The Marvellous Moon Map by Teresa Heapy and David Litchfield
Rating:
Read before: No
Ownership: Gifted by a friend from my wishlist.
Spoiler free review: No.
Mouse is excited to set off and find the moon following the Marvellous Moon Map, but his friend Bear worries about how he will manage and if he is well prepared. Mouse starts the adventure in high spirits but as the time goes by, the woods get darker, the weather gets worse and suddenly a map isn’t enough to get by and find the moon.
Thankfully Bear was worried and so prepared a way to save Mouse. They do make it to the moon and Mouse realises how valuable true friendship is and how having friends makes discoveries and things more fun and better, plus easier to deal with.
This is one of those books that are good for read aloud or just letting a young reader go through. The pictures tell most of the story but it has dialogue so also quite fun either way. The artwork is stunning and I was happy to read it and pause to see all the details of what is happening to Mouse, and Bear once he joins the adventure.
Recommended for those wanting a book about friendship for children, a nice read as an adult, something about the moon or cute artwork of animals, it is very soft in colours and feeling.
Before the year ends and the holiday season is behind us, I had to share my review for the fourth Narwhal and Jelly book, which is all about their version of the holidays. There is a magical mermaid unicorn that brings gifts just for giggles to the sea creatures and as per usual Jelly is skeptical but ends up wanting to give a gift to Narwhal, and Narwhal is the cheerful bundle of joy as usual.
I had a lot of fun reading this just before setitng the Christmas tree up and while trying to finally get a feel for the Christmas spirit which I wasnt feeling very much this year due to circumstances *points at world and situation*. But Narwhal is so chirpy and so hopeful that you just can’t resist it and suddenly you feel a little bit more cheerful, a little bit more into the holiday spirit and maybe even wishing a magical mermaid unicorn had brought you a gift or something to spread the holiday cheer.
The artwork is simple but it doesnt take away anyting from it, as it is very expressive and fits well the story, there are still waffles and a lot of sea creature friends alongside Jelly and Narwhal and I can recommend it as a feel good cheer up read where you need all the books from this series because one is just not enough, in a good way.
Recommended for those who love sea facts, narwhals, jellyfish, friendship and cute cartoons. It is a read on your own, or just look at the pictures or share a giggle with someone kind of book.
Horizon Zero Dawn – The Sunhawk by Anne Toole, Ann Maulina, Bryan Valenza and Jim Campbell
Rating:
Ok, when I found out that there was a Horizon Zero Dawn comic, I preordered the hell out of it. So much I have all individual issues in at least 3 different versions of the cover, plus this one and the Forbidden Planet edition of the full volume. I genuinely love the game and have played it many times, so this was a natural add on to my shelves.
But what about the actual story?
It is very exciting and makes me want the Forbidden West game to come out today or as soon as I started reading the comics. I fully appreciate getting a comic while we wait which like an appetiser of what is to come.
Mostly it is a story about Talanah going on a mission/quest to hunt a new machine that looks dangerous and the slight scrapes and adventures she gets into. We also meet a few other characters that I suspect will show in-game and I can’t wait to play it! It is also nice to see a comic and the drawings of the machines and the adventures plus new areas. And it makes me want to draw some fanart and replay the main game. You definitely get less Aloy in it but I liked the focus on Talanah and how she’s faring being the Sunhawk of the Hunter’s Lodge, since the game will still focus on Aloy.
Overall, I recommend it for fans of the game and series and if you can’t wait to play the second game, you should totally read this.
I ended ordering The Art of Ghost of Tsushima after realising that books of this kind for older games had sold out and I was desperately trying to find them. I have many reasons to buy an Art of book, but for hte most part is to see what is conceptual art, what was promotional, what ideas where bounced around and a few other details that you don’t see in the game or film.
The other reason I buy them is for reference, as sometimes I want to study the artwork, style or motifs and other I want to make fanart. So this would be a great encyclopaedia for drawing Jin and company.
The game has blow you away stunning visuals and as you can see from my chosen flat lay of the book, you can find the same alongside more details on clothing and character design and scenery. Honestly I just went page by page through it thinking that I’d love to just transplant myself to the scenery but preferably without the drama. Don’t want to be fighting mongols in real life thank you very much.
So, if you like game art and conceptual art or Japan or are intrigued by the artwork from it, this ia good book, the quality is stunning, presentation also wonderful. No faults from me except that I would like more pages and more art for the book.
Midnight Magic by Michelle Harrison and Elissa Elwick
Rating:
Midnight Magic is all about magic and black cats born at midnight.
It is also one of those books that as a child you love and will read over nad over again and keep thinking it would be amazing to have a cat like Midnight and be so lucky to have magic around. I remember feeling like this with The Little Leftover Witch, and I got the same little hope of magic and things just coming to happen with a pinch of magic in them.
