Two root beer mugs
And one just-turned-12-year-old Birthday Boy!
Yes I've entirely given up rhyme and rhythm. I'm writing this while a ear-infected little love snores on my chest so my literary standards are a bit lax right now. Fish will get his real celebration when we're all healthy. He has requested bowling with friends. Um. Fun.
On the sixth day of Christmas my household gave to me...
Six (ty) dollars fleeing (to the med center)
Five gallons of mucus!
Three dead mice (thank you, Oreo)
Two lost dice (again, thanks Oreo)
And a game of Catan with some yummy hot tea!
I have given up any attempt to read, write or count because my sinuses are full of concrete. As are Awesome Sauce's ears. Or one anyway. "Two prescriptions for antibiotics" didn't have the same ring as two lost dice, but it certainly applies. As would "six chickens clucking" since chicken #7 mysteriously disappeared. Merry Christmas Mr. Fox. I hope you enjoyed her. Poor girl.
On the Second Day of Christmas my children gave to me...
Two nasty colds,
And a tin of magnetic poetry!
For those [one] individuals who actually read this, yes I'm doing the 12 Days of Christmas AFTER Christmas. Why? Because that's when they happen! Contrary to cultural belief, they are the twelve days between Christmas and Twelfth Night, which is the eve of Epiphany.
On the First Day of Christmas, my family gave to me...
A huge bag of trash by the tree!
Ps. Merry Christmas to all my beloveds. I am blessed beyond words and overflowing with ... crinkled wrappings. Right this moment we're in the post-gift hangover phase, with a nice stack of items on the counter to return. Like three Nerf guns. Me: ever the idealist, and the fool.
Okay, so maybe assembling a dollhouse is a little more complicated than I thought. Here it is, almost a year later and we are STILL not done. We now have: a foundation, exterior walls, roof. Plus a few extras so complicated they require their own post. Like electricity!
Meh, it's not that complicated. Who wants to build a dollhouse in the summer when there are chickens to chase and bikes to ride? Downside of taking a six-month break, one may not read the directions thoroughly when starting back up. Imagine my horror when - just yesterday - I spotted a bottle of Tacky Glue under the worktable. I've been using Elmer's Glue-All for everything! Sure enough, the instructions recommended Tacky Glue. One frantic Google search later and I discovered Elmer's is a perfectly suitable construction glue. Panic averted. Mostly.
Following are some in-progress shots. It doesn't look quite as dramatic as it feels (paint! walls! floors!). Enjoy!
The season of Advent is upon us! Actually, the season began a few days ago, but in our house celebration begins today, December 1st. I have our Jesse Tree ornaments in the Advent calendar, treats in the candy jar (with five children all old enough for treats they don't fit in the calendar anymore! The treats, not the children), and our daily readings all planned out.
Jesse Tree, what's that? Ornaments? What daily readings, you say? Oh, I'm so glad you asked!
You see, there's this wee little Advent ebook called Gloria! A Family Guide to Advent and Epiphany. It takes you through all of December with daily readings, songs, activities, Jesse Tree ornaments, and then, THEN it takes you through the Twelve Days of Christmas. You knew the 12 Days of Xmas came after Christmas, right? Even better, it's free! Look, here it is:
And wouldn't you know, I put the whole thing together. A labor of insanity that began in 2012 or something. A long time ago. The first year I made these cute, lumpy, hideous ornaments from salt dough without knowing that salt dough was, well, lacking in longevity. Here's the deal: Salt dough doesn't always dry all the way, or it will re-moisturize (that's a word, right?) if left in a damp place. Like, say, a basement. And what happens when metal hooks combine with moisture? Uh, yeah.
So I had to make all new ornaments (not all I suppose, since some weren't made with salt dough, though since I was making most of them over, I ended up making all of them over because I'm like that). These are a few of the ornaments:
Find the rest in the book which you can download here!
And just in case you were wondering what special fun activities are included in the book, and what stories are studied on each day, find the full list below:
And click here to preview one of the fabulous songs for the first day.
I don't know how Mud Pie got me to agree to it. Sure, both her brothers had big birthday parties around age 10 (I think Fish's was his 11th, but whatevs). Sure ,poor Pie has spent her whole life with a dumb mid-summer birthday so she's missed out on things like bringing treats to class or handing out invitations (July 3, which is actually pretty awesome but again, whatevs). Sure, my sanity is always questionable. But somehow she talked me into it. I may have even suggested it myself. A tenth birthday shindig with none other than a Murder Mystery theme.
