plugging away

[ewein2412]

Doing our thing for SmartPop's Demigods and Monsters, which I have got an essay in. Sara and Mark have both reviewed the film The Lightning Thief here.

For a different view of things, try rachelmanija's furious and frankly baffled review of the film here (I enjoyed the review, and the comments, very much). I confess I would not have made it through the first of these books, let alone the first three, if I had not already signed up to produce the essay. The Adbooks listserv raved about Lightning Thief (as did the whole children's lit scene) and I had overly high expectations for it. I think this is yet another series that is RIGHT ON TARGET with its target audience--Sara adores these books--and I am way outside the target. I am always seriously bugged by this. It's not that I dislike the series--I just find it dull and samey. WHY??? And is my failure to connect with these hugely popular books related to my own books "missing the target"? Hmmm.

Incidentally, when I was doing a boatload of reading for the Children's Literature New England seminar in 2007, I kept notes on the required books I'd read in order to be able to review them just before the lectures. I noticed that I was always trying to find good in everything I read, some redeeming thing to say about the book that was positive, even if I didn't really like it. And I realized that in fact I was fooling myself--for me, there is no in between. I either like the book or I hate it. The reaction is polar. This is why I never give a star rating to children's books on my Goodreads reviews unless the author is dead! Best just to keep it to myself. I might meet the author some day.

Comments

[estara.livejournal.com]

That's a cool triple essay, and it's fun to read your different voices. I highly applaud Sara's professional tone, even referring to you in the third person when talking about your essay. Mark was honest and to the point, you were honest and diplomatic ^^.

[ewein2412]

thanks! Sara is very, very good at cranking out the prose. Mark is funny because he writes the way he talks--often putting in a lot of asides and parenthetical phrases (WHAAAA????) and extraneous punctuation. It sometimes drives his teachers crazy.