Danny Dunn and the Heat Ray by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashin has Professor Bullfinch inventing a laser that can burn through things. That would be good to have. I know I shouldn't have one, but I'm just sayin'. Danny takes it up in a plane and starts a forest fire. See, what did I tell ya. Don't worry, it's intentional. Danny is starting a firebreak. See a guide on wood lore for information on that. The firebreak saves the Professor and some rich guy. At the start of the book Danny is interested in how planes fly. He asks a pilot, a relative, for information, and winds up being offered a ride in a small plane. They meet a crazy millionare who is coming out to the University that Professor Bullfinch works at. I have to admit I am tiring of the series. It's not as good as I remembered it being in my youth. It's pretty sparse writing and the plots tend to be the same. At least the kids do something interesting some of the time. Like starting forest fires. This is an old ex-library book and it's going away eventually. Hope it isn't burned up.
Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire by J K Rowling is the first of the books with some meat on it's bones. I am in the camp that feels, bigger books = more story, and since I like the story, I'm happy. This book has 4 dragons and that's as good a rating as any. It also has that great Voldemort resurrection scene at the end of the book. There's a guy who's scary. He'd kill ya just for snoring too loud. Several people get killed in this book, including a student, by his hand or his whim. Still there are those dragons and all the fire. The tests are good and the new characters are mostly Ok. Some of them come to mean more later. I like the Mad Eye Mooney character, even though it's just an imitation. There are some tragic stories in the wizarding world and the Crouch family has a bunch of them. Still, it's not hard to be close to some horrible event or death when the community is so small. This is my seventh reading of the book. That's the cover to the Denmark Edition. Kind of reminds me of Richard Powers. Burnin' Death Eaters.
The Saint In London by Leslie Charteris is like a lot of Saint books, collections of shorter pieces, rather than a novel. I've read a lot of them. There are many. This book has three short novellas. The first story has Simon blackmailing several highly placed politicians into giving a huge pile of money to help the wives and families of war victims. Next he takes down a rich villian with evil plans, and in the third he goes head to head with some creepy murder bound gold robbers. The Saint is joined by his girlfriend Patricia Holm and his slow witted, alcohol fueled, American side kick Hoppy Uniaz. Together, under Simon's direction, they joyfully spoil the fun of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, who's only remaining goal in life is to catch the Saint and lock him away. Poor Claud! He's a guy with EPIC FAIL written across his picture. I was always a big fan of The Saint, both the books and the 60's tv series with Roger Moore. There are dvd's of 2/3's of the series. I recently got both the season one and two sets. The pair of sets cost over 90 bucks on Amazon but with a bit of waiting, and some luck I managed to get both for $48. The shows were in black and white then. There is a third box set that has 47 shows in color. The series was syndicated back in the 60's. I discovered the books just after, and I've been a huge fan of both since. The Saint in the books is a bit rougher and darker of a character than the Roger Moore TV version. That's Ian Ogilvy on the book cover; he played the Saint in the 1980's series Return of The Saint. I never saw them. I don't know that I want to very much. I also like the 1930's movies of The Saint with George Saunders.
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix by J K Rowling was the first book of the series that I actually waited to read. That's the Brazilian cover. They copy the US cover. I got the first two HP books from the SFBC a couple of months before number 5 hit the stores and I read them and 3 and 4 through twice. When 5 came out I stopped on the way home from movie night, picked one up, and was home just after midnight. Read for hours, crashed and started again soon as I got my tea made. It's the book that takes a decided turn for the darker story. The war has started even though the Ministry of Magic refuses to take part or acknowledge the existence of the Dark Lord.
Mitch and Amy by Beverly Cleary was a departure from the usual gang of kids populating her stories. Mitch and Any are twins and ten years old. Mitch has trouble reading and Amy has trouble with math. Mitch has trouble with a couple of bully kids. Amy has trouble cleaning the kitchen floor. By helping each other they all get by. Cleary had twins herself. There is some fun stuff and some nice stuff and mostly a good read. The illustrations are nice and I like the onus on reading. I heard some guy talking on MPR today and he was talking about the perception of literature in Russia. He said the Russian attitude on novels is you can read one and learn something from it. Something I've always said. I learned that kids in the 60's aren't too different from kids now.
