one of the creepiest books I'd read. I remember sitting on my bed at La Rochelle Rd, reading. I couldn't put the book down but it was getting late and I felt so spooked. The second time I read it, there wasn't the creepy, spooky feeling, but it was just as good the second time around.

Coraline is bored and looking for adventure. Her workaholic parents are a little strange - eggheads and absent minded. Coraline meets her strange neighbors - the two former actresses who live with their dogs in the basement apartment and the man with the mouse circus. He lives upstairs. In Coraline's apartment, there is a door to nowhere. But one day Coraline opens the door and instead of a brick wall, there's an entrance into a bizzaro world that looks like her own. But her mother (the "Other Mother") has buttons for eyes. She gives Coraline what she's been longing for - some attention. But Coraline finds out that there's no place like home when the Other Mother gets stranger and creepier.

The movie was very good but, of course, it couldn't match the book. There were little touches in the book that just didn't translate. It's been a few months since I've seen the movie, but I remember thinking that the Other Mother grew sinister looking too quickly. I think the Other Father was a little different as well.

But I loved Coraline the book!