I finally took a bit of time to sit down and record Chapter 2! And it's just as bizarre as I remember it being. Remember this was written by an 8th grader who had limited access to the internet and had no idea how public school worked. Science? We don't know her. Middle school classes? Most of my middle school education was on the computer on these stupid CD-ROMs that I hated. Realistic children? Don't count on it. But it's all fun anyway! At least I think so. Just like last time, the text version of this chapter is below the video if you feel like reading along! Enjoy! (Or cringe and turn away in horror.) Chapter 2: James and Abby
The football went flying towards his head as James stopped to ponder a science question. I can’t tell you what it was about because I know nothing about science, with the exception of the rule: What goes up must come down. That is exactly what happened in this football practice. The coach threw the ball and it hit James square in the face, well, then again, footballs are oval, so it hit James oval in the face. We’ll just stick to square, because it sounds a lot better. Anyway, James got hit in the face and plummeted to the ground. That also portrayed my rule from above, what goes up must come down. James scuttled to his feet and looked down, yuck, a tooth had fallen out! James bent to pick it up and went to hear the Coach’s complaints. “What were you thinking Kingston?!” Coach barked, “You have to look up to catch the ball! This is the ninth time this WEEK that you haven’t been paying attention!” All the other boys chortled behind their hands. “Sorry Coach, I was thinking about a science question, problem forty-four, ‘is it possible to create worm holes or portals to other worlds.’” James explained, “I think it’s a matter of opinion, but you know scientists these days, always coming up with a new theory.” The Coach actually growled at this. “Kingston, we aren’t the science club! If you like science stuff SO much, go and join the scientists! You’ll have plenty of time for it; you are suspended from the team for four weeks!” James was shocked. How could he be suspended from the team? He was their best player! What would they do in the big Thanksgiving game without him? There was only one thing to do, find Rosie Stone and get his revenge. Abby Gail wasn’t having any better of a day; in fact it might have been worse! She couldn’t decide whether to fry her teacher or roast her, either way would be simply divine. The deliciousness of Ms. Rottencandy would soon be-- whoops, wrong story, again. As I said before nothing too bad happens to anyone. Anyway, Abby was having a horrible day because her advice column in the paper had totally been wrecked because Jeff had come in and seen who was running the column when it was supposed be secret! What if he told? No one would want to tell her their problems anymore! Her dreams of being like Oprah were dwindling! The horror! The horror! (Yes, I did just repeat myself, get over it.) Abby had to find Jeff and make him swear not to tell any person on this earth that she was the Abby of Dear Abby! She rushed down the halls of the school, looking to see if Jeff was still there. When you run fast, looking for something or someone you rarely notice anything or anyone. This is precisely what happened to Abby. She was running so fast that she didn’t see James running quickly at her. James went into the school to see if he could find Rosie because she had been interviewing him in science causing him to miss question forty-four! So now he had a bone to pick with her because she got him suspended from the football team! As he rushed through the school he didn’t notice Abby rushing towards him because as I explained before, you can’t see too well when you are rushing through the halls of your school. Since James couldn’t see Abby running at him and Abby couldn’t see James running towards her, the two applied the law of gravity that I explained earlier. Since those two were standing up, those two must be knocked down, it’s really quite simple, and I just can’t believe you can’t remember it! So James collided with Abby and Abby collided with James. Ouch. When the two arose they were even angrier than they had been--which might not be possible. “Why did you run into me?!” The two said at the same time, “I didn’t run into you! You ran into me!” Again they said it at the same time. “No!” same time again, “I,” same time, “Hey!” this was becoming comical. “Listen,” wow, same exact time, “Stop it!” Finally, James said it this time, “Stop saying the same thing as me at the same time! I’m looking for Rosie Stone; she works on the paper with you, right?” Abby nodded. “She does.” “I have a bone to pick with her,” The muscular child growled. “I’m busy looking for Jeff, that guy whose desk you sit on all the time, I need to find him before…” Abby paused. James looked quizzically at her. “Before what?” “Something bad happens.” “Well I saw Jeff hanging around Rosie; maybe they’re at one of their houses. We can go together and pick their bones at the same time.” James concluded sensibly. So the two enraged children stomped to Jeff’s house. Then upon finding