"The Golden Hour" by Carrie Brownell, illustrated by Hannah Hill

I don't often review picture books here, but The Golden Hour by Carrie Brownell is a Christmas picture book, and that has made all the difference.  

This is a lovely story about the wooden angels at Westminster Cathedral in London coming alive for one hour every Christmas night.  They usually spend their hour singing and flying about the cathedral, but one night, one angel sneaks outside and has an encounter with a child... and I can't spoil the rest, I really can't.  The last page gave me goosebumps AND brought tears to my eyes, so yeah, very good stuff here.

The illustrations by Hannah Hill are beautiful without being either too cutesy or too grandiose.  They suit the story perfectly.

This is too long to read to young children -- probably best for kids around 5 and up.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Absolutely wholesome and perfect for kids.

"The Last Atlantean" by Emily Hayse

Emily Hayse's books have a kind of direct, inevitable heroism that I find enthralling.  Her prose suits other and older worlds, filled with larger-than-life heroes and heroines, villains and villainesses.  This whole book felt like a movie made in the 1950s but set a few decades earlier.  

Hattie is a lighthouse keeper's daughter living in Maine in 1912.  A stranger washes up on shore one night, and Hattie rescues him, helps nurse him back to health, and falls in love with them.

Not even halfway through the book, they get married, after he's revealed that he's not just a random sailor, he's actually Isurus, the rightful king of Atlantis.  Yes, the lost kingdom of Atlantis.  Which seems not so much lost as hidden, in this.

Of course, Isurus and Hattie go to Atlantis.  With the help of a handful of faithful followers, Isurus attempts to take down his half brother, who betrayed Isurus and then usurped the throne.  There are underwater pathways and shark battles and other exciting and dramatic things, plus a sweet and clean love story.  Just enough worldbuilding to make Atlantis a convincingly otherworldly realm, but not so much that I got bored (this is often a problem for me with fantasy books).  I found this book a healthy dose of bracing and heartening fiction, which I definitely needed.

Long live the shark king!

Particularly Good Bits:

"The only thing you can do is make choices, one after another, and hope the fates smile upon us.  No one becomes a hero, or a villain, without a choice.  Everyone has a choice" (p. 22).

Life was moving on around her, relentless as ever, but the feeling of that moment -- she would have it to hold against all dark and sorrowful times (p. 73).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some violence and a smidgeon of kissing.  No smut; no cussing.

This is my 45th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Hummingbird" by Natalie Lloyd

Natalie Lloyd's books continue to enchant and delight me.  And make me cry.  This one definitely made me cry multiple times toward the end -- but not over sad things!  Like with most books (and movies), what made me cry was some really, really good stuff happening against the odds that it wouldn't.

Like, not to spoil the ending or anything, but man, it is GOOD.  

Olive has "brittle bone disease," or osteogenesis imperfecta.  Because she's had so many broken bones all through her childhood, she's always been homeschooled.  And she doesn't mind being homeschooled, but she would really like to try public school, just to know what it's like.  So, she convinces her parents to let her try it.  And she struggles to fit in.  And she makes friends.  And she pursues her dream of being an actress by trying out for the school play.  And there's heartache and happiness and joy and fear and wonder.  And magic.  

Also, this is the first Natalie Lloyd book I've read that involves going to church.  Olive and her family attend what basically sounds like a non-denominational church, and Olive talks openly about praying, believing in God, and so on.  But, yes, there's also magic in the form of a magical hummingbird that grants wishes.  You just kind of have to read it to get it.  The only thing I didn't approve of was that Olive's church has a woman pastor, which I believe is unscriptural, but that is not enough to make me stop from recommending this book.

Oh, and Natalie Lloyd herself has osteogenesis imperfecta, which gives this book another layer of poignancy.

Particularly Good Bits:

All in all, it seemed like an ordinary day.  But it wasn't.  Beginnings are sneaky like this (p. 2).

Banjo music sounds like sunshine on a string.  Like a bumblebee square dance (p. 9).

"You're not a miracle because you have brittle bones or because you use a wheelchair or walker.  You're not a miracle if you don't.  You're a miracle because you exist.  Everybody is" (p. 24).

Mama and Jupiter have always told me that one person's talent does not take away from your talent (p. 244).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  No cussing or violence.

