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My Diary From the Edge of the World by Jodi Lynn Anderson

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shakespeare’s Hamlet, epigraph to My Diary From the Edge of the World by Jodi Lynn Anderson,

“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” ~Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontiers, quoted in My Diary from the Edge of the World by Jodi Lynn Anderson.

Twelve year old Gracie didn’t know that when her mother gave her a diary for her birthday, the coming year would be the most exciting and momentous of her life. Garcie lives in the prosaic town of Cliffden, Maine where “nothing terrible or exciting ever happens.” Baseball games, science lectures, school, watching Extreme Witches on TV, playing in puddles after a rain, collecting fallen dragon scales—these are the rather mundane things that make up Gracie’s life with her mother, a professional violinist turned homemaker, her father, an abstracted and absent-minded meteorologist, her older sister Millie, the beautiful, graceful one, and her little brother Sam, nicknamed the Mouse.

Gracie lives in an alternate universe version of Planet Earth. Gracie’s Earth is flat, and it is home to lots of creatures that are only mythological on our Planet Earth. Witches, dragons, (destructive) mermaids, pegasi, sasquatches, ghosts, and other myths are all real in Gracie’s world. And Dark Clouds come for people when they die.

When it looks as if a Dark Cloud has come for Sam the Mouse, Gracie’s family decides to outrun fate (or death) and try to escape to the Extraordinary World where dragons and ghosts and Dark Clouds don’t exist. Gracie’s dad is the only one she knows of who actually believes that the Extraordinary World really exists and that it might be possible to to get there from the edge of their world, but anything is worth trying to save Sam.

Okay. So “quirky” and “weird” are appropriate descriptors for this middle grade fantasy that is more of a family in crisis story than an adventure story. Gracie’s family crosses the continent in an old Winnebago, and they encounter monsters and wonders beyond imagination. They also learn to trust one another and to forgive each other. I thought the book was poignant and emotional at times, and the story was intriguing. However, the use of (fallen) angels as just another mythological-but-real-in-this-world set of characters marred the book to some extent. I wish the author had chosen some creatures other than angels to be her guardian protectors in this otherworld, since “one of these things is not like the others.” Angels may be mysterious, but they’re not mythological in the same way that witches and ghosts are.

Gracie’s world is also beholden to or ruled over by “the gods”, like Zeus(?), but they are barely mentioned in the story. At one point in the diary when Gracie and her family have been saved from certain doom by the quick thinking and action of a good friend and by fortuitous circumstance, Gracie writes, “‘Thank you,’ I whispered to no one in particular. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.'”

It reminds me of this song by Andrew Peterson:

Anyway, Gracie and her family are looking for a savior, a place of refuge, and maybe even for Someone to thank. You’ll be intrigued, if you read the book, to see whether or not they find what they’re looking for.

Fuzzy by Tom Angleberger and Paul Dellinger

Vanguard One Middle School has a new student: Fuzzy, a state-of-the-art, highly intelligent robot with speech recognition language processing, facial recognition software, and fuzzy logic. Fuzzy is nearly human, but not quite. And Vanguard One Middle School is nearly under the complete control of other, more specifically tasked robots, in particular Vice-Principal Barbara who practically runs the entire school from her secret control center in Room 43.

Max, short for Maxine, is tired of Vice-Prinicpal Barbara and her constantly issued discipline tags (which are sent automatically and immediately to parents), but Max is also fascinated by the new student, Fuzzy, and the possibilities inherent in a robot student who re-programs himself in response to new data. While Vice-Principal Barbara is doing everything she can to execute the Constant UpGrade program (#CUG) and achieve the goal of a perfect school—ever higher test scores, ever fewer discipline problems, ever cheaper and more efficient to run—Max and Fuzzy are getting to know one another and become friends, as much as a human being can become friends with a fuzzy logic robot.

What a great story! While it lampoons the current educational culture of constant testing and computer idolization, the book also shows readers the possibilities and limitations of cutting-edge robotic technology. It just might be coming any day now to a school or workplace near you. Many years ago, Arthur C. Clark’s 2001: A Space Odyssey asked the question, “with artificially intelligent computers (or robots), will we continue to control the technology, or will the technology take over and control us?” This story is a variation on that theme, with humor, for middle grade readers. It’s not deep or prophetic or philosophical, but it does introduce the thought that technology may be both a blessing and a curse.

And it’s just a fun story. Enjoy the story. Then, if you want, spend some time thinking about the questions: What separates humans from artificially intelligent computers or robots? Could robots have feelings? Could they make you have an emotional response? Have you ever felt sorry for or angry with Siri? What happens if a computer is programmed to override its own programming?

