Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

My two favorite things:

Jane Austen and people getting dead!

Ghost Letters by Stephen Alter

2008 Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children's Books

I cant figure out if I am going crazy and can no longer comprehend things the way I used to or children's books are becoming much more complicated than I remember. Over the course of this woefully short, and woefully cold, summer I have read a number of books which took a dictionary and multiple readings to understand. Either the characters are too quirky to be relateable or the situations are so implausible that it just makes me want to put the book in the incinerator.
GHOST LETTERS started out extremely difficult to read. The book is about a boy named Gil who gets sent to his grandfathers house for a few weeks. He meets a girl named Nargis and together they find have to deliver undelivered letters to people in times past so that unfortunate happenings don't occur. Sound good, right? Sounds like fun. It is fun, if you can get past the first 30 pages. The story jumps around too much and throws characters around so that it is hard to keep track of what is going on and who is doing what.And there are some characters and events that are completely extraneous and could be removed totally from the book without making any difference to the story's flow. But once you get past the introductory pages the book develops a fast and entertaining pace.
I really did enjoy this book. The characters were realistic and relateable. The plot was good science fiction, with the right blend of real history and a little bit of magic. The book had a few spooky moments that will give you a few chills but not enough to give anyone a nightmare.
PS. I absolutely adore children's books that glorify the ancient art of letter writing. I wish more people took the time to write letters and feel the joy of receiving one in the mail. I think that this book will spark an interest in letter writing for some fortunate reader.

Other Reviews:

From School Library Journal: Grade 4–7—Gil, 14, has been expelled from school and sent to the Massachusetts coast to reside with his poetry-loving, eccentric grandfather. The old man doesn't own a television, uses a typewriter, drives a beat-up Volkswagen, and can only offer his grandson a 30-year-old bicycle as transportation. While walking his grandfather's dog, Gil decides to explore Rattle Beach. A curious-looking bottle floating in the water attracts his attention. For a joke, he pens a distress call, places it inside the empty container, and throws it back into the water. Returning later, he finds the bottle again and discovers an urgent message inside it. It is from Sikander, a boy from India who is living 100 years in the past, when a war is brewing. As the two boys continue to correspond, Sikander's family gets into a deadly situation and he begs Gil for help. Other paranormal events include a ghostly mailman, a skeletal hand, a djinn (or genie), and a love affair that spans the centuries. It appears that the events are interrelated, but the teen is not sure how. Readers will empathize with the plight of the characters, but a favorite of many kids, the genie, is not well developed. Also, a few of the plot threads are not fleshed out, but even so, readers will find the book scary enough to thrill and clever enough to challenge their deductive reasoning.—Robyn Gioia, Bolles School, Ponte Vedra, FL Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist: Alter’s multi stranded tale offers something for almost every fan of non heroic fantasy—from magic and time travel to a ghost, buried treasure, and a grisly severed hand with an agenda. Staying temporarily with his grandfather in a Massachusetts coastal town, Gil and new friend Nargis, a local age-mate of Indian descent, find an antique bottle that carries messages back and forth through time. Soon they are corresponding with a nineteenth-century calligrapher’s apprentice in India, whose own friend has been nabbed by deserters from a threatening British force. Enter a ghostly Massachusetts postman, wearily carrying never-delivered letters that can save the kidnapped lad, avert the battle, and rekindle a century-old romance on Gil’s side of the world. So much is going on here that when a bureaucratic British genie wheels in toward the end to deliver the old letters at Gil’s command, it’s hardly surprising. Nonetheless, Alter juggles the elements (and more besides!) with reasonable expertise, and readers who can readily suspend their disbelief will enjoy the show. Grades 5-8. --John Peters

Watchmen by Alan Moore, Illustrated by Dave Gibbons

Watchmen by Alan Moore, Illustrated by Dave Gibbons

1986 DC Comics

This is the first time in a long time where I honestly can say that I do not know how I feel about a book. There was so much to like about the Watchmen that I almost forget about the things that I didn't like. Watchmen had the best illustrations. There was absolutely no ambiguity about the characters emotions and actions based on the artwork. That said, the story read like a soap opera and not the best. The story went around in circles and gathered characters like kids at a carnival.There were times I had to read and re-read the same pages to try to keep straight who was doing what and who was who.

WATCHMEN was really interesting to read. It is one of those books that is relevant to any time period but especially resonates with the political and social climate of right now. Who doesn't want to be a superhero and save people? It is an admirable profession. But who will monitor the superheros and who will keep them honest? The superheros in WATCHMEN, for the most part are real people who decided to be an aide to mankind. With the exception of Dr. Manhattan the Watchmen are ordinary humans who purposely develop into superheros. But they are still human with the same issues that ordinary human have to deal with, and some, in the case of Rorschach, with a few more issues than necessary. The question that WATCHMAN asks is what makes a person a superhero?

I think everyone wants to be a superhero as a child. We read about Superman and Spiderman and wish we had their powers. Would we still want to be a superhero if we had to spend hours in the gym, if we had to be a part of the humanity that we were charged with protecting? Based on the issues that rise in WATCHMEN I don't think that there would be so many children willing to put on a mask. How do you protect the world if you cannot even protect yourself? What do you do in the face of ever increasing violence?

WATCHMEN is not a feel good book. It does not leave you wanting "to be all you can be". If anything it left me a little wary. One person cannot save the world. A group of persons can try to make a change but in the end it does not really matter. Mankind is a violent race and superheros only seem to slow down our inevitable violent climax. But this book does make you think. It makes you contemplate the frailty of human life, the need for those that have peace as their goal and the power that power and responsibility have on our leaders.

SYNOPSIS:

It all begins with the paranoid delusions of a half-insane hero called Rorschach. But is Rorschach really insane or has he in fact uncovered a plot to murder super-heroes and, even worse, millions of innocent civilians? On the run from the law, Rorschach reunites with his former teammates in a desperate attempt to save the world and their lives, but what they uncover will shock them to their very core and change the face of the planet! Following two generations of masked superheroes from the close of World War II to the icy shadow of the Cold War comes this groundbreaking comic story -- the story of The Watchmen.

OTHER REVIEWS:
From Barnes & Noble
Alan Moore, the master storyteller behind V for Vendetta, and Dave Gibbons, a brilliant draftsman, have long been revered by comic book fans as the creators of Watchmen, a groundbreaking graphic novel that subverts the superhero genre as easily as a toddler upends a house of cards. Rather than focusing on superhuman abilities, Moore instead zeroes in on the humanity of his characters and leavens what is essentially a murder mystery with enough social commentary and political intrigue to fill a shelf of graphic novels several times over. Gibbons, too, in his detailed yet understated style, conveys a wealth of emotions that easily rival any Oscar-winning performance. Factoring in added treats like excerpts from Moore’s original working script (complete with highlighted notes), character studies, page thumbnails, and cover sketches taken directly from Gibbons’s sketchbook, this deluxe 20th anniversary edition is simply a must-have.
From the Publisher
It all begins with the paranoid delusions of a half-insane hero called Rorschach. But is Rorschach really insane or has he in fact uncovered a plot to murder super-heroes and, even worse, millions of innocent civilians? On the run from the law, Rorschach reunites with his former teammates in a desperate attempt to save the world and their lives, but what they uncover will shock them to their very core and change the face of the planet! Following two generations of masked superheroes from the close of World War II to the icy shadow of the Cold War comes this groundbreaking comic story -- the story of The Watchmen.