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A Most Malicious Murder
A Most Malicious Murder
Melanie Fletcher | 2021 | Mystery
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Edgar Allen Poe is on a tour of the universities of England, His first stop Oxford. He's worried about his wife who's had a rough time on the way over. Hes had a bit too much to drink to celebrate his success he then wakes up in what he thinks is his room with a very sore head and a dead chambermaid at the bottom of his bed on the floor!
He must do everything he can to clear his name so he can continue with his tour.

It is an absolutely encapsulating story it did remind me a bit of Sherlock and Watson. It's very well written and captures your imagination from the start!

The murder scenes are rather gruesome but then murders aren't meant to be pretty are they! The air of mystery through out the novel keeps you wanting to read through to the end to find out whodunit and why?

a fantastic mystery to keep you captivated.
  
Wonder Park (2019)
Wonder Park (2019)
2019 | Adventure, Animation, Comedy
Kind of inoffensive? (1 more)
Animation is fine
The plot (2 more)
The concept
The execution
Horrible Park
Contains spoilers, click to show
I have five kids. So I've seen a ton of kids' movies. Some are good, some are bad, and some are meh. "Wonder Park" falls completely and stubbornly into the bottom range of Meh. It's not so bad that you hate yourself for watching it, but it isn't even interesting enough to hold your attention for the 80-minute runtime.

"Wonder Park" is about an imaginary amusement park called Wonderland (they never explain the discrepancy in name versus the name of the movie) invented by a young girl. She talks about the park, she draws pictures of it, she makes models of it, and she creates new rides with the help of her mom.

Unfortunately, in a real downer of a plotline, her mom gets sick with an unnamed illness and has to go away to see specialists somewhere. This makes the girl depressed, which makes her stop using her imagination, which makes her stop caring about Wonderland.

Then, in a situation that makes no sense, she hops off of a bus on the way to Math Camp, takes off on her own through the woods, and stumbles onto a real-life version of Wonderland run by real talking animals. Except there's a problem: Wonderland is being destroyed by a big black cloud and a sea of stuffed monkeys.

The girl eventually realizes (duh!) that the black cloud is basically her sadness, and to save the park she has to learn to use her imagination again. So she does. Then she leaves the park, goes back home, and her mom is magically better from the illness and everyone presumably lives happily ever after.

It's a neat concept (kid creates amusement park!) with bad execution, a terrible story, and too much depression for a kids' movie. Plus it wraps up too neatly. And it isn't funny. And I literally almost fell asleep watching it.

If you have to see a family movie, you can do a lot better than this one. I wouldn't even recommend renting it from Redbox. It is that bland and inoffensive.
  
Rusty Brown
Rusty Brown
Chris Ware | 2019 | Comics & Graphic Novels
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Just look at what a beautiful object this book is! It gets better on the inside, too. The detail and creativity is immense; the dust cover unfolds into a gorgeous mosaic, with puzzles, and even the copyright notes have a little Easter egg snuck in there. Every satisfyingly thick page of it is dense with ideas and art of admirable quality. It’s heavy and well made. Simply, one of the nicest books aesthetically I’ve ever owned.

I don’t have a big history of reading graphic novels. In fact I can count them on one hand: this one, Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Persepolis. But what I see I like. There is something extra on the storytelling that is the best of both a book and a film – like a film unravelling at the pace of a book, with your imagination made into still images. I love the possibilities of them! There really isn’t anything you couldn’t do with it given enough imagination. I must try a few more as I go through life.

Rusty Brown, by Chris Ware is rich, melancholy, sometimes downright sad, but always truthful. Nothing is exaggerated, only presented, as we see snapshots of all the children and teachers that live in a small American town. They are dealing with regret, nostalgia, self-esteem, bullying and secret Joys, but in a mundane way as the routine of life plays out around them. Yet it manages never to seem bleak or hopeless, as enough moments of beauty keep everyone afloat.

There is a hint of subversive politics going on under the surface, but no more than issue flitting through Chris Ware’s mind; there’s no agenda or propaganda going on. He’s basically showing us a place he knows and saying, huh, what do you think of this. It made me laugh out loud many times, and cry at least twice. Remarkable work.

Both this artist and graphic novels in general are now very much something on my radar to learn more about and enjoy. If you haven’t ever really tried, I recommend Rusty Brown Chris Ware whole-heartedly as a starting place.
  
    Pango Land

    Pango Land

    Games and Education

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

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    Pango, Piggy, Fox, Squirrel and Bunny… they all invite you to their home with lots of games and...

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ClareR (6037 KP) rated In My World in Books

Nov 7, 2017  
In My World
In My World
Jillian Ma, Mimi Chao (Illustrator) | 2017 | Children, Education
10
6.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
A beautifully illustrated and worded book
This is a book that looks in to the mind of an autistic child, and their struggle with other people understanding how they think and view the world. The illustrations are beautiful - and I like how the main character is actually a human child which is much more relatable to all children, whether they're autistic or not. The book shows that we might see autism as something negative, but the child has a world of their own imagination in which to live happily - I can see other children realising that they too have this imaginary world and that they're not so different after all. As with many children's books about autism that I've seen lately, it is all about fostering understanding; helping the non-autistic child learn that they are not so different, and that any differences are what actually make us all individuals. A lovely book that I'm sure will be popular.

I received this book free for an unbiased review through NetGalley and publisher.