We'd actually planned it a week or so away from her actual birthday, but when only one-ish little girls RSVPd "Yes" we decided to postpone. My sneaky self wanted to postpone anyway since I knew we were starting a new homeschool co-op and I expected Pie to make friends quickly, which she did, so we had an abundance of invitations to hand out. She did so at the beginning of October, and last weekend, Halloween, was the chosen date. Now I will share what we did and how it went, in case someone else somewhere someday wants to make themselves crazy for a week have the pleasure of planning and executing such an event. Many ideas were outright stolen from this website, and other ideas were swiped from other websites or emerged from the remnants of my brain at some point during that pre-party week. So what did we do?
The invitations:
Murder Mystery Party Invitations
A little something I whipped together in Pages. We printed them on card stock (three to a page) and cut them out. I also sent an Evite since keeping track of responses would be so much easier online. Once I had confirmation, they were sent their character, but more on that in a moment! Each was asked to dress appropriately and was given one special line or instruction. Things like, "I hate feathers!" Or "Someone stole my ring!" Moms were also invited. Why not? We had as much fun as the girls!
Next for the big event, I decided I would write the mystery myself. My thought process: I'm a writer, this should be easy, I ought to be able to whip this out, no problem at all. Yes, I am this moronic. After several hours I wished I'd gone and bought a mystery kit online. After several more hours I really, really, really wished I'd bought one online. Eventually, I had some semblance of mystery hashed out, complete with a spreadsheet and about twenty sheets of scrap paper. Here's where I made characters and assigned them to each girl/guy and mom who was able to attend.
Finally the big day! When each girl arrived (and one guy, since Fish was attending and was allowed one friend), she received a bag with her "Mystery Item" which was a prop that would be used at some point during the game. Then we gathered at the dining table for tea (apple cider punch - yum) and crumpets (donuts and scones. Yeah, I went all out. Like all the way out to the grocery store). First task: match each attendee with the "profession" on their suspect sheet.
So many streamers! All over the house!
Our mystery began with the Countess (Mud Pie) and her Royal Chicken who lays golden eggs. The Countess suspected someone was out to steal her chicken, so invited all the suspects to tea. They did not know this yet, of course, but they would soon find out! Because the Countess slipped off to the upstairs nursery (her and Rowdy's room) and screamed.
Imagine ten kids and five moms thundering up the stairs to find Mud Pie unresponsive (but very giggly) on the floor! The Coroner declared the Countess dead and together the kids marked out her body.
Oh the fun of masking tape!
What fun. Rowdy, little sister, cried and asked Pie to "Get up!" Which she eventually did because she was actually just knocked unconscious. Sadly, the blow wiped her memory so she had no idea who attacked her and who ... stole her chicken! Another character's ring had also been stolen.
The butler, Fish, was supposed to lead everyone downstairs to watch a video the Countess left for such an occasion, but brothers are not always the most helpful. Thankfully Mom-Housekeeper had that spreadsheet handy! Down we went to watch the recording:
Poison! The tea was poisoned?! We had to be sure! So upstairs we raced to test. Except again Fish had misplaced his Mystery Item, so Mom-Keeper to the rescue with some baking soda to toss in the cup of colored vinegar. Poison confirmed, the Coroner placed everyone under arrest. We followed a thread to the dungeon (basement) where a "Web of Intrigue" had been crafted, painstakingly by Mom and Pie earlier in the day. Which we had to fix about a hundred times because Fish's bedroom lay on the other side. Anyway, it was like a laser maze, but with thread.
We navigated the maze in the dark with glow sticks. Not the best idea for the longevity of the maze.
Inside Fish's room we took mug shots and fingerprints. I made use of a handy iPhone app. Fun! And while waiting for our photo shoot (which didn't take long), we solved Halloween Riddles. Like What did the skeleton order at the bar? Two cokes and a mop! Groan.
Next we returned upstairs because someone spotted the chicken (me - I hadn't quite figured out how to get everyone upstairs). Interestingly, colored eggs were all over the living room. Inside the eggs, puzzle pieces (and candy because you have to have candy in colored eggs!). Next task, put the puzzle together!
Mystery puzzle in progress...