This is my 26th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Yours, Constance" by Emily Hayse

Set in the Roaring Twenties and tinged with magic, Your, Constance is an atmospheric treat.  Constance Hanover seeks solace at dazzling, deafening parties for the pain of having lost her sister in a tragic accident.  There, she meets Ella Whittington, sixteen-year-old heiress with her own sad past to haunt her.  Ella befriends Constance despite the latter's tendency to try to mentor, mother, reprimand, counsel, and boss her... all in nice ways, but I did wonder once in a while if Ella wasn't going to get tired of Constance always reminding her to be careful, be cautious, watch out, and so on.  

Actually, Constance reminded me of myself in that respect, as I also tell people those things a lot.  Only difference being that I usually direct those instructions to my children, not a slightly younger friend.

Ella's father died recently, possibly murdered.  Possibly murdered by her brother, in fact.  Her brother has disappeared, leaving Ella in possession of a mighty fortune, and possibly many secrets as well.  Constance watches and waits to see what happens next from the sidelines, gradually coming closer and closer to the truth that is tangled up with the tragedy surrounding Ella.

There are faerie stories woven throughout the book's text, little hints about things that might be going on in the story's background, all of which get deliciously resolved at the end.  There was even one little twist I didn't see coming at all, which I appreciated.

Particularly Good Bits:

A roaring party is one of the safest places to be dead inside.  No one notices (p. 19).

Dreams were things that broke and cut your fingers when they did (p. 44).

"This society worships shallow things as if they can be obtained and held by sheer willpower.  They dance on the edges of precipices, never dreaming their ruin could be inches -- seconds -- away" (p. 141).

Sometimes it takes pain and sorrow to make us see how wonderful the real world is.  But more powerful than pain, I think, is beauty.  It can break our hearts more than sorrow can, because it is more lasting.  After pain and sorrow end, there is still beauty.  I wonder, sometimes, if beauty might be a matter of life and death after all (p. 232-233).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for lots of alcohol use and a smidgeon of non-gory violence.  No smut, no cussing.

This is my 25th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProjecto2023.

"Lost in a Good Book" by Jasper Fforde

After rereading The Eyre Affair last month, I simply had to continue with the series.  These books are so much nerdy, bookish, readerly fun!  I must admit I haven't laughed aloud as much over them as I did when I first read them, years and years ago, but that's okay.  I still love them.   And I did laugh now and then.

Thursday Next has a lot on her plate in this one.  Her dad's being hunted, her husband's in danger, her boss keeps yelling at her, her aunt and uncle disappear on purpose, and she discovers she has a major life change on the way.  Also, Goliath Corp. decides to blackmail her.  And then she gets apprenticed to Miss Havisham.  And has to stop the world from ending.

I can't even begin to make this book make sense in a review.  I promise it makes a kind of cool and surreal sense while you read it, okay?  The ending has a cliffhanger, so I'm really going to have to reread the next book, The Well of Lost Plots.  And then I expect I'll reread Something Rotten too, because it's got lots of Hamlet in it :-D

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for some quite bad language, some innuendo and suggestive dialog, bits of violence here and there -- the bad language isn't pervasive, but I still wouldn't let a young teen read it.

"The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde (again)

I loved rereading this book!  I first read it in 2004, and I know I've read it at least once between then and now, but it's been at least a decade since my last journey into this wacky alternate universe of literary awesomeness.  This was long overdue.

It's hard to describe this book.  It's set in 1985 in an alternate universe where the Crimean War is still raging, people care about literature the way people in our world care about sports teams, and there are people who can bend time.  Also, dodos.  Also, portals into the insides of books.  Thursday Next is a government agent dealing with forged books and other literary crimes.  A really evil bad guy named Acheron Hades wreaks some havoc, Thursday runs into her former fiancé Landen Parke-Laine, Jane Eyre gets kidnapped, and it all turns out happily. 

Plus, Mr. Rochester is a total sweetheart, Jane Eyre is calm and wise outside her book as well as in, and Thursday Next gets to engineer a happy ending for Jane and Rochester, who then return the favor. 

This isn't making much sense.  You'll just have to read the book to understand it.

Particularly Good Bits:

Ordinary adults don't like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own gray minds (p. 69).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for some very bad language, some innuendo, and bits of violence here and there.  The language is the real reason I would not rate this PG-13.