the other two children not there the two left for Rosie’s apartment building. They found them there, watching the news. The two seething kids rejoiced at their find. After the rejoicing stopped they got all malicious and impolite to Jeff and Rosie. “How could you get me suspended from the football team and not know what I’m talking about?” James said mid-way into the conversation, although he was beginning to understand that Rosie had unintentionally got him suspended. But he couldn’t lighten up now that he was angry. “And you Jeffrey, if that IS your real name, how could you not have seen me reading people’s problems? It was right in front of you!” Jeff looked at Rosie and Rosie looked at Jeff, very suspicious if you ask me, but of course, they didn’t ask me, I am, after all, only the author. Later, after a whole lot of arguing you don’t want to hear, all four children had somehow ended up at James house. I believe they got there like this: Jeff started fighting with Abby and James with Rosie, but Mr. Stone got a head ache and told them to play outside. So they all went outside and started walking around. Then, suddenly, James suggested they go to his house because his mom had made apple pie. After that they all stopped arguing because Mrs. Kingston’s delicious pie was crammed in their mouths. The pie was so yummy it caused them to chat good naturedly with each other and become friends. (That must have been some good pie.) The quartet went outside and sat on the lush grass of the Kingston lawn. The neighbors (the next door lady in particular) all looked skeptically at them through their windows because the children talked and laughed so much. The kids had a great time until James’ grandfather emerged from the old outhouse in the corner of the yard. The smell that emanated from the small structure could have killed an elephant! It stank so bad that the kids had to hold their noses in hopes that they wouldn’t lose their sense of smell all together. “Must have been those beans I had for lunch, I’ve been in that hut for about an hour.” Grandpa said, walking inside. The four children on the lawn groaned and ran to close the outhouse door. Whew! The outhouse would bother them no longer. The children started to giggle at the horrid smell, I don’t get what is so funny about almost losing your sense of smell but these kids are quite odd. “Wow! That is one putrid smell!” James said. “Ugh, I can barely breathe!” Jeff gasped. “Why does your grandfather even have an outhouse?” Abby moaned. “Because he thinks that indoor plumbing is too ‘new-fangled’ and ‘it was good enough for the people when I was a boy’.” James mocked while holding his nose, “I know it’s odd but Mom thinks that since it was his house to begin with he should get to do his, uh, ‘business’ where he pleases.” I’m going to stop writing about this rancid smell and skip to what happened next. The four kids started to play ball in James’ smelly backyard. It was so fun that they hardly noticed when the yard started to smell bad again. I have promised you I will not go into that, so the smell’s mention stops here. The long afternoon had the children worn out by the time they had to go home. That night their parents rejoiced, because the kids slept like rocks. In the morning James met Abby, Jeff, and Rosie before school. “Hey you guys want to come over to my house again after school?” James asked. “Yeah, sure.” Was the collective reply. “Cool, meet you there!” James said, leaving for his first class with Jeff trailing behind. In school James was caught off guard by his first class. His science teacher told his class that the biannual science fair was happening in two weeks. James hadn’t even begun to think of a project! What was he going to do? Then he got an idea, a brilliant idea. An idea that this whole story is modeled upon. The only questions he had for his teacher were these: “Can I with work with partners?” he inquired. “Yes James, as long as at least one of them does this class with you. You know, so someone else on your team knows what you’ve been studying as well. ” The teacher explained. “And also, Mr. Smellfoot, what is the correct answer to problem forty-four?” “From the practice we did yesterday?” James nodded. “Well, Mr. Kingston, I believe the answer to that problem is yes. I have always believed that travel to an alternate world is possible with the right equipment, the right people, and imagination.” “Thank you Mr. Smellfoot.” James grinned. Now you and I know that no real science teacher would ever tell a kid to “imagine” something, but Mr. Smellfoot was no ordinary science teacher. Mr. Smellfoot was a science teacher who had also been a substitute Creative Writing teacher, and so he learned that anything is possible with a little imagination. He learned this lesson as Chad, the Creative Writing bully, had stuffed a pencil up Mr. Smellfoot’s nose. James went home happy and started his science fair project. The frame of the thing was done, as were the blueprints. Now he just needed to have a little help from his friends. Until then he decided to hide the thing in the most unusual of places. Later, at James’ house, the four