I'd been worried about having enough time, and had pushed things along a little quickly. So at this point we were, oh, like fifteen minutes into the mystery part of the party. It was going a little too quickly. The puzzle took longer than expected. Pfew! I made the puzzle, yes I did and I made it from this picture:
Yes, that's a chicken and a ring.
Our next clue! The chicken had the missing ring, and was last seen where this photo was taken. Down to the family room where a mess of feathers had suddenly appeared. And the poison was taking its toll. We had to pick up the feathers using cooking utensils because our fingers were no longer working!
I detest feathers! That was the maid's "line."
Beneath the feathers, one of which was a paintbrush, lay a message written in chicken language (pig pen code that St. Nick helpfully wrote out). One of the girls had a cypher as her Mystery Item. Of course Mom-Keeper had to remind her, but it worked out fine.
Sticky fingers?
The message told us that the suspect had sticky fingers. So up to the kitchen we went, only to discover a fingerprint on the stove. Who'd have thought our suspect sheets had fingerprints on them! Match up the fingerprints and ... The Artist stole the chicken to save it from the cook, who wanted to cook it! And the chicken laid an egg with the missing ring inside. The Princess (who had lost the ring) paid a reward (fake money, which was her Mystery Item - see how clever I am?) to everyone.
Mystery solved, Mom-Keeper wanted to collapse. But it was only a bit after 3pm and the party didn't end until 4. Plus the Ambassador had not yet arrived (a girl who was planning to come late), and she knew where the antidote to the poison was. Right as I was about to give it up and serve the cake, the Ambassador's mom pulled up in the driveway! Saved!
The Ambassador had a riddle, the solution to which provided us with the location of the antidote. It was inside a pumpkin, mixed in with pumpkin guts. Yuck. But oh so fun!
Digging through pumpkin guts for the antidote
Finally, cake and presents and one last game. An auction of wrapped dollar store treasures, opened in White Elephant fashion. The girls were too polite to steal one another's gifts, however, so most everyone ended up keeping what they got. All good.
Store bought cake. I have my limits.
We wrapped up at exactly 4pm! Except that many of the moms and girls stuck around for a while to chat, eat more cake, and generally enjoy the afternoon, which I must admit was the highlight of the whole event for me. And what did I do the next day? Sleep? Nonono. I vacuumed feathers out of the family room.
My favorite picture: Pie and Rowdy getting ready for the party!
The concept of a picture book illustrated with totally over-the-top-awesome pumpkin carvings is incredible. Brilliant, actually. The story, while fairly simple, has a full and satisfying arc. The pumpkins want to dress up and scare the children, but the children laugh. The vegetables, on the other hand... Well, what kid isn't afraid of vegetables?!? There are also some parent-friendly puns and jokes (mimes really are scary!), but the text itself is straightforward, with almost textbook clarity. It's a smart book, an incredibly creative book, a "why didn't I think of that" book. But the execution taught me a few things.
For one, I happen to love frivolity and play in the language. Picture books are like poetry: every word counts, every word should do multiple things (evoke, set tone, move the story, establish character). Relying on concept and (obtuse-to-a-child) humor just doesn't sparkle. I also longed for more "setting" to the pumpkin-carved illustrations. Of course I'm not an illustrator or a pumpkin carver, but I am a photographer. Why not set up whole scenes instead of the chalk background? While the text was supremely easy to read (if a bit verbose), the pictures were hard to read.
P.s. Why is October muggy - warm and moist? Wouldn't it be chilly? Windy? Stormy? Words matter.
That said, the carvings are really truly amazing, and the story is satisfying, clever, funny, especially for adults.
Trick or Treat
Leo Landry 2012
First, I love the size of this book. The smaller, square size is so bedtime-friendly, and the amount of text per page is perfect for an evening read-aloud. I hate when Rowdy is trying to flip pages ahead of my reading, and she didn't need to do that here. (I also hate wordless pages where I, in my pre-bedtime-zombie state have to make sh@t up on the spot.) I also love the simple story of a little ghost having a Halloween party, and clear illustrations with a bit of visual irony. One invitation ends up in human hands! Oh my! The ending is satisfying.
Here's an example of text and illustrations that meld perfectly. Both are streamlined, simple. The text isn't showy, nor overly complex. It tells the story in a sweet, gentle way, which matches the sweet, gentle illustrations and completes a story about Scary things (Like a ghost named Oliver!) that turn out to be sweet and gentle! Talk about aboutness - this book does it beautifully.