"The Storm in the Barn" by Matt Phelan

I absolutely love Matt Phelan's graphic novel Snow White, so when I spotted The Storm in the Barn at the used book store, I had to have it.  And it did not disappoint.

The story centers around a boy named Jack growing up during the Dust Bowl in Kansas, 1937.  It's been years since any rain fell on the Great Plains, and his whole life seems to be covered in dust.  The faces on these pages are hopeless, desperate, and lost.  Well, most of them.  Jack has a sister who suffers from "dust pneumonia" but remains a bright, happy girl.

One day, Jack thinks he sees something weird in a neighbor's abandoned barn.  A bright flash of soundless light.  Eventually, he investigates.  Eventually, he discovers a being that could solve... not all his problems, but maybe some of them.  Maybe, if Jack is brave enough, he can at least bring some hope back to his world.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for mild bad language and somewhat scary images like the one on the cover.

This is my 30th book read off my TBR shelves this year for #TheUnreadShelfChallenge2021.

"The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman

Oh. My.

So, I've heard some pretty glowing stuff about this book from a lot of people over the past few years.  I even checked it out of the library once, but didn't get around to reading it before it was due.  

Mostly, I wanted to read it because I love graveyards. I love to ramble around in them, reading headstones and soaking up history.  When we lived in Connecticut, there was a massive graveyard a few blocks from our house that was the only really wide-open space with grass and trees that we could find for my energy-soaked toddler to run around in.  It was a popular spot for joggers and other moms with strollers.

Anyway.  I just never quite got interested enough in this book to read it until I read somewhere recently that it's a retelling of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.  I adore The Jungle Book, especially Bagheera, the massive black panther guardian of little Mowgli.  So I thought I'd give this a try at last.  Especially since I enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane so much.

Reader, I loved it.  LOVED IT, I SAY.  

Especially Silas, the Bagheera character who was a vampire.  Honestly, if someone had just said to me, "Bagheera is a vampire in this book!" I would have snatched it up immediately.  Because I also love vampires.  Especially really good vampire guardians who use their majestic, undying power to care for and protect someone.  (My second-favorite TV show of all time is Angel, the spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and its main character, the protective good vampire Angel, is one of my 5 favorite fictional characters of all time.  It's a thing.)  So, yeah, wow.  Silas was amazing.  Also, I love the name Silas because of Slow West (2015), and I had a merry time imagining Michael Fassbender as a vampire, and yeah.  

But the whole book was amazing.  Smart, funny, exciting, scary/creepy in the best ways, and thoroughly satisfying.

A little baby's family is killed by a relentless murderer, the man Jack, but the baby is taken in and protected by the ghosts that live in a nearby graveyard.  They name him Nobody, Bod for short, and raise him in the graveyard.  The vampire Silas reluctantly becomes his guardian, then mentor, then friend, and Bod learns all sorts of unusual skills (I wish I knew how to Fade, because that sounds so handy in so many social situations), and eventually he has to confront his family's murderer, of course.  Oh, it's delicious!  Delicious, I tell you!

This might be the best new-to-me book I've read this year.

Particularly Good Bits:

"I've absolutely no idea," said Silas, who consumed only one food, and it was not bananas (p. 27).

There were people you could hug, and then there was Silas (p. 149).

At the best of times his face was unreadable.  Now his face was a book written in a language long forgotten, in an alphabet unimagined.  Silas wrapped the shadows around him like a blanket, and stared after the way the boy had gone, and did not follow (p. 194).

"You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it" (p. 298).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for scary scenes involving murder, ghosts, demons, etc.

"Curse and Consequence" by Savannah Jezowski

As you may have noticed, I am an Austenite.  I've got a shelf overflowing with books by and about Jane Austen, and that has led me to enjoy other books set in the Regency era as well.  Books like this!  I guess you could call this magical historical realism fiction?  

Curse and Consequence is set in the Regency era, but it's filled with magic.  Two brothers, Hugh and Sedgwick Whitby, both fancy the same girl, Rea Abernathy.  Rea is their mother's ward, and she spends most of her time tending the animals on their family's estate.  Because she loves them, not because she needs to, you understand.  Well, one brother decides he just has to have her for himself, so he pays a faery to put some kind of mild blight on his brother... or so he thought.  The curse ends up hitting more than one person, and then the curse gets changed, and everyone ends up having to be honest about their thoughts and feelings and who they are inside before it all gets sorted out.  

