Stuff As Dreams Are Made On…

Eighth Grade Bites (Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, Book 1) by Heather Brewer
2007
182 Pages
4/5

While thirteen year old Vladimir Tod’s friends drink their fruit juice boxes at school, he has his own bag of red drink….blood. Vladimir is what he thinks is the last of the vampires, the spawn of a human woman and his father, a vampire. He’s the first vampire to ever be conceived this way. And he defies traditional views of vampires. He can go into the sun as long as he has his sunblock on. He doesn’t drink blood from it’s source, but rather from his caregiver, Nelly. Well, not exactly FROM Nelly, but she brings him “blood bags” home from her work at the blood bank. He attends school with all of the other teens, though he’s less than popular and has to make sure to hide his fangs when he becomes angry.

His best friend is Henry, the only person in the world aside from Nelly to know that he is a vampire after he bit him during play when he was 8 years old. Vlad’s mother and father were killed mysteriously when he was younger and since then, Vlad has felt like an outsider. As much as Nelly and Henry try to make him feel normal and treat him as a human, he knows he is something else, a vampire. Things suddenly take a turn for the bizarre though when his english teacher goes missing and is later pronounced dead. Vlad starts to think that he may not be alone. Replacing his lost teacher is a bizarre man named Otis Otis.

Mr. Otis is a fun teacher that everyone seems to like except for Vlad. Otis teaches the class of various mythological and folklore creatures. Witches, zombies, ghosts, werewolves…and vampires. And he always seems to have his eye on Vlad. When he tries to enter into Vlad’s life more than a teacher is welcomed, Vlad grows worried. And he soon notices a mark on his teachers arm that is similar to the one that his father once wore, the same mark that is on a book of vampire secrets that his father left him. Combined with the discovery of his father’s journals, he soon begins to think that he may not be as alone as he once thought he was.

This first book in the Chronicles of Vladimir Tod was SO MUCH FUN! I really loved it. It’s not great literary writing by any means, but it’s a truly fun, fast paced, and relevant story. Brewer makes a lot of fun puns throughout the novel. Of course there is Vlad’s name…there’s also a kid named Edgar Poe who goes by Eddie. There’s a town nearby called Stokerton. A villian named D’ablo. You get the picture. But the novel isn’t all fun and games. Sure there are the moments that make you snicker, but the majority of the story is a well thought out tale of a kid trying to find himself while in a very strange world. Think of it as a YA coming of age novel with a twist thrown in.

Brewer “gets” teens and I think this bodes well for her books. This is a book that I would feel comfortable giving any kid that said “I hate reading.” (such horrible words). Want to know what I did as soon as I finished Eighth Grade Bites? Ordered Ninth Grade Slays Can’t wait to continue with this series! And the third book comes out this month! And one more thing…these books have the best covers! I want Vlad’s hoodie!

That Neil Gaiman fellow has a new book out that’s illustrated by that Dave McKean fellow. It’s called Crazy Hair. And it’s crazy good! Like The Day I Swapped My Dad for a Goldfish and Wolves in the Walls, Crazy Hair is a picture book collaboration between these two brilliant men. The story spins a hairy tale of a man with “crazy hair”….hair that is filled with lions and tigers and bears along with carousels and other wonderful and mysterious things. He hasn’t cut his hair since he was a small boy, and a universe of it’s own has tangled itself in it. It’s a fun little story of imagination, curiosity, and mysteriousness that I enjoyed quite a bit! And the illustrations by Dave McKean are just to die for as is nearly everything he does. I love his use of color in this book. It’s just fantastic! Highly recommend this one to add to your Neil Gaiman collection! If you have small children, they’ll love it, if you don’t, you’ll love it.

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So I had a fun little idea a while ago that I forgot about and was reminded about last night on Twitter. I was talking to Amy of My Friend Amy who is currently at Book Expo America! She mentioned that she’ll be stopping by the table that has ARCs of Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games! So of course I told her how jealous I was :p And then she did the sweetest thing! She said she wouldn’t mind sending it to me when she was done with it and then I could send it along to someone else! I’ve been wanting to do this. So here’s what we’re going to do. The book I’m offering to send out to someone is Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest. Why? Because it’s amazing and I think everyone should read it! I’ll put my name in the cover and maybe write a little note or something. The person who gets the book from me should write a little note in it (or drawing, or whatever) and send it along to someone else! You can also write comments in the book as you’re reading…whatever you’d like! It’ll become like a little scrapbook almost is what I’m hoping of wonderful thoughts.  And it will keep being sent on around the globe. Kind of like bookcrossing I guess. It would also be really cool if you blogged about it when you received it or mentioned it in your review so we could all follow it’s progress. If you would like to be the first person to get this book from me, just leave me a comment here in this post and I’ll draw a name on Sunday. And if you want to send your own book around the world, please do!! That would be fantastic The more the better!!

