Inside Out

Inside Out: A Musical Adventure by Elizabeth Swados

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Inside Out is definitely on the inventive side. I suppose that sometimes you feel you really need to go to great lengths to get kids to want to practice for their music lessons. This book gets seriously strange and silly at times! Most of the time, I had no idea what was going on. The end ties it all together rather nicely, but probably not soon enough to really save it from flopping. My kids enjoyed all the strange characters, however, and didn’t mind the fact that nothing really seemed very congruent as far as plot or storyline, and that the characters were very two-dimensional. There were times I enjoyed some of the characters inside the instruments; that they were appropriately matched to their instrument, such as the loud robot creatures in the percussion. Other times, I was at a complete loss as to why those specific characters were chosen for that instrument, such as the old men on strings inside the timpani or the governor inside the trombone (his speech was, though, absolutely hilarious…Best part of the whole book)! Then there was that lone character that seemed to follow the twins around everywhere and changed shape—always to something that started with the letter ‘p’. Why the letter ‘p’? I never found out. There were rhymes and songs that had no rhyme nor meter to them…nor any real reason for being there. The pictures were rather terrifying. Overall, the whole book felt as if it were translated (badly) from another language. If you can make it through, by the time you get to the end, you may start checking your instruments for little people, and thinking twice about being out of tune.



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The Ogre of Oglefort

The Ogre of Oglefort by Eva Ibbotson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Ogre of Oglefort is a very funny and creative story. It definitely follows the pattern of the majority of Eva Ibbotson's children's books: The main characters are not within the mold of your average heroes! Instead of princesses or princes or knights being the main concentration, they're ghosts or hags or ogres or strange animals. But it works! She has a way of making the gross and nasty things that revolve around the existence of those creatures seem like part of every day life and, more often than not, it’s absolutely hilarious!

In this book we meet the unlikely tenants of 26 Whipple Road: A Hag and her familiar (a toad named Gladys), a Troll, and a Wizard, among others. They're preparing to go to a meeting that will announce this summer's activity for magical creatures. Unfortunately, Gladys (the toad) states that she's too tired to go. The Hag tries to find another familiar in time for the meeting, but instead finds a little orphan boy who is very keen to join with them!

The meeting starts out wonderfully with the idea that everyone will be going to a fun fair to rid them of a mouse infestation, but the Fates appear with different ideas! Instead, our hapless heroes are told they need to go to the far north to save a princess and kill an ogre!

Along the way, we meet a host of very clever and funny characters: Some dimwitted princes, an ogre who is definitely not what he seems, a group of very exotic and helpful animals, and a sweet little dog. Every part of this book is very clever--such a fun twist on 'horror' stories, where absolutely no one is what they seem! The ogre is supposed to be mean and horrible--but instead, he's just tired. I thoroughly enjoyed his planning of his funeral! I loved all the misunderstandings of the Fates who judge what needs to be done by a 5 second viewing on a screen between naps! I think one of the main themes of every Eva Ibbotson book, be it for children or adults, is that things really are not as they seem. Our first impressions are almost always completely off, and many times even the things we think we've known and understood about someone (or a group) since childhood are flawed. It's all about stepping into someone else's shoes and finding out what makes them tick to realize that maybe that person isn't so scary—or different—after all!

While I read this book out loud to my children I was able to discuss with them some of the nuances of Ibbotson’s humor, which I find to be more intelligent than crass or silly, and we shared ideas about some of the situations. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. However, if you were to want to hand this to a child to read on their own, I would recommend a little older age due to some potentially scary characters (some of the more evil ghosts, the Norns, even the main characters themselves at times), talk of witchcraft and wizardry, and the humor itself, which is aimed toward a slightly older age group.



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