This was a fun, quick read, and I think my daughters will be charmed by it when they're old enough to be interested in boy+girl stories.

Particularly Good Bits:

She let the thought sink into emptiness, into that aching hollow where she kept all her secrets, where she kept her true self, the self she never let anyone see (p. 21).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some mild, magical danger to the characters.  The romance is very mild and clean, just a kiss or two exchanged toward the end.

"The Ocean at the End of the Lane" by Neil Gaiman

Once in a while, I like to pick up a book to read that I've never heard anything about.  I like to browse the library stacks, pulling off books and reading their dust jacket flaps until I find one that interests me.  That's how I found this book.  Yes, I've read things by Neil Gaiman before, but I'd never heard of this particular book of his.  It looked and sounded interesting, so I checked it out and read it.

I'm not always a huge fan of magical realism.  I mean, sometimes I am -- I'm an ardent devotee of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and the Harry Potter books.  But a lot of times it doesn't work for me.  Well, this is one of the times that it totally did.  This is a short book, but so jam-packed with flavor and atmosphere I gobbled it up as quickly as I could.

The protagonist recalls things that happened when he was seven years old.  He met some magic-wielding women who lived at the end of his lane, he accidentally let an evil being into the world, he dealt with the aftereffects of that evil being's presence, and he survived it getting cast out of this world again.  Somewhere along the way, he grew up.  A lot.  But remained seven and still a little boy in many ways too.

Gaiman's descriptions and way of weaving magic in to the real world were astonishingly wonderful.  I'm so glad I pulled this book off the shelf last week.

But despite the fact that the main character was seven when most of this happened, this is NOT junior fiction.  Definitely YA.  Please keep that in mind.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for scenes where a 7-yr-old witnesses two adults engaged in adult activity (not described explicitly, but what they're doing is very obvious), scary scenes, and suicide.

"The Key to Extraordinary" by Natalie Lloyd

You may recall how much I loved Natalie Lloyd's novel A Snicker of Magic.  In fact, I was a little hesitant to read her new book because... what if it wasn't as delicious?  

I shouldn't have doubted.

Like Snicker, The Key to Extraordinary is set in a unique little town tucked away in the Appalachians.  Blackbird Hollow is a magical place where flowers bloom everywhere, all the time, and where a great treasure is rumored to have been buried back during the Civil War.  Young Emma lives there, next to the cemetery in what used to be a church and is now the Boneyard Cafe.  Emma's older brother and grandmother run the cafe, and Emma leads tours of the graveyard.  Emma's mother died not too long ago, and her father died before she was born.  But before her mother died, she gave Emma a special book about all the women in their family, generation beyond generation.

All of the women in Emma's family have a special gift, a Destiny Dream that will reveal the path they should tread through life.  Emma hasn't had her Destiny Dream yet, and she's anxious to have it because she's sure it will help her figure out how to save the Boneyard Cafe from destruction.  Her grandma is just about ready to sell it off to a greedy contractor who will tear it down and build something depressing like a strip mall in its stead.

Emma's sure that when she has her destiny dream, it'll show her how to find the legendary treasure hidden somewhere in Blackbird Hollow, and that treasure will solve... not all her problems, but a good many of them.  

Like A Snicker of Magic, this book belongs to the realm of Magical Realism, set in the real world but with magical touches here and there.  This magic is gentle, whimsical, and has nothing to do with casting spells.  Emma and her family can't work magic, but the world of Blackbird Hollow has magic running through it, especially in its special flowers.

Particularly Good Bits:

Blue says true friends turn a bad day into something wonderful faster than a pancake flip (p. 39).

"Do you remember what Mama said about fear?" I asked.  "She said fear is just a flashlight that helps you find your courage" (p. 42).

The storm clouds had drifted away to reveal the setting sun.  I stared down at our shadows on the ground and realized grief feels exactly that way sometimes, like a flat shadow (p. 79).

I know I'm lucky to have a place in the world so special I never want to leave it.  But that doesn't make the letting go any easier (p. 172).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G for genuinely good and sweet and lovely.  

By the way, I recently read a cool interview with Natalie Lloyd here, where she shared several of her favorite books from her childhood.  Thought you might enjoy it too.

"Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" by William Shakespeare

You'd think I'd have nothing left to say about this play after spending nearly three months discussing it.  And, in a way, you'd be right -- I'm not going to say anything new or revelatory here.  But I'd like to kind of recap a few of my thoughts from this reading.

This time through, I particularly noticed how focused this play is on the difference between seeming and being.  Obviously, I've long known this is a major theme in Hamlet, but this time so many lines jumped out at me as reinforcing that idea.  From Hamlet's "Seems, Madam?  Nay, it is.  I know not 'seems'" (I, 2) to Claudius' "Or are you, like a painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart?" (IV, 7), it felt like every character was reminding me time and again to take a good look at appearances versus reality, acting/pretending versus being, truth versus deception, honesty versus intrigue.

No matter how often I read this play or see it performed, I always find some new nuances or details that help me see it in a fresh way.  I've been studying it for 18 years, and it never gets stale.  Amazing!

If you want to read some of my other posts on this play, this post has links to all the individual scene posts I did.  And don't forget to enter the Hamlet giveaway here!  It's open through the end of Monday, January 4th.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for sexual themes and violence.

This is my 30th book read and reviewed for the Classics Club!

"A Snicker of Magic" by Natalie Lloyd

I believe it was Kara of Flowers of Quiet Happiness who first brought this book to my attention.  But I can't find her post about it to link to here.  ANYWAY!  Some blogger I follow who reads junior fiction loved this.  I saw it at the library last week, picked it up to read the first couple pages, and knew I had to get it before I'd finished the first chapter.

The best word to describe this book is definitely "spindiddly."  Which happens to be a word the main character, Felicity Pickle, uses a lot.  Instead of "cool" or "awesome."  I like it.  I'm saying it in real life.  Try saying it yourself!  It's very fun to say.  As is "Felicity Pickle," actually.  And so many other words in this book.  It's clearly written by a word-lover, one who remembers childhood vividly.  I liked it very much indeed.

Okay, so this is a book about a lonely sixth-grade girl, Felicity, whose mom moves her and her little sister around all over the US, never staying anywhere for very long.  Dad walked out years ago and hasn't been heard from since.  They arrive back in her mom's home town of Midnight Gulch, Tennessee, and move in with Aunt Cleo.  Mom gets a job at the local ice cream factory.  Felicity and her little sister go to yet another new-to-them school.  And on the very first day, something magical happens:  Felicity makes a friend.  She's painfully shy, and she even stutters sometimes when she has to talk to strangers, but a boy befriends her nonetheless.  Through him, she gets to know the other eccentric people in Midnight Gulch, learns the history of the place, and solves a mystery concerning one of her forebears.

Also, there's magic.  Magic woven all through the story -- helpful and benign, completely original and made-up magic, as it turns out, but that IS why I read this first before letting Sam read it.  Never know about magic in books -- as a Christian, I am always wary of it, and want to familiarize myself with what's going on in a book that contains magic before I let my kids read it.  

What kind of magic is this?  Felicity can see words, see them when people say them, see them around people and things like an aura.  She collects them by writing them in a book, on her shoes, on her arms, wherever she's got a spot.  And is that not one of the best descriptions of a writer ever?  Other magic involves ice cream that brings back memories, music only a few people can hear, memories captured inside objects... no spells cast, no Dark Arts.  Very imaginative and imaginary.  Whimsical, kind of like Edward Eager in a way.

When I'd finished this, I let Sam read it.  He polished it off in an afternoon, and his first comment to me about it was, "Is there another one?"  Not yet, but I found Natalie Lloyd's blog this morning, and she says there could be a sequel some day.  She has another book getting published before long, but it's not a sequel.

Particularly Good Bits:

And I think if you're lucky, a sister is the same as a friend, but better.  A sister is like a super-forever-infinity friend (p. 10).

Because home is where shabby hearts like ours belong (p. 52).

And some miracles, the very best miracles of all, show up wearing cowboy boots (p. 101).

"Stories aren't peaceful things.  Stories don't care how shy you are.  They don't care how insecure you are, either.  Stories find their own way out eventually.  All you gotta do is turn 'em loose" (p. 146.)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G for gumdroppy goodness.  Clean and charming -- like I said, I let my 7-year-old read it.