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Book Review: Return to the Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz

Return to the Isle of the Lost: A Descendants Novel by Melissa de la Cruz

Disney Hyperion Publishing, May 2016

 

Last year, Melissa de la Cruz introduced us to an interesting, darker twist on the typical Disney tale in Isle of the Lost. In the Disney fairytale realm of Auradon, all the villains, along with their children, have been captured and imprisoned on the deteriorating, isolated Isle of the Lost. The first book introduced a variety of villain children, but focused on four in particular: Mal, the daughter of Maleficent; Jay, the son of Jafar; Evie, the daughter of Evil Queen; and Carlos, the son of Cruella de Vil. At the end of the book, the four of them were invited by Prince Ben, soon to become king of Auradon, to attend boarding school in Auradon.  Isle of the Lost was quickly followed by the live action, made-for-television movie musical, Descendants, in which Mal and her villain compatriots chose to defend Auradon from an attack by Maleficent, who had regained her magic and escaped. Mal defeated Maleficent, transforming her into a harmless lizard.

Return to the Isle of the Lost directly follows the events of the movie. Mal, Jay, Evie, and Carlos are adjusting to, and mostly enjoying, life in Auradon when they receive mysterious messages that they must return home. When they do return,  they make the disturbing discovery that their parents have disappeared without a trace, in an attempt to escape the island through secret, underground passages. Mal, Jay, Evie, and Carlos must find and travel the passageways to keep their parents from tunneling through to Auradon, but to do so, they each must face a challenge left behind by their parents. A note for English teachers: the meaning of the term “anti-hero” is hammered home pretty thoroughly.

In the meantime, Merlin has approached King Ben with a request to use magic, which has been forbidden, in order to deal with a threat to Camelot; the citizens there report attacks by a purple dragon. Ben’s immediate thought is that Maleficent is the cause of the trouble, but since she is still a lizard, that seems unlikely. If you’ve been watching animated Disney movies for most of your life, you probably can figure out who the purple dragon really is in about thirty seconds, but it was a complete mystery to my 8 year old daughter.

I found Return to the Isle of the Lost to be a disappointing follow-up to the first book and the movie. In those, we got to see some very complex characters dealing with conflicts central to their identity. The villain kids in Isle of the Lost are not nice kids. They steal, lie, destroy property, treat other people badly, and can often be shallow. Despite that, you can see these are kids who desperately want their parents’ approval, and there is something there that makes you want to root for them. In Return to the Isle of the Lost, that’s missing. Their parents are absent, so we don’t get to see that conflict, and the kids have pretty much settled on being “good”, although with a preference for painting gloomy castles instead of peaceful sunsets. Very little is done to further character development either; It’s just not as interesting. To be fair, de la Cruz is dealing with a huge cast of characters, and it would be impossible to do justice to all of them, but it seemed like even the main characters got short shrift.

While Isle of the Lost could appeal to those who like their fairy tales dark and twisted, I don’t think Return to the Isle of the Lost will satisfy. However, for your Disney-loving 8 year old who is tired of the same old princesses, I can speak from experience; the book will be a tremendous hit. Recommended for ages 8+.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 


 

Posted on August 4, 2016 by , Reply

Book Review: Scary School #3: The Northern Frights by Derek the Ghost, illustrated by Scott M. Fisher

Scary School #3: The Northern Frights by Derek the Ghost, illustrated by Scott M. Fischer

HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2013

ISBN-13: 978-0061960987

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

There are several books in the Scary School series, and Monster Librarian has reviewed others, but this is the first one I have read myself, and it is a gem. The books are set in a school for children who are a little out of the ordinary: zombies, vampires, werewolves, and other creatures. Jason Boorhees wears a hockey mask and carries a chainsaw; Fred Kroger seems to think he is always in a dream. The teachers are pretty scary, too: King Khufu spends his lunch hour in a sarcophagus, a hydra monitors the hallways, and Mr. Acidbath creates frightening concoctions in the classroom.  Scary School also has its fair share of ordinary humans, like Charles Nukid, the main character of this book. In The Northern Frights, six human students from Scary School, including Jason, Fred, and Charles, are chosen as exchange students at the even scarier Scream Academy, located in the freezing north. Can they survive and succeed where so many other humans have failed?

