09.29.06
Posted in Spirituality at 3:07 am by Rosepixie
Piglet is the champion of the little people! Yay! I’m really not sure what the whole bodyguard plot was for in the background of that chapter. It felt very strange and tacked on. Pooh’s song at the end also felt kind of odd to me - almost like it missed the point. I found the discussions of taoism very interesting and many of the Pooh examples incorporated into that discussion well, but the extra stuff felt very extra and unnecessary. It was kind of annoying, actually!
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Posted in Childrens, Fiction, Role Playing Games at 2:50 am by Rosepixie
This book is actually a very good idea. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure book with customizable statistics and dice - a role-playing game for beginners that you play by yourself! I kind of wish that Mirrorstone or Wizards of the Coast would hire some writers better able to write for a young audience and produce some new D20 ones! I think they might be great!
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Posted in Magazines at 1:17 am by Rosepixie
This was a fairly so-so issue of Vogue. I largely enjoyed it, but wasn’t wowed by it in any way. The fashion articles were fine, but not particularly exciting, as I don’t care all that much for the styles this season. The book reviews were interesting and there are a few books I might check out, which is encouraging. I found the articles on Sandra Bullock and Nancy Jarecki to be interesting. The movie review made me angry for a variety of reasons (none of which have anything to do with the movie itself, about which I know little and care less). Maybe I’ll write more about that on my main blog sometime. Who knows? Anyhow, it was a fine issue, just not anything special.
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Posted in Spirituality at 1:11 am by Rosepixie
This book is much more technical and expository than The Tao of Pooh was. That isn’t necessarily bad, it just happens to be different. I don’t really get the story about how taoism began (how everything was great and harmonious but then humans got dumb and ruined it all), but I am intrigued by the idea of the “virtue” that Piglet supposedly illustrates. This is an interesting book, even if it isn’t, so far, as much fun as The Tao of Pooh.
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09.28.06
Posted in Childrens, Fiction at 12:55 am by Rosepixie
At the end of the book Dallben tells Taran that he helped by holding the group together and that the journey itself was important, but it really doesn’t seem like Taran listens. He either doesn’t understand what Dallben said or doesn’t believe him (I’m really not certain which, maybe both). I’m glad that he got wiser and better at listening by the end of the series!
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09.27.06
Posted in Spirituality at 2:52 am by Rosepixie
Ok, well, the “interjection” wasn’t that Piglet-centered, but at least it claimed that the rest of the book would be. I do wonder what Piglet was doing when he fell into the wastebasket, but as long as it doesn’t become a habit I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
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Posted in Childrens, Fiction at 1:47 am by Rosepixie
The books tell us about everyone’s background before the story started - Taran grew up on Caer Dallben, Eilonwy grew up by the sea and then was sent to live with Achren and Fflewdder was a king in a small kingdom to the north. But what about Gurgi? Where did he come from? Who are his family? What was his life like? How did he first meet Gwydion? Where did he live? We know nothing at all about him, yet his very existance raises a ton of questions! I wonder what Lloyd Alexander thought about him as he was writing? It would be interesting to know!
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Posted in Magazines at 12:37 am by Rosepixie
This was a great issue of Cricket! It has a fabulous fantasy map on the cover drawn specially for Cricket by David Wyatt. Inside are three stories based on the map by three very different authors - Lloyd Alexander, Tamora Pierce and Nancy Etchemendy. My favorite was Alexander’s “The Legend of the Seventh Wall”, but both of the others were excellent as well. I really liked Pierce’s protagonist, she was a good character. I love that Cricket did this “shared world experiment” and I’m almost tempted to write a story based on the map myself and submit it for the monthly contest. The map really is beautiful. I wish I could buy a copy without a barcode and magazine title on it (or even just one without the barcode, since the Cricket logo is pretty and doesn’t cover anything up).
I enjoyed the other parts of the issue this month as well. The “Cricket and Ladybug” comic strip story was very cute (I always like seeing Silvery, Jim and Elvis too!). “How Otto Brought the Sun Back to Plov” was cute and funny, although also extremely silly! I really liked “Amy’s Metaphor”. It was interesting and rather sweet. The end of “Mama and Lady Washington” was just as good as the beginning! Mama was a great character and fun to read about. I’m glad the ending was as satisfying as the beginning was funny. The piece following it about the death of the “horse-and-buggy days” was really well done as well. I even liked most of the contest winners. The presidential chair and the fire were my favorites.
This was a great issue. I adore that map and I might just end up using it for something!
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09.26.06
Posted in Spirituality at 1:29 am by Rosepixie
According to his introduction, Hoff wrote this book because Piglet was his favorite character. Actually, there’s more to it, but that’s the part I like. Piglet is awesome and way underappreciated. He’s always been my favorite, so I’m glad that he’s Hoff’s favorite too! There’s a lot about Piglet that’s awesome, but he’s often overlooked, so anything celebrating him is a good thing as far as I’m concerned!
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Posted in Childrens, Fiction at 12:01 am by Rosepixie
Taran simply does not know how to think about anyone but himself. Eilonwy’s fury at never being called by her name by him is very justified and the problem is far deeper than she realizes. He doesn’t even actually see her as a person in her own right. She isn’t Eilonwy to him, she is “the girl”. He sees everyone and everything through tne lens of how they relate to him, he never even considers that they might be people in their own rights. One of the most interesting aspects of Taran’s character is how that slowly changes over the course of this series.
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