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J K Rowling starts in the Muggle world, as the Prime Minister gets a visit from the recently ousted Fudge, who is there to introduce the new Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour. Turns out Fudge was crappy at his job and everybody is mad at him. Voldemort is growing in power and the Death Eaters are killing muggles along with people in the magical community. The Ministy is fighting back, but "The trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister." Then there are secret doin's with Severas Snape and some evil women. Finally, we get to Harry, who's waiting for Dumbledore to arrive. You can bet the Dursley's are going to enjoy that. Wizard's in their house. I did like it when Dumbledore bounced the glasses of mead off the Dursley's heads. Then it's off to the Weasley's, Harry hitching a ride via side-along apparition, after a side trip to entice an old teacher to come back to Hogwart's. Horace Slughorn is a great new character who introduces some interesting new potions to the mix. Back at Hogwarts for the new school year Harry finds he can get into NEWT Potions but doesn't have a book. Professor Slughorn hands him the find of a century, a potions book with some great corrections from the Half Blood Prince. See how everything is tying together. There's a ton more book. I have to prop these books up on something because they are so heavy, especially the US edition, which I think is nearly 30 pounds. Like a sack of flour. That's the cover to the Dutch edition. I don't know how heavy it is.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J K Rowling finally ties up the whole series. I liked the book a lot, even the epilogue. Even after several readings I still want to see what's happening as the pages turn. There's a good mystery and some good battles. I'm curious to see the 2 part movie version of this book. It's not for a while. I'm sure to read the series before the last movie comes out.
Danny Dunn On The Ocean Floor by Jay Williams and Raymond Abraskin has Professor Bullfinch invent a really hard plastic that lets his old pal Dr. Grimes build a small submersible, that's got huge windows, to travel about the ocean. That Dr. Grimes doesn't stick with any branch of science too long. There are the usual antics that put everyone in danger and some way or another they get out of it. There's the usual science discussion, a weird music session by the learned doctors, and some poetry by Joe. Did I mention that I don't care for poetry? Just not something I appreciate. Luckily there are only one or two per book. These writers know boys don't want to read that much poetry. I like the Freddy the Pig books a lot and they often have too much poetry. You can always skip over it, if you are so inclined. I am leanin' that way, myself.
Emily's Runaway Imagination by Beverly Cleary is probably my favorite of her books. It's set in the early 1920's in a small Oregon town. Emily's mother thinks the town should have a library. She writes a letter to the state library in Salem to ask what she should do. Emily takes the letter to the post office. I am reading an ex-library book about a girl and her mother and their quest to build a library for the town. What could be better than that? It's funny too. A nice kind of gentle fun, like then the cows get out of the yard and into the apples orchard where they eat all the rotten fermenting apples and get drunk. The ladies of the town were thinkin' that was pretty funny. There are the usual touching moments that were nice. Grampa gets a Model T. That was fun. Emily saw a plane on one trip out of town and the pilot waved at her. That was exciting. They open the library in a space in the Commercial Clubrooms. Open every saturday. It's a hit. One young boy comes from a town that is four miles away. He walks all the way there and back. On the railroad tracks. Just for a book. Brought tears to my eyes.
Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine by Jay Williams and Raymond Abraskin has Professor Bullfinch and the gang get reduced in size by the Professor's reducing machine. Shades of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids! Did you know John Candy turned down the role of the dad and recommended Rick Moranis. Our tiny gang have to get a message to Dr. Grimes before he accidently steps into the field and get reduced too. Danny rides on a butterfly, just like the cover depicts. He learns to stear the beast by holding his hands over the eyes. The butterfly thinks something is flying near and blocking it's vision from the sun. It turns away. I wonder if that would really work. You'd never get me on a butterfly. It's another ex-library book from 1968. Still in pretty good shape. No interesting stains. I skipped Joe's poem, figuring I'd shave a half a minute or more off my reading time.
Sideways Stories From Wayside School by Louis Sachar is an odd little duck. It's about a school that has thirty classrooms. Unfortunately when they built the school the builders got the plans wrong and stacked up the rooms instead of laying them all along the ground beside each other. There is a thirty story stair to get you to your classrooms. No elevator until the second book. Then it breaks down three days later and is never repaired. No wonder people complain about the school system. The stories in the book, and there are 30 of them, are about the kids who go to the top classroom of the school. Mrs. Jewls is the teacher of that class. Each story is 2-4 pages and pretty silly. Chapter 6 is about Bebe, who can draw up a storm of paper. She did 378 pictures in art class. She's bummed out when she finds that people don't always judge art by the quantity. There are a lot of characters and their stories are funny. Sacher also wrote Holes and that is a step above these fun stories. I saw the movie first and really enjoyed it. I've got a copy of Holes that I have read, and really enjoyed, which I plan to re-read. I might keep SS from WS too. It's pretty thin but it packs a wacky punch for it's size.
