In this book May Bird is whisked off to the land of the dead, called Ever After, and adventures her way across the land, searching for a way home. She makes some ghostly friends, and some enemies, in her quest to find the Book of the Dead which holds the answers to every question.

The writing is excellent, and there are many good characters. I just don't like ghost stories. All the Halloween-style world building was not to my taste, but I think other people would enjoy that kind of setting.

The story takes a little while to finally get going, and then I really liked it! I loved May's character. She is spunky and weird and brave! The people she meets are interesting and crazy and hilarious. So many wild characters!

I was really inspired by this book! It includes spiritual thoughts to meditate on, personal stories from various people about their yoga journey, and quotes from famous spiritual teachers, philosophers, and yogis. There are meditation guides, holistic food recipes, and asana (yoga pose) sequences to practice. There are journal pages with questions to answer or creative challenges to do, and the pictures are so beautiful! Seriously, the design and photos are the main reason I bought this book! Just gorgeous through the whole book.

There are, of course, a few pages with explanations about Hindu tradition and even Buddhist teachings, but I just skipped those and enjoyed the wisdom in the rest of the book. Most truth, like being kind and responsible and valuing spiritual things, will apply to every life, no matter what your belief system.
Truth is Truth, Wisdom is Wisdom, no matter what mouth it comes from.
So I was able to embrace most of the spiritual teachings in this book, since they line up with the same basic teachings about kindness, etc., in Christianity.

In this book, Alice discovers that her extraordinary swimming abilities, her webbed toes, and the fact that she can breathe underwater, all mean that she is a half-human descendant of a mermaid. When her half-sisters come looking for her, and a mysterious man appears to her in a vision, Alice must decide if she really can believe in a new type of magical life, or if her damaged past will keep her from accepting the love of her new family.

I wanted to like this book because it's about mermaids, and I kept reading the book because of the mystery surrounding a shipwreck, but I didn't enjoy it that much.
The writing is odd and strange, and I skipped a lot of random explanations of things.

A better title for this book would be "Mermaids Having Sex", because even though there's only one sex scene that I had to skip, every character in the entire book is overly sexualized, as if everyone's primary characteristic is their sexual identity, and they have no depth beyond that. And that got boring really fast.

The only part I liked was the mystery about the shipwreck, and even that was a disappointment at the end. The plot is too straightforward, and I was looking for more complexity and depth.

I know absolutely nothing about video games, art, or design, or any of it, but I found this book to be quite interesting. It made me think about color and perspective and contours and shapes and all that stuff that I had never considered before!
I think if I were an artist or at all interested in video games, then I would find this an invaluable resource and inspiration. As it is, I only gave it 3 stars because this is not my area of interest.

I don't usually read a lot of graphic novels, but this is a moving and enchanting little story, and told with beautiful illustrations! I loved the sense of movement in the pictures, but sometimes I wasn't quite sure what was going on until I really looked at each illustration carefully. (I always find that when I'm reading a magazine or any medium where there are both photos and text, I will read the text first. My eye is drawn to text before images.) So I, personally, wish there had been more dialogue and more text in the story. However, I can see that the pathos and sweetness of the story is enhanced by the visuals rather than words. Most of the time, no words are needed. The expressions in the art says it all. And the passages of text that ARE included are woven into the story with purpose and care. Beautifully done!

I enjoyed this play so much! This is the story of Marcius, a noble general in the armies of Rome who wins renown in battle, is renamed Coriolanus, and is promoted to consul. But the political machinations of Rome bring him down because he won't pander to the people or speak sweetly to the rabble. It IS a tragedy, so of course we already expect him to die in the end.

I was intrigued by Coriolanus/Marcius' tempestuous nature and rage that is tempered by his love of honor and justice. He has a high regard for noble deeds, and refuses to compromise to lesser men, and naturally his honesty is what gets him killed.

People are always lying about him, saying that he's a proud tyrant or a traitor; and I think that his public and private reactions to those rumors are very telling of his honest character. Honest people don't always jump to defend themselves or proclaim their innocence. They are more often secure in their innocence and don't think they need defending against lies.

Coriolanus, while innocent and good, does not react with wisdom when confronted by evil conniving people. He seems to think that any intelligent person will be able to see his innocence, forgetting how stupid the masses actually are, and how easily they are swayed by any passing orator with honey in his mouth.

I vacillated between loving and being annoyed by Coriolanus' mother, Volumnia. She is a strong character with witty and moving dialogue. She's extremely proud of her son, always saying how she encouraged him to be so war-like and brave. It's evident from the beginning that they have a close relationship and Volumnia has a lot of influence over Coriolanus. He's really a bit of a momma's boy! haha! She presses him to become a consul, even though he doesn't think he'll enjoy the job, and the whole thing falls apart from there.

A big point is made in the play that Coriolanus is more suited by nature to life as a soldier, and that his rough disposition is not conducive to politics. It brings up a deeper theme of men and women being fit for their work and taking their proper place in life. Almost a "nature vs. nurture" debate could be found in between the lines.

Coriolanus often calls on Mars, the god of war, and I find that very apt for his character. The entire time I was reading, I kept thinking of Percy Jackson's Greek gods, and how well Coriolanus would have fit in at Camp Half-Blood as a demi-god child of Mars/Ares. haha!