The Northern Frights is not great literature. It’s sketchy in its world-building and, with a few exceptions, characters are pretty one-dimensional. It’s narrated by Derek the Ghost, a student who died during a disastrous science experiment and now haunts the school. However, I frequently forgot that the book was supposed to be written in first person, because except for occasional asides it reads like it’s written in third person. None of that really matters, though, because it’s funny, punny, fast-paced, and smart.  This is a book that parents and kids can both enjoy, reading independently or together (I hope most kids in the target age group don’t watch slasher films, but the Jason and Fred characters’ behaviors give those of us who do know the movies that something extra to appreciate).  It’s also extensively illustrated, with both full-page and in-text illustrations that complement the story. If you have a reluctant reader on your hands, or are looking for a fun read-aloud with your middle-grader, this is a perfect choice. Highly recommended for children’s collections and elementary school library media centers.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Previously reviewed:

 Scary School #1 by Derek the Ghost

 Scary School #2 : Monsters on the March by Derek the Ghost

 

Posted on June 5, 2016 by , Reply

Women in Horror Month: Mother Goose On The Loose

Mother Goose telling tales, from the frontispiece of Perrault’s Histoires.

The dark mystery behind the tales and rhymes that today we attribute to Mother Goose is something most people don’t notice now, because taken for granted that they were written for children in the nursery– and who today would entertain the littlest of us with violence and nightmares? Her image first appears in Perrault’s Histories, published in 1697, as an old woman telling stories to children, but her name and role as storyteller already existed in France. In Halls of Fame, Olive Beaupre Miller writes that John Newbery, the first publisher to concentrate on children’s books, was the first to publish an edition of Mother Goose rhymes in 1786,  and that in the preface, the editor writes that the rhymes  “are of great antiquity… some as old as the time of the ancient Druids”.  Miller was writing in 1921, and she wrote to educate small children, but recent research bears this out.

Apparently Americans’ puritan tastes led to “refinement” of the rhymes, although overseas, children were purchasing chapbooks of Mother Goose rhymes and fairytales in unexpurgated form. Gillian Avery notes that originally, few of them were written for children at all, but were “wrenched” out of adult contexts by children, and were “ruthless” and “often violent” until adult writers and illustrators toned down the content to what modern audiences recognize as Mother Goose rhymes today (to the objections of those who prefer the violent, political, and sexual nature of some of the originals). Samuel Goodrich, who later became the popular American children’s author, Peter Parley, was sheltered from these rhymes and tales until the age of ten, and outraged by them when he finally encountered them. Avery quotes Goodrich as saying,

“Little Red Riding Hood, Puss In Boots, Jack the Giant Killer, and some of the other tales of horror,[are] commonly put into the hands of youth, as if for the express purpose of reconciling them to vice and crime. Some children, no doubt, have a ready appetite for these monstrosities, but to others, they are revolting; until by repetition and familiarity, the taste is sufficiently degraded to relish them.”

Goodrich made a career of writing nonfiction and realistic, moral fiction for children, in a mostly successful effort to drive works of imagination and fantasy underground (for several decades, at least), and once the rhymes emerged, there continued to be censors who criticized and edited them (Geoffery Handley Taylor’s 1952 catalogue of the dangers in nursery rhymes is notable) but as this story shows, in the end, especially in the age of the Internet, you can’t keep Mother Goose down.

Sources not available online:

Avery, Gillian. Behold the Child: American Children And Their Books, 1621-1922. London: The Bodley Head, 1994.

Miller, Olive Beaupre.  “The Interesting History of Old Mother Goose”. Halls of Fame. Chicago: The Book House For Children, 1953.

 

Posted on February 18, 2016 by , Reply
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