Title: The Elephant in the Garden
Author: Michael Mopurgo
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: 09/06/2011
Pages: 233
Service: Gift
Format: Paperback
Buy: Book Depository
'Lizzie and Karl's mother is a zoo keeper; the family has become attached to an orphaned elephant named Marlene, who will be destroyed as a precautionary measure so she and the other animals don't run wild should the zoo be hit by bombs. The family persuades the zoo director to let Marlene stay in their garden instead. When the city is bombed, the family flees with thousands of others, but how can they walk the same route with an elephant in tow, and keep themselves safe? Along the way, they meet Peter, a Canadian navigator who risks his own capture to save the family.
Admittedly, Michael Mopurgo's book may be aimed for a younger reader than myself, but age was not something that stopped me from reading this book. I was give a box set of his for my 13th birthday and for some reason I had never gotten the chance to read any of them, I'm glad I finally got around to picking one out from there.
'The Elephant in the Garden' tells the story of Elizabeth who is in a nursing home to one of the nurses and her son, Karl. She talks about her time in World War Two in Germany and how her and her family escaped the city of Dresden after it was bombed along with and elephant.
There were a good few reasons that I enjoyed this story. It was just a book that you good read and just enjoy. It showed how strong family values and how this small family of three had to pull through a very harsh winter. How things weren't always easy but they did it as a family. It taught people the importance of family, even in the hardest of times.
What I did really like about this book is that it showed World War Two from the German civilian's point of view which I think is something that people need to read and learn about. Sometimes, I think people forget that the people of Germany still had to live through the war like everyone else and not everyone agreed with what was going on. Personally, I think this book will be able to show younger readers and older readers exactly like.
Mopurgo's writing style was something that I really did enjoy reading. It was quite easy to read and had a really nice flow to it. It wasn't patronising and it drew you into the plot.
Though it wasn't a book that I'm head over heels in love with. I still did enjoy it and I think it's a book for someone who loves reading about civilians in the war without it being all too heavy.
Rating: ★★★
Title: The School for Good and Evil
Author: Soman Chainani
Publisher: HarperCollins
Series: The School for Good And Evil #1
Release Date: 06/06/13
Pages: 488
Service: Giveaway
Format: Paperback
Buy: Book Depository
Author Twitter: @SomanChainani
‘The first kidnappings happened two hundred years. Some years it was two boys taken, some years two girls were taken, sometimes one of each. But if at first the choices seemed random, soon the pattern became clear. One was always beautiful and good, the child every parent wanted as their own. The other was homely and odd, an outcast from birth. An opposing pair, plucked from youth ad spirited away.
This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good and Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale villains and heroes. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a fairy tale princess. Meanwhile, Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone, seems a natural fit for the School of Evil.
But when the two girls are swept into the Endless Wood, they find their fortunes reversed – Sophie’s dumped into the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School for Good, thrust amongst handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication… But what if the mistake is the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are?...’
So, this is a book I saw floating around in my local Waterstones and seemed pretty interesting and when I saw it being given away and I just had to get my hands on it.
I just want to start off on my thoughts about Sophie, Soman Chainani did a wonderful job in making me dislike her so much. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that annoyed with a character that I had to just put the book down a breath. But it wasn’t due to the fact that Sophie was poorly written. She was beautifully written in a way that made me loath her throughout the entire book. Every time I thought that I might be able to cope with her character she ended up doing something that ruined that. Agatha was a character that I did feel horrendously bad for at some points and though a lot of the time I was annoyed with her choices and wished that she would open her eyes to see what wold happen, I understood from the character’s point of view. Agatha wasn’t someone who had many friends and the way she was acting was realistic I think for the way that someone might have been in her position.
The main thing that I loved about this story was how much some of the things in the book were true. We grow up with this idea that a princess has to be this beautiful person and in real life that isn’t always the case. This book shows just that. Sometimes, you just have to look beneath what a person is on the outside and see what someone is really like. It was just one of those books where you could clearly see the message that they were trying to give across.
The beginning of the book I found myself getting into quite quickly and felt that I just wanted to keep reading. About a third of the way into the book though I found that the plot was just moving a little slow for me but it was definitely worth carrying on reading because as I moved along I found it starting to pick up again and I was getting drawn in. The end left me wanting to read the next book so badly, I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
The only problem that I had with this book is that they show why Sophie is in the School for Evil but then when you look at the School for Good a lot of the people are exactly the same. It was something that bugged me along the book.
It’s well worth the read though if you’re looking for something fantasy that incorporates a lot of the old fairy tales within it.
Rating: ★★★★