friends sat on the lawn, chatting. The girls were talking about something in the newspaper and Jeff tried to get James to talk about some story that he had read earlier. James didn’t really listen to any of it, mostly because he was trying to get his own two cents in. That means he was trying to tell them something himself, but the others were busy putting at least ten cents in. A loud rupture caused them all to stop talking and stare at the outhouse. “What was that?” Abby demanded. “I don’t know. Whatever it was it came from the outhouse.” James said with a mysterious smirk. The other three kids snuck over to the outhouse to see what had made the loud noise. James remained seated on the grass, snickering silently. You, “dear” reader may be expecting it was the Grandfather of James that caused the loud noise of the outhouse, but you, reader, are wrong. It was not a gas leak from the Grandpa that caused this “boom” in the outhouse, but a machine frame. The kids saw this as James pried the walls off the old privy. The kids gasped and asked about a million questions at once, mainly, “What is it, and how did it make that noise?” James “shushed” them with a wave of his hands. “Come on people! Not so many questions at once! This is what I like to call the M.T.M.” The rest of the kids looked just as confused as they had before, then James explained, “Magical (even though it isn’t magic) Transport Machine.” The kids appeared to be perplexed so James continued, “When it is finished it should be able to take us to a different world! And it probably just made that noise because I left it turned on.” As the gang grasped this information they all started to talk again. “You mean we can go to a different world?!” “How is that possible?” “When will it be finished?” Blah, blah, blah, they were really enthusiastic. James did his best to explain everything but the questions were too many. “Um, it will be finished sooner if you help me with it, and I really need you guys’ help.” The questions stopped for a second, but then everyone wanted to know how they could help. “Well, Jeff has two jobs, first he just needs to stay in science class with me so that I can have you guys’ help. Secondly, Jeff needs to not lose his memory of fairytales, we’ll need that. Abby needs to get us costumes. Your mom owns a medieval themed restaurant right?” Abby nodded, her mother owned the coolest restaurant ever, and it had waitresses dressed as damsels and waiters dressed as pages. NOT the paper kind. “Good, we’ll need you to get us some old costumes that your mom doesn’t need anymore. Rosie, you have one of the most important jobs. You have helped your dad fix his car wash before and I will need that mechanical help because I have no idea how to work tools.” James’ friends nodded and smiled, they got to help build one of the most amazing machines of all time! The kids could not wait. Before I told you that it wasn’t a story about kids who go on cutesy adventures. It still isn’t, don’t worry all you dark readers, it won’t get cute, just like I promised. BUT I didn’t promise I wouldn’t add more characters.
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Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.96 Content Rating: Light PG-13 (some violence) What if you had one year to save everything you loved? ONE PRINCESS. Merida of DunBroch needs a change. She loves her family—jovial King Fergus, proper Queen Elinor, the mischievous triplets— and her peaceful kingdom. But she’s frustrated by its sluggishness; each day, the same. Merida longs for adventure, purpose, challenge – maybe even, someday, love. TWO GODS. But the fiery Princess never expects her disquiet to manifest by way of Feradach, an uncanny supernatural being tasked with rooting out rot and stagnation, who appears in DunBroch on Christmas Eve with the intent to demolish the realm – and everyone within. Only the intervention of the Cailleach, an ancient entity of creation, gives Merida a shred of hope: convince her family to change within the year – or suffer the eternal consequences. THREE VOYAGES. Under the watchful eyes of the gods, Merida leads a series of epic journeys to kingdoms near and far in an attempt to inspire revolution within her family. But in her efforts to save those she loves from ruin, has Merida lost sight of the Clan member grown most stagnant of all – herself? FOUR SEASONS TO SAVE DUNBROCH – OR SEE IT DESTROYED, FOREVER. (goodreads.com) Beware, I'm about to get kind of personal in this review. I just have a lot of feelings, okay? Full disclosure, Brave is one of my all time favorite movies. Not just Pixar, not just Disney—one of my favorite movies out of all the movies I’ve seen in my life. So I went into this book feeling rather nervous. I have read and watched sequels to movies before where all of the character development from the original movie is undone. Sometimes there are massive continuity errors or character deaths that are completely unnecessary. I was so worried that something like that would happen in this book and that I would hate it. And guess what… some of those things I mentioned did happen (to a much lesser extent than I was