Monster Mash
David Catrow illus. 2012
The song, Monster Mash, in picture book form. Hmmm. I'm not sure how well the song translates into an actual story. Because, well, it's not a story. It's a song. So the plot would be: monsters come to a party and do the monster mash. Which is, well, not much, but hey, it's about the illustrations, baby!
Which are ... gross. I mean, they're amazingly artistic and creative and colorful and almost sort of disney or pixar or something (which, if you look at the artist's bio, makes sense). But the creatures are scary. And gross. And this is coming from someone who keeps a collection of Garbage Pail Kids Funkos on her desk. When I asked Rowdy if she like the book she said, "Yeah." So I asked, "Are the pictures scary?" "Naw, it has Spooky Scary Skeletons!" So, bah, whatever. I would have liked the book more had the illustrations pushed for more of a story, gone beyond the Monster Mash song.
Only a Witch Can Fly
Alison McGhee, Taeeun Yoo illus. 2009
This book has definite kid appeal, proven by 10-yr-old Mud Pie's theft of it. She's read it several times already so it must speak to her. And no wonder! The writing has a Charlotte Zolotow feel to it. Lyrical, poetic.
From the mouth of Mud Pie, "I liked the kitty, but I didn't like that I couldn't tell if the person on the broom was a girl or a boy." So there, publishing industry, quit trying to make characters gender-ambiauious. It's creepy. Though a Halloween book is supposed to be creepy, so... Never mind!
The Monsterator
Keith Graves 2014
Illustrations: adorable, scary without being grotesque, and the flip-book monster-maker at the back is brilliant! It's a book, it's a toy, it's a full fifteen minutes of entertainment on a long car ride! The story: child-centric (good), clever (good), surprising (gooder!). Spoiler alert: I sort of love that the little monster didn't "learn himself a lesson and be a good boy ever after." Because you know, sometimes if you make a nasty face long enough, it really does stay that way. The rhyme: worked as well as it needed to.
Happy Halloween Witch's cat!
Harriet Muncaster 2015
Surprisingly this take off on the "Is that my Tractor" sort of book was our absolute favorite. Rowdy asked for it many times, and Pie and I spent quite a while studying the pictures and exclaiming over little details we spotted. We love love love love loved (we really loved) the illustrations. We loved the simple storyline that, though the illustrations, wrapped up surprisingly well (all the discarded costumes show up at the party anyway!). Adorable, creative. One I wouldn't mind adding to my permanent collection.
Black and Bittern was Night
Robert Heidbreder, John Martz 2013
Here I'm going to be grumpy. I really really loved this book. I love the playful language, the illustrations that pop with simplicity. I never got to read it all the way through. Why? My tongue hurt. Seriously. Reading it aloud just wasn't happening, and Rowdly got too impatient with the thrickle thrackling skul-a-mug-mugging to let me work it out. As a performance piece it might be amazing. As a bedtime read-aloud? Splickderringdoo.
Thanks to recent developments, I love love love the library again. (Although I still prefer bookstores - they're less expensive!) The books I pulled off the New Picture Books section today: Yard Sale by Eve Bunting (love her!), illustrated by Lauren Castillo, Are We There Yeti? by Ashlyn Anstee, and Flowers Are Calling by Rita Gray, illustrated by Kenard Pak. Now for my writerly thoughts (pics take you to amazon links, affiliate style).
Yard Sale (Bunting/Castillo, 2015): Firstly, the touch of the book: I absolutely love it. I'm extremely tactile, have been known to go to Joann just to run my hands through the fabrics, so when I come across a book with feel-good pages I'm very very happy. The paper is heavy, matte, pleasureful to touch and turn. Paper combined with the deceptively simple illustrations lend the book a retro 1980s feel. Which really matches the story, because the economy in the 80s was rotten, and life was just kinda depressing (for my family, anyhow). The illustrations perfectly blend with the mood Bunting creates, but don't make the story melodramatic or caricatured, if that makes sense.
The story itself is beautiful, the writing straightforward, the aboutness clear and moving. For those studying picture books, this would be a good one to re-type, storyboard and dissect.
