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It'll require turning you into a millipede, but I think I can manage it
My day started with a wake and ended with a Halloween party and at this point I have been awake for essentially three days (I do not count five hours of non-consecutive sleep, especially when at least one of them occurred in a car on the way to Cape Cod), so this is not really a post. It is a recommendation for Ursula Vernon's Castle Hangnail (2015), which I read in the car on the way back from Cape Cod: it was my present from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schreibergasse and is recognizably the work of the genius who brought us Digger, "Squashbat," and "Balthazar Disdains the Lemon" while reminding me more of Diana Wynne Jones than anything since Charmed Life (1977) and The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988). I can't decide if one of the protagonist's spells is a nod to Lloyd Alexander or a case of plausible parallel evolution. The prose is breezy and funny and perceptive, with informative facts about the natural world on the side. The black-and-white illustrations by the author interact well with the text; I'd be interested to know if Vernon has done any art for the characters outside of the book. The emotional hits are real. I like the minions of Castle Hangnail and I like the twelve-year-old girl with steel-toed boots and a vulture pendant who comes to take charge of the masterless castle before it's decommissioned by the Board of Magic; I too would like to know more about Mad King Harold, who thought he was a cuttlefish and declared war on the clouds. Right now, I'm going to bed.
schreibergasse and is recognizably the work of the genius who brought us Digger, "Squashbat," and "Balthazar Disdains the Lemon" while reminding me more of Diana Wynne Jones than anything since Charmed Life (1977) and The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988). I can't decide if one of the protagonist's spells is a nod to Lloyd Alexander or a case of plausible parallel evolution. The prose is breezy and funny and perceptive, with informative facts about the natural world on the side. The black-and-white illustrations by the author interact well with the text; I'd be interested to know if Vernon has done any art for the characters outside of the book. The emotional hits are real. I like the minions of Castle Hangnail and I like the twelve-year-old girl with steel-toed boots and a vulture pendant who comes to take charge of the masterless castle before it's decommissioned by the Board of Magic; I too would like to know more about Mad King Harold, who thought he was a cuttlefish and declared war on the clouds. Right now, I'm going to bed.
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That's fair. If the protagonist's age is a guide, I assume it's designed for middle-grade readers, with earlier ones being a bonus. I hope she enjoys it when she gets to it!
For very light reading or readers in early elementary I can unhesitatingly recommend _Harriet the Invincible_ and recommend the Dragonbreath series with small reservations.
What are the small reservations? I read the first Dragonbreath and enjoyed it very much; I read a later one and thought it was all right, but I have since been informed that the series can vary wildly in quality. I have not read any of the Hamster Princess books, but four different people in the last twenty-four hours have told me to, so I will.
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I should say that because Chad & I switch off bedtimes with the kids, I've never read a Dragonbreath book the whole way through. But I remember wishing it had more than one female character; there's a book that's unexpectedly somewhat darker than the rest of the series; and I'd want to read the entire relevant books to get a better sense of how they handle, e.g., the ninjas.