expecting, thankfully) but I absolutely loved the majority of this book. Without any further ado, let’s get right into this, shall we? I have many thoughts and I don’t want this review to turn into a full blown book in its own right. First off, the bad. (My least favorite part of this book I will create a spoiler section for. I have severely mixed feelings about it and need to rant to someone, but it is from the very end of the book and I don’t want to spoil things for anyone who doesn’t want to be spoiled. But if you don’t care or have read the book already, go right ahead and jump to that spoiler section.) One thing that is very minor, but irritated me about this book is how they treated Merida’s animal companion. She is technically a Disney Princess and in being such, obviously has an animal companion. Hers is Angus, a massive draft horse who is, for all intents and purposes, a good boy. He’s also not very old. I mean, they never say how old he is in the movie, but he doesn’t seem that old. My sister who works with horses regularly, also agrees that he doesn’t seem that old. However, in the book they keep referring to him as ancient and said that he had to come out of retirement for a road trip they were taking. They acted like he was fragile and decrepit. And this book, as far as I can tell, takes place about four or five years after the movie, but horses can live up to thirty years so he shouldn’t be ancient just yet. Angus is such a minor part of this story that it’s really not important, but it bothered me and I’m in charge of this blog so I get to talk about whatever I want. Another thing I didn’t like about this book was the relationship between Merida and her mother, Queen Elinor. Now, if you’ve seen the movie, you know that they have had a rocky relationship in the past and that the movie was about mending that relationship. And sure, not everything is going to be perfect after one magical adventure where the queen gets turned into a bear, but I feel like the lessons they learned when the queen gets turned into a bear would be pretty memorable and that they would keep trying to fix their relationship. And it is better in this book than it was at the start of the movie, but it also feels like Elinor isn’t actually trying to make it better, she’s just not arguing with Merida. It almost feels like she’s afraid of her daughter turning her into a bear again. Which was an accident (sort of) in the first place! By the end of the book I felt things were a bit better, but I still wasn’t satisfied with Merida and Elinor’s behavior toward one another. I will say that Elinor was in the book little enough that this relationship did not truly affect how I felt about the rest of the story. So, again, not a major problem, just a little irritation. One more nitpick-y thing and then I’ll get to the parts of the book that I enjoyed (which were most of them). Merida, you may recall, has three much younger brothers: Hubert, Hamish, and Harris. In the movie, they are indistinguishable from each other and they don’t speak. Mostly because they aren’t hugely important to the film apart from causing shenanigans and sometimes helping Merida. In this book, however, they play a much more important role, which is great. I will say that I was anxious about what their dialogue would be like, since they don’t talk in the movie and they don’t have distinct personalities either, but it was well done. It started off with them not speaking, or making gestures like in the movie, then they would all speak as one for a while, and slowly we are eased into the triplets being independent of one another and getting to know their personalities and how their personalities and Merida’s view of them evolve over the course of the story. That’s not the part I have complaints with. The part I have complaints with is, again, super minor and not hugely important, but irritated me. At one point, Merida questions whether her brothers know about the secret passages all throughout Castle DunBroch. And, thankfully, later, two of the three triplets assure her that they’ve already seen the passages. But it bothers me that Merida doesn’t know that because it is one of the triplet’s biggest roles in the movie. They are constantly crawling through secret tunnels and popping up at other ends of the castle. It’s a whole thing during a scene where they have to lead King Fergus on a wild goose bear hunt through the castle. And it’s ALL THREE OF THEM. Not just Hubert and Harris. Hamish knows the secret passages too! In the book he says the secret tunnels sound scary, like he’s never been there or something. And though Merida doesn’t really see the boys use the passages in the movie, I just feel like she would know that they do. Because it’s their whole thing. And maybe in the book, it’s supposed to show us that Merida doesn’t always think of others, or how she has a set view of the people around her that needs to be updated and changed, which fits with the themes of the book. But still. I’m just a bit salty about it. Okay, enough ranting about tiny details. Let’s get to what I actually liked. Maggie Stiefvater is a wizard with words and plots. She