Midnight is born exactly at midnight on a stable and she is a very lucky cat but also, it means a lot of trouble, but she will soon find her way around life.
I had a lot of joy reading this book, the illustrations make it even nicer to read and the rhyming verses to go through the story are delightful. I can highly recommend this book to read, both for your own enjoyment or for your childre, or your niece/nephew, or if you’re a teacher, then for your classroom. There will be a lot of fun and imagining how life would be if you had Midnight come to your house and you adopted her. I cant wait to see if there will be more adventures for Midnight and her family.
Overall, great read for all ages, and full of magic. Highly recommended.
This book was provided to me as a gift from the publisher. It was one I requested since I wanted to be able to review it. The fact that the book was provided by the publisher doesn’t inform my review of the book. All views here my own.
I picked the Truth Project since I have been reading a lot of fantasy and middle grade or graphic novels, so this felt like a good palate cleanser of a read and it was the perfect book to read while in a cosy bath. If you like The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, then this is definitely a book to read as it is also in verse style.
Cordelia is aceing high school and ready to go to university, she just needs to get her project sorted which she chooses to tackle a genetic test and the concept of identity through poetry. For that, she is paired up wiht the troubled boy Kodiak. It should be an easy project writing about what makes you you and what effect genetics have on it, or at least that is what she thinks will happen. But when the test results come through, her truth isn’t exactly what she thought it was, the person she calls Father isn’t her biological father.
This defintiely throws Cordelia in for a spin and her perfect record suddenly doesn’t matter as much, when it feels like everything she knws is a lie. We get the story shown as she grapples with her identity, trying to decide if she wants to meet her biological father and figuring out what she thinks about who she is and who her family is. Through her poetry, text conversations with her best friend and Kodiak, and a few email exchanges, we get a very dynamic story.
I really liked the format this was being worked with, it isnt just poetry/verse but also texts and emails, with different language depending on who Cordelia is talking to. And it was interesting to see how she tries to navigate her new truth and what it means for her, and the lies she wants to believe or the ones she starts making up to cope with the truth.
As you may know, I am not big on contemporary, usually quite picky on it, but this one won a space in my reading due to how it explores identity, family, being troubled, making mistakes and the concept of what is true and what lies one can believe or deal with.
Also, bonus points because her family is there and not just thrown around conveniently. I also could see glimpses of what her parents are actually discussing but that she doesn’t realise where things are going or how they are happening and instead interprets differently. But it was fascinating to see the layers of thigns even through her verses.
Sera and the Royal Stars by Tsuki, Mok, Angulo & Campbell
Rating:
I can’t remember why I chose this book at some point but it obviously caught my eye and I had it just gathering dust somewhere (I put aside my graphic novels those moments of the year when my brain just cannot engage with a novel and needs the pictures and not as many words).
Thinking for some odd reason that this was a single volume kind of graphic novel I set to read it, and I have to say I like the artwork, reminds me a lot of old, or should I say traditional, comic style, with the colouring and the artwork, in a nice way. It is like the art was given a new lease in life keeping all the good of old styles but making the art better and just nicer to read through, a good middle ground between old fashioned and modern.
As for the story, it is really interesting, with a lot of myth, a lot of heroics and great characters making this something to sink your teeth into. Not superheroes but with a grander than just you storyline, gods, constellations, big stakes and more, it has all the elements of a big saga to happen and Sera is well fleshed to be the main heroine of the story with her own personal goals, but also being swept into needing to do more for the world and trying to figure out what is right and what the right things to do are when there are many paths but technically only one that will suceed.
Now, I do admit, this didn’t make grab me so much that as soon as I finished I wanted the next volume, but I think if I found the volumes in the library I’d try to get them and read through the whole series. But I did not feel like I wanted to buy all the volumes as it was not hitting me as much as other books have. I do know I am less into grand sweeping arcs that are too close to traditional superhero stories and I think that is where the fault is for me with this book, which is more of a palate one than of the story or execution.
Still, if you like traditional comic superhero stories but want a more fantasy view with gods and other interesting items, this may be the series for you, and it has a very interesting main character, so I can recommend you to look into Sera and the Royal Stars.
I can’t remember how exactly I stumbled upon Mary Oliver’s poetry but what I can remember is that it caught my eye and that artistic par tof me wanted to read more, to have some more poems to munch and mull over for a lazy read if I could. I had a hard time choosing which one of her books to buy, but ended up settling for A Thousand Mornings since it felt like it had the right kind of poems for me and what I would like to read.