Flowers Are Calling (Gray/Pak, 2015): Those same fabulous matte pages which are essential for the absolute drop dead gorgeousness of these illustrations. The illustrations are really truly glorious. I wanted to frame them and hang them all over my house! Now, may I confess something? I didn't understand the text until I read the jacket copy (which I read precisely because I didn't understand the text). I may very well be that slow, but as I read I kept thinking, Why aren't the flowers calling the porcupine? Is he hidden in the picture? No, he's not, so why... Apparently Rowdy thought the same, because somewhere around the moose she wiggled off my lap and wandered off to play. She may be (at 3.5) on the young side for this book. However, this is one I'll use with my older children when we talk about plants/pollination later this school year. Rarely do education and beauty meld into such a perfect harmony.
Are We There Yeti? (Anstee, 2015): Another one with a great feel to the pages. Yay! I'll admit, I was skeptical of this book because I wasn't sure Rowdy would "get" the pun. But she totally did and spent the rest of the day saying, "Are we there YETI?" and laughing like a maniac. How awesome is that? I think she loved the pictures too, and the mystery (what's in the cave? oooh more yetis!!!), and the kids being impatient on the bus.
This is a great book to study suspense, how a picture book needs to build it up then resolve it in a satisfying way (this one does both exceptionally well).
In honor of a very special day, I thought I'd revive this old post about a book I found, um, intriguing, with some interesting asides (see below!).
My first thought as I read this book was Wow! Dahl is on LSD! Which makes sense for a book published in the 80s (is Dahl a child of the 60s/70s?). But no, he wasn't on psychotropic drugs. The book is Freud and Jung with a dash of Platonic forms. That says it all, doesn't it?
Ok, on to at least one real thought: BFG’s fabulous voice of made-up words, rhythm and bizarre syntax that never muddles meaning makes the book vivid and real, and surprisingly easy to read. Logic, however, seems a non-essential factor in this book, and in fantasy for this age in general. Example: the BFG can’t understand the natterbox spiders (he doesn’t know the language), but he can understand the chatbag cattypiddlers. Um. Why? Not that I really care because, hello, natterbox spiders and chatbag cattypiddlers are just too freaking awesome.
Yet I can’t get away from a Freudian reading of this book. Case in point, the giants have these frankfurter lips, right? And we all know what hot dogs represent... And they have this slimy drool, and little Sophie ends up in a giant cucumber-like (phallic much?) vegetable and is then taken into the giant’s mouth ... Yes, yes, I know. A stretch. It’s just creepy to me, like the author is subconsciously working through some latent memories he can't make sense of. Anyway, enough of that. Now for additional disjointed and seemingly random thoughts:
I love how the BFG is so childlike while the giants are rather obviously bullies, though the “message” is a little too heavy-handed for me, and a wee wittle one-sided. There's a line about human beans (yes, beans) being the only ones that kill their own kind, which isn’t true at all. I had enough hamsters as a child to know they often kill one another, and they eat their young (or in the case of Peaches, half of one of her young. The other half she left for me to find). On that note, I was a little annoyed by the social commentary. It seems the book was half parody (jack and the beanstalk references), half fantasy, and half cultural critique (yes, I know my halves don’t add up). Yet even with all the talk of how human beans kill one another, the giants (only doing what comes naturally to themselves, unlike the awful humans) get a pretty severe punishment.
Moving on: Stephen King wrote somewhere that horror is having people react in expected ways to unexpected events. Here a giant meets real England and a table is made for him of grandfather clocks and a ping pong table. Dahl gives great authenticating details of the butler needing a ladder to set the table, it taking four footmen to carry the clocks, and so on. Such great humor here, and the fart jokes, and by the bellypoppers and portedos. I’m laughing aloud. In public. People are looking at me.
On the downside, it took to page 118 (Sophie trying to save the school kids) for there to be strong forward motion. The plot was muddled throughout and not tied up too neatly at the end. Maybe because the whole thing is just some Jungian shared dream? It was all Dahl’s dream, obviously, since he is the BFG who, we discover at the end, is writing the story. Obviously, right? RIGHT?
So although I found the book creepily Freudian/Jungian, and although I did enjoy the wild creativity and fun use of language, I do hope Dahl got himself some good psychotherapy.
As an aside, I loved the bit about why there are blank pages at the back of an atlas—to draw the places no one has ever been. Isn’t that a metaphor for writing? And for life itself?
A second aside: Dahl and I share a birthday! Which just so happens to be TODAY! Happy birthday to us!