wrote The Raven Boys series (which I did review on this blog, but I can’t find where I put it so I can’t link it) which didn’t end up being a good series for me personally, but let me give you a quote about how I felt about the writing: “THE GOSH DARNED WRITING WAS JUST SO GOSH DARNED GOOD AND THE CHARACTERS WERE WELL WRITTEN AND WELL DEVELOPED AND THE PLOT WAS INSANE AND INCREDIBLE.” So even when I don’t like the themes of Maggie Stiefvater’s books, I still am shocked and astounded by her writing. It’s unbelievably phenomenal and I was pleased to find that this was also the case with Bravely. I mean, the first chapter starts with a lengthy description of bread. I freaking love bread. The descriptions of food in general were just the epitome of “chef’s kiss”, actually. It sort of reminded me of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Descriptions of everything were grand. The descriptions of the settings were vivid, the descriptions of people were spot on and helpful, and the descriptions of daily castle life were realistic without being too gross (because we all know medieval times were nasty and it’s nice to no have to focus on that). The prose of this book wrapped me in a big hug every time I picked it up.
This book made me feel so comfortable reading it, but it also made me uncomfortable--in a good way! This book is all about change, but not change for the sake of doing something different. It’s about avoiding stagnation. Breaking out of your bubble of safety. Learning more about the world and people around you. It does a great job of actually changing the characters too, because rather than taking the easy route and saying “let’s just make this character experience the opposite of what their normal personality is like and call that change” it introduced them to aspects of their life that they needed to improve and their development felt organic. Lately, in my own life, I have been feeling a bit afraid of change. I’ve gotten comfortable in my house, with my cat, reading, writing, watching videos in the embrace of my blankets and big changes are scary. Part of this is probably because it is winter and winter makes it so difficult to do anything. (You can’t just leave the house, you have to bundle up, check road conditions, be prepared for it to get dark early, and experience the biting cold when you actually do get outside. It’s hard to be moving when all the sensible creatures are hibernating.) But big changes are scary for me right now too because there are tangible momentous things upcoming in the near future. Career adjustments, friends getting married, siblings graduating college or heading out on their own, the possibility of going back to school myself--all big exciting and terrifying things that spook me into inactivity. So, with the whole plot of this book being that Merida needs to find a way to help her family, friends, and home get out of their stagnant state within a year, it made me dwell on some of the ways my own life is moving ever onward and how I’ve been resistant to that lately. And even though that’s not exactly comfortable or easy, it is important. I think I read this book at the exact right time and I am grateful for it. Good books always help me process the world. Okay, enough goopy sentimentality. Another thing I like about this book is that it can stand on its own even if you haven’t read the movie. In fact, I might have almost liked it better if it weren’t connected to Brave, but I can’t quite say that with complete honesty. I think, because I have always felt a bit of connection with Merida, it made me feel more at home and invested in the happenings of this story. If it had been some other princess that is new to me, I probably wouldn’t have cared about what was going on. However, I still think others who haven’t seen the movie would really enjoy this book. The stakes are high in this book, but the edge-of-your-seat-action is at a minimum (there is one really intense scene with a fire and another with some battle, but that’s about it), so it reads like a cozy fantasy (the multiple feasts help with that). There isn’t a ton of magic in it either, so if you like more historical fiction type stories, this nearly falls under that category too. As I said before, I have a least favorite part of this book that is very much a spoiler. So I have included a spoiler section down below if you would like to see the reason why I knocked off one star from what would have been a five star read for me otherwise. This part of the review, however, we shall leave on a happy note. I wish there were more to this book so that I could keep reading it. I love the theme of change and the way this book handled it with its characters. And, as I’ve said before, Maggie Stiefvater’s writing style is incredible and even though I wasn’t a fan of The Raven Boys, I seriously need to check out some of her other work. Thanks for reading, I’m off to turn my mom into a bear (jk, jk, I would never do that… on purpose). I’ll see you in the next review! Click on “Read More” in the bottom right corner to see the spoiler section! |
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