I was not wrong, and I enjoyed the poetry, it is old style, and it has a lot of story, some of it is simpler than other pieces but overall it is cohesive and it speaks well. The way Mary Oliver uses language reminded me of mornings and cups of coffee and just being awake slowly and sometimes abruptly.
So I guess the best review I can give is to say that the poetry and poems spoke to me, and the words were beautiful and charming, lyrical and magical, and I couldn’t escape them so I read until I came to the end of the book and felt like this was the book to read one poem every morning until they run out to savour it.
If you like poetry and just reading pretty phrases that stir your heart I can recommend reading this, it is quite short and concise but still good reading.
My Neighbor Hayao by Spoke Art Gallery (Compilation)
Rating:
I have a weakness for Ghibli themed books, and well, this was all about art, so it was utterly irresistible when I saw it and preordered. It is curated by the Spoke Art Gallery, featuring artwork from a huge variety of artists to celebrate Hayao Miyazaki and the impact he has had in filmmaking and animation.
The curation is beautiful and you can see that they made a huge effort to chose significant pieces there, some of my favourite ones are lantern shadow cuttings for the films, or film poster style reimaginings for each of the films but to reduce the content of the book into just those pieces would be to do it a huge injustice.
What this book does is bring the art exhibition, the gallery, into your home.
I poured over the book and kept coming back as the pieces and interpretations, the tributes left a mark on me. Some stay quite close to the source whereas others reinterpret the artwork and make a newer or very unique piece matching the artists’ style and mindset, and yet they all have a little of the magic that a Ghibli film has. The beauty of the simplicity of life infused by magic and Hayao Miyazaki’s life experience.
It is utterly fascinating how his life experiences have fueled the films in such a way that war makes an appearance or his family history, but also you can see the love for food and Japanese culture, the day to day living, in a Ghibli film, it is the little details against the huge things happening, and this collection of artwork showcases how different artists have been influenced, or have immortalised even further into their work.
If you are a fan of Studio Ghibli films and Hayao Miyazaki’s work, I would suggest adding this book to your collection and enriching it. It also has a lovely ribbon and bookmark feature that meant I could stop and come back to it or highlight my most favourite piece it is a difficult choice).
Short disclaimer first, I received a copy of the book for free from the publisher so I could be part of the blog tour and provide a review (I only read hard copies). This doesn’t change or influence my opinion except maybe it adds a book I may not have considered if it hadn’t been brought up to me for consideration.
Now to the actual blog tour review, because apparently I have lived under a rock and hadn’t read any of Kristin’s books before so this a new author to me and new stories to read.
This is a book a little outside of my usual books but not something I wouldn’t have read when I was younger. It is a dystopia with romance and a lot of finding yourself, being a rebel and just figuring things out. When I heard the premise I immediately was of two minds, it could be quite interesting to read or too close to the present (this is basically post-pandemic semi dystopia where the Key control the areas and have brought technology to help combat this ugly virus, plus genetic modifications, so it isn’t fully dystopia but really close and touching is a no-no). Thankfully, it was done well and it only barely reminded me of the present situation (needing that escape sometimes is key and I didn’t want to try and enjoy a story that was too close to real life and therefore not a different place).
We meet our main characters, Elodie and Aiden, and Blair. I have to say that Elodie at first frustrated me a little, but as the story goes, I warmed up to her and she provided a good panorama to a relatively cushioned life under the Key even if she isn’t aware of how protected she has been up to now by not questioning the rules and having family in the right places (but also, she doesn’t know how fragile the balance is).
Then we have Aiden, who is not fitting in well with how the Key want him to integrate into society and is on the last chance to be able to do something with his life (because in this world you’re matched to your partner, and you have your career chosen after taking some tests, nothing or barely anything is left to chance, and even old books and stories are banned). And then Blair who is the side that wants to move up the ranks inside the Key and to do more, achieve and not lose power are her intense desires.
I have to say that overall I enjoyed the story and was curious as to what would come. I think it dragged a little to try to make it into more than one book (I didn’t realise it wasn’t a standalone until I saw how much of the book was left and how little actual action ahd happened). But the dragging of the plot does provide a good setting and background. However, I do think the plot could’ve gone further if we had skipped the story bits Elodie reads (those I definitely did not like and would skim read).
Still, it was interesting to see how touch had been banned, the webs of lies and how people manipulate or rise through ranks and amke their place by “following rules” without ever questioning and calling themselves loyal. Yet at the same time, that position is always so fragile even if the players do not know it.
So, what’s the prospect? If you are a fan of the young adult fiction from 5-10 years ago, this is the book for you. It has that vibe with a fresher look, like when a trend comes back, and it ha some interesting concepts of technology, power and characters, and now I am very curious as to what actually happens next and what is in Zone Seven.