In the end, I think it's the fault of Roman society for raising a boy to be courageous and prove his worth by violence in a battle arena, and then punishing him when he does that same thing as a man in a political arena. Rome, you got problems!

This is my umpteenth time reading this book, and I enjoyed it just as much as I did when I was a girl! There's a simple charm to these stories of pioneer life that invites you in.
As always, Laura is my favorite character because she is spunky and brave and hilarious, while her sister Mary is prim and boring.

Pa is another favorite, because he is a musician, and because his funny and jovial ways remind me of my own father. Laura says that "Pa always laughed out loud and his laugh was like great bells ringing." haha! Wonderful!

In this book, the Ingalls family is settling in Indian Territory, building a log cabin, digging a well, and plowing the land for fields of corn. But the Indians are close by and some of them are dangerous.

This book contains the most famous scene of the entire series, when Mr. Edwards swims across the raging creek to bring Laura and Mary Christmas gifts that he claims Santa Claus asked him to deliver. When I was a kid reading this, I never realized or thought about how the adults are reacting in the scene. I was focused on the children getting their gifts.

Now reading as an adult, I see it so differently, knowing the extent of the sacrifice Mr. Edwards had made and the danger he went through. "Pa shook Mr. Edwards' hand, and shook it again. Pa and Ma and Mr. Edwards acted as if they were almost crying, Laura didn't know why."

The adults are overwhelmed by emotion at seeing their children so happy with their presents, and they are relieved that Christmas is not ruined. Is there anything more powerful for an adult than to see children happy at Christmas, knowing the sacrifice that it cost?

The author is brilliant at bringing an emotion to the forefront with very few words. I adore all these books!

I had to DNF this one. It's boring, and the plot is trite, and the pacing is weird. I didn't care about any of the characters, so after I stuck with it through 100 pages, I called it quits.

The writing is really condescending, and points out the obvious over and over. In the beginning, the setting is described as a society of mice who are afraid of the sewers below their community because the evil rats live in the sewers and they eat any poor mice who go wandering down there.
Then a mouse named Albert is lured into the sewers, and the author thinks they need to tell me and explain again and again that Albert is afraid. He's afraid of the sewers because there are ravenous rats in the sewers. He's afraid of the rats because the rats capture and eat mice. Albert is afraid.
OMG, don't tell me 50 times that Albert is afraid. I can deduce that very well for myself!

That's probably why I couldn't connect with any of the characters, because I wasn't allowed to just feel the emotions of the characters through the story; I was TOLD the character's emotions, and that gets annoying really fast.

The pacing felt jarring and strange. One minute the characters are fleeing for their lives, and then we cut to a scene of a momma mouse with her little mouslings having cake a festival. The story didn't flow very well from scene to scene.

I've heard this compared to Redwall. No, no, no! Redwall actually has good writing and interesting characters.

This is a sweet little story about a dragon child who can't learn to fly and gets left behind when all the other dragons migrate to other lands. Poor little dragon child has a hard time because his wings are too small, and everyone is exasperated with him and losing their patience waiting for him to fly.
He befriends a bird, who tries to teach him flying lessons, and an orphan girl, who brings him a lot of comfort in friendship.

I expected more from this little book, since I have enjoyed many of the author's other books. I felt like there could have been a lot more to the story, and was disappointed that it was so short. Of course, since it is short, it makes for good reading aloud to children, or for young readers who are just starting little chapter books on their own.

The story has some depth to it that is not properly explored though. The ending is rushed, and some aspects of the story are not really explained or explored.
A great little story that children would enjoy very much, but as an adult, I wanted more.

Hugo is an orphan child, living and working in a grand train station in Paris. He is the son of a clockmaker, and loves to tinker with mechanical things. He meets a bitter old man and a bookish little girl, and finds that he is not the only one struggling to make sense of his past losses.

This is a story told partly in words, partly in pictures, and with reference to the beginnings of the motion picture. It amazes me how the story encompasses so many mediums!
It's a melancholy story about loss and heartbreak, but also about finding a family of your own and owning your past.

The best part of the story is the mystery of the mechanical man, an automaton, and the secrets that machinery hides. There's a wonderful blending of the spiritual and physical in this book. Anything that you dream and imagine can become a reality, a tangible and visible thing; and vice versa, anything real can become a dream and have spiritual meaning beyond its simple existence.

I liked Hugo's character, but was often frustrated with how he pushes people away, and how he is so doggedly stubborn sometimes. I feel like he doesn't realistically use those street smarts of his. But he's a very sweet and pathetic character, that you just want to hug and give him a cookie.

I didn't like that the old man, George, is so mean and rude and selfish in the beginning. It made for a jarring change when he suddenly became nicer later on. Was it really necessary or in keeping with the story arc to make him such a villain at first? And his character change wasn't gradual so that we could SEE the change in him. It was very sudden and weird. Also strange how Hugo suddenly trusts him at the end, after half a book of the old guy being horrible to Hugo!

Although I loved the book's construction with all the pictures, I'm not amazed by this story. I still enjoyed it though!