Finally, to all of our blogging friends who are at BEA, HAVE A GREAT TIME!!! I’m saving my money starting NOW to go next year

Voodoo Season by Jewell Parker Rhodes
2005
275 Pages
4/5

I found a book tent this year at Jazz Fest and knew that I had to go visit it. It was filled with nothing but New Orleans authors or authors who wrote about New Orleans. Yeah, I was like a kid in a candy shop. My eye was immediately drawn to the voodoo section as I’ve always found voodoo to just be fascinating…maybe it’s because I live in the voodoo capital of the world, who knows. On the shelf was a book by an author I had never heard of, Jewell Parker Rhodes. She’s an african american woman who seems to wrtie a lot about voodoo! Couldn’t pass that up. Especially when I found a fictional account of the great granddaughter of Marie Laveau, Voodoo Season.

Voodoo Season is a fascinating book. It’s the story of a young doctor named Marie Levant who is doing her residency at Charity Hospital. Marie has always noticed that something was a little different with her….a little strange. She has a seemingly sixth sense. She knows things about people without knowing how she knows them, she takes in lovers that show such passion. But when one of those lovers turns up dead at her hospital, things take a turn. Not only has her lover turned up dead, but so are numerous young women. And they all have crosses on their heads. When Marie has an intuition that one of the girls is pregnant, she performs a C-Section and forms an instant attachment to the child. She wants it to be hers. She searches for the babies grandparents and in doing so falls into the world of voodoo.

There’s a myth that voodoo is an evil religion. It wasn’t started that way and it’s not an evil religion. But like all religion, there are those that use it for evil purposes. These are some of the people that Marie runs into as she begins to come into her own and begins to realize that Marie Levant, her own name, is a transformed version of Marie Laveau. She is a direct ancestor of Laveau and it is she that holds the ability to be the next voodoo queen.

I feel like I’m doing a horrible job of describing this book, but take my word for it…it’s damn good. Jewell Parker Rhodes is another author that captures the essence of southern Louisiana perfectly. The city of New Orleans, the swamps further down south, the madness of Charity hospital, it’s all there. She awakened a fascination with this part of the city that has lay dormant in me for a long while and I’m anxious to scoop up all of the information I can now on Marie Laveau. I’m also dying to read the rest of her books. The prequel to this one is Voodoo Dreams and is a telling of the tale of the actual Marie Laveau, a woman who is to this day still shrouded in mystery. There are also two sequels to this book that further the storie of Marie Levant.

The only slight problem I had with this book was the ending. I was happy with the way it ended but it felt so rushed. I don’t know if she was given a page limit by the publisher or what, but it would’ve been much better I think if it had been a longer novel. Everything seemed to happy to quickly and a little too conveniently at the end, but that’s ok I guess :p The scenes of Marie performing her voodoo rituals for the first time more than make up for that. Read it!

The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot
1995
136 pgs.
4.5/5

The Tale of One Bad Rat is a touching and painful story of a young girl named Helen who has been sexually abused by her father. After years of abuse, Helen has run away from home taking with her only her beloved Beatrix Potter books and her pet rat. The memories of the molestation continue to haunt her and deny her the willingness to become close to anyone else. She meets strangers throughout the way and while some are more welcoming than others, she has a hard time growing close to anyone anymore. Aside from her pet rat.

Bryan Talbot tackles this issue perfectly through the graphic novel format. Talbot has a real gift when it comes to telling unconventional tales in the format of the graphic novel. With Alice in Sunderland, he gave a history of Lewis Carroll and with this amazing, but shorter, graphic novel, he’s expertly tackled the subject of sexual abuse and it’s long term effects on children.

Helen shows all the signs of past abuse…she blames herself for what happened, diminishes herself as a person, cuts her hair off to make herself less attractive to men, and shies away from any form of love, even genuine love that has no alterior motives. This book is a gift to humanity. I think that it would be so well received in the hands of someone who’s lived through abuse of any kind. He tackles the issue in an honest way yet in a very approachable manner. Another one that I wish I didn’t have to give back to the library…

Other Views and Opinions:

Books of Mee
Things Mean A Lot
The Hidden Side of a Leaf