Mystery Of The Empty House by Dorothy Sterling was a book that I picked up on a whim from Sixth Chamber Books. I had been trading books there and taking cash to buy LEGO but occasionally some book would turn up that looked interesting. Pat's family moves to the small town that her parent's came from. I have done that. I lived in both the town's that my parents came from before they moved to the big city. New kid Pat, breaking into an abandoned house, falls on her new best friend Barbara. "Ow," says Barbara. It's really not that bad, there's a lost ball involved. That house does have hidden in it something that will return it to the family that lost it. Pat and Barbara help the Paine brothers find a treasure that clears up the reputation of an ancestor and pays the taxes. Yea! I didn't care for the cover that much. There are some ok illustrations inside the book. Nothing you need to see. I won't keep the book. It's just ok.
The Secret of Willow Coulee by Louise Bower and Ethel Tigue was another selection found at Sixth Chamber. It's set locally, and by locally I mean the Minneapolis St Paul area. It's a story about Benjy, a kid who gets a different paper route. He wants to work the river, to be near the boats he is so in love with. The story is set along the river over in St Paul. There are some kids in a gang. Benjy has some trouble with that gang. They are responsible for some stealin' goin' on around the boat yards, and they are the low end of a smuggling ring. Benjy makes friends with the gruff Captain Hank, who's in charge of the boat yard. He's a character with a treasure in his boat house. Really, he's got a suitcase full of precious and semi-precious stones under his bed. Old coots! Aren't they great? There's some danger as the gang kidnaps Benjy and forces him to steal a boat from the boat yard. Luckily the police are on his trail and he's not drowned. The gang is caught and everything works out fairly well. Not a bad book, but not a keeper. I kind of liked that cover.
Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sacher is a second helping of the Wayside School. It isn't really falling down. There are too many cows and you know how hard it is to get rid of cows. They come over and they never leave. And they can't use the bathroom properly, so you can imagine the mess they leave. This book has 30 chapters. Three of them are chapter 19. Another book that was fun to read and easily polished off in an hour or so. I have the third one, maybe I will read that soon. There is a sequel to Holes that I am waiting to get at HPB. I missed a used one once and there hasn't been one back since. I can wait. If I wait long enough there will be a paperback that is even cheaper.
The Ancient One by T. A. Barron was a book I picked up a few years ago. I was looking for teen fantasy novels, and this looked like it might be ok. It is. It's a tree hugger's fantasy. Kate goes to visit her organic aunt and they team up to stop some loggers from chopping down a special old growth forest. Kate's aunt has a magical staff that transports Kate back through time. She pals up with a native girl, and some talking rocks, to battle some ancient evil force. There are lessons to be learned. The writing is ok, but I won't keep it. I have two more of the Kate books; this is the second of three, and 5 books of the Lost story of Merlin. Barron likes Merlin I guess, he's also part of the third Kate book.
It Came From Beneath The Sea is mostly famous for having Ray Harryhausen doing the creature animation. It's the movie that united him with Charles Schneer. They would go on and make all the really famous Ray Harryhausen films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad or Clash of the Titans. This movie only has one monster. A giant octopus. It keeps attacking ships. It attacks the submarine commanded by our hero, who's played by Kenneth Tobey. He's a favorite actor of mine who's in a bunch of good films. You might remember him from The Thing From Another World. That's a good one for another day. Today Kenneth is fighting a giant octopus and winning the heart of a science gal played by Faith Domergue. She used to be Howard Hughes girlfriend. Here she's trying to figure out what the radioactive biomass found stuck in the submarine's propellers might be. It's a giant octopus. That's where Kenneth and Dr. Joyce meet. There's some science stuff and some dinner. Then the monster attacks in Oregon. Everyone runs up there and there's a comical sheriff that doesn't believe in giant monsters from the deep. He's convinced soon enough. Then it's off to San Francisco where Octy busts a big chunk out of the Golden Gate Bridge. Next? It's Market Street and The Embarcadero for some shopping. The Military shows up with flame throwers to drive it back into the sea where Kenneth waits with his full loaded and ready to fire submarine. Guess who's getting his water soaked ass kicked? Yep. Kenneth Tobey scores twice at the end. He gets the octopus and the girl. Make your own joke but the movie is fun and the monster is pretty good. Not the best quality of special effect but good enough. It gets the job done. 