Every moment is packed with more than I can do (school! meals! chauffeur! high schooler! baby! toddler! writing!). Every corner of our home is packed and used for multiple purposes (kitchen: food prep, mail station, delivery center. Dining room: food consumption, school, craft table, office, clothes folding. Living room: morning coffee, office, baby play wonderland, kids' computer center. Family room: entertainment, school work area, partial library, preschool supplies, music and art. etc.). Every corner of my mind is packed with things I desperately don't want to forget. From order forms to rare quiet moments snuggling our newest bit of abundance.
Rather than seeing life as overwhelming, draining, exhausting, I'm striving to see the fullness of every corner as abundance. Life is gift. These children are gift. And today we celebrate our newest, smallest gift. I realized in writing this that today is my first time mentioning him here. I'm not sure how a year slipped by, but it has, and I will remedy that now by unveiling his journal nickname (since all my babies have nicknames). He is and will forever be: Awesomesauce.
And what an awesome year it has been. Little Awesomesauce has been the true Tagalong Baby, going with us to Kentucky and Pittsburgh and Milwaukee and New York City. I was nursing him when my agent called with news of my first book contract and he helped inspire my second book. Yet despite clutching to every moment in an attempt to preserve it forever, an entire year has passed. I'm not sure where it went. But a few of those places:
Brand new and already smiling
Hotel Poolside in Pittsburgh!
Playing Hide-n-Seek?
At MOMA in NYC!
Another museum!
And a castle!
Happy birthday, my darling, always-smiling boy. You are the sauce that makes everything awesome.
In this house we read a lot, especially picture books. I'm sure it has nothing to do with having a three-year-old and a sweet little baby. So trips to the library (Penny's favorite place ever) always end with stacks upon stacks of picture books. Usually I have to sneak some back on the shelf because our book bag will be overflowing. I'm not sure when the library added a New Books section for picture books, but the discovery has yielded a happy preschooler. More books! While I get to keep up with new titles.
I'm also trying to Read like a Writer, and since picture books are too easy to read carelessly and cast aside, especially when a certain tot often loses patience with a book after the first few pages, I'm going to record books as I read them and share my (I'm sure brilliantly insightful) thoughts here. Starting with...
Jampires!
Sarah McIntyre/David O'Connell, 2014
Can I just say I love love love weird books like this? The illustrations are zany, frolicking, fun (not to mention delicious), and the story is surprisingly satisfying for a picture book.
I hate writing, "for a picture book," because picture books should have stories. You know, with beginnings and middles and endings. The really great ones do. Very Hungry Caterpillar,Where the Wild Things Are. But too often it seems picture books are given a pass. Anyhow, I'll rant about that another day. Right now I'll comment on the elements of Big People Books that this picture book shares, that make it good.
1. A sympathetic protagonist. Sam is cute as a button, has personality, and shows efficacy - he solves the problem and rescues the world from jamlessness!
2. A plot. I feared, especially when I saw the rhyme, that the book would be a sing-song little story about creatures who eat jam. And while it is about Jampires, it's mostly about Sam saving his donuts and returning the little lost Jampires to their home (the latter was the one element I thought could have been developed more. But hey, we're talking about a few hundred words so...).
3. A really awesome setting. The Jampire's world is so, so, so YUMMY! I want to live there, like right now, with my afternoon coffee. Honestly, I can see a movie springing from this book. If it did, I'd be first in line to see it.
So that's that. I could go on about rhyme (pretty good), and the use of color to evoke mood in the illustrations (really lovely), but maybe next time. I'll just say, I want a Jampire of my own. I also love the word Dodgers.
Trick or Treat
Monster Mash
Only a Witch Can Fly
Happy Halloween Witch's cat!
My first thought as I read this book was Wow! Dahl is on LSD! Which makes sense for a book published in the 80s (is Dahl a child of the 60s/70s?). But no, he wasn't on psychotropic drugs. The book is Freud and Jung with a dash of Platonic forms. That says it all, doesn't it?
Ok, on to at least one real thought: BFG’s fabulous voice of made-up words, rhythm and bizarre syntax that never muddles meaning makes the book vivid and real, and surprisingly easy to read. Logic, however, seems a non-essential factor in this book, and in fantasy for this age in general. Example: the BFG can’t understand the natterbox spiders (he doesn’t know the language), but he can understand the chatbag cattypiddlers. Um. Why? Not that I really care because, hello, natterbox spiders and chatbag cattypiddlers are just too freaking awesome.