Two Magical Sixth Grade Reads with Dating Issues

Fortune Falls by Jenny Goebel.
Sticks and Stones by Abby Cooper.

These books were similar in many ways. Our female protagonist in each book is a bit of a misfit, even an outcast, with a poor self-image and an innate limitation that exacerbates that problem. In the book Fortune Falls, Sadie is an Unlucky who lives in a town, Fortune Falls, where superstitions such as breaking your mother’s back when you step on a crack, are true laws of nature. In Sticks and Stones, Elyse suffers with CAV, a condition that causes the words that people use to describe her, good and bad, to appear in bold print on her arms and legs. The bad words, like “loser” or “klutz” or worse, itch ferociously; the good words, like “adorable” or “cool” or “sweet”, feel warm and comforting.

So Sadie is looking for a way to transcend her bad luck or even change it into good luck, while Elyse is just trying to survive or avoid the bad words people throw at her and glean lots more compliments and good words. Both of these problems speak to fears that middle schoolers (and many adults) often have: What if I’m just a born loser? What if I never do get into the “cool kids crowd”? Do I really want to be cool? On the other hand, do I want to see myself, and have others see me, as a pathetic outcast for the rest of my life? It’s the basic “Who am I really?” question. (By the way, there’s a black cat that figures prominently in Fortune Falls, but said cat has a bobbed tail. Cover error!)

Sadie answers the questions both by finding a little luck along the way and by accepting her luckless self as she is. These two solutions conflict somewhat and really beg the question. Sadie says she’s OK because she managed to work within the rigged system and grab some luck or because she believes she’s OK, and that’s enough. Elyse answers the “who am I really?” question by accepting her words, both good and bad, and by deciding not to apply bad words to herself. I’m not sure the resolution in either story is adequate. Bad words can hurt, even if you’re determined to not internalize them. And bad luck, in a town like Fortune Falls where luck is a real thing, could really damage or even kill.

Both Sadie and Elyse have friend issues, issues with “mean girls”, and boyfriend issues—all in the sixth grade. Sticks and Stones, in particular, has a heavy, heavy emphasis on sixth graders dating, even though it’s pretty tame dating, holding hands, kissing, breaking up, going steady, not at all what I would like to see sixth graders worrying about. Stereotypical “mean girls” are in both books. In Sticks and Stones, Elyse’s best friend joins the mean girls clique for no discernible reason. Both books have lots of name-calling. A sort of/kind of therapeutically good ending doesn’t make up for all the angst (at 12!) in the middle. I think sixth grade is way too young for the boyfriend/dating thing to figure so prominently in the stories, but it’s more and more of a theme in middle grade fiction. I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but eleven and twelve year olds are too young to have boyfriends and dates and jealousy over boys and breaking up and going steady. If it’s happening anyway in sixth grade, we need to discourage, not encourage, it.

Aside from the boyfriend/girlfriend nonsense, these are readable and serviceable, not for my library, but you may get better mileage than I did.

The Luck Uglies: Rise of the Ragged Clover by Paul Durham

Rise of the Ragged Clover is the third, and I assume final, book in the Luck Uglies series. It’s been a good story from the beginning. Riley (Rye) O’Chanter and her family and friends fight against unnumbered foes, including the corrupt Earl Morningwig Longchance and his family, a multitude of Bog Noblins, the treacherous Fork-Tongue Charmers, and in this new book, Shriek Reavers and a River Wyvern. In an uneasy coalition with the Luck Uglies, outlaws who protect the town of Drowning, sometimes, Rye and her friends try to protect the weak and the innocent, but end up in dangerous and morally ambiguous situations over and over again until the final climax of the story has Rye face an impossible choice: let the Bog Noblins destroy Drowning or drown the town in a flood that might kill everyone anyway.

I really did like the story, but the moral ambiguity and ends-justify-the-means reasoning was too much for my sensibilities, which have admittedly been scarred by this election season. However, these are some of the nuggets of “wisdom” that Rye’s father drops, and I just couldn’t help applying them to our own national leadership crisis. This kind of advice (moral relativism) has led us to where we are now.

“Sometimes only the bad guys can save you. Sometimes it takes a villain to save you from the monsters.”

I can’t help it. I’m reading: “Sometimes we have to vote for the lesser of two evils. Sometimes only a strong, bad, guy is strong enough to shake things up and save us from a really evil and worse fate.” Consequentialism, blech.

” . . . a leader’s choices are sometimes impossible ones. The right decision may not be the best, and the best decision can be both right and wrong. So a real hero can only follow her heart.”

And what if “her heart” leads her to justify the killing of unwanted babies or what if “his heart” says he must kiss every girl he is attracted to? What if the hero’s heart is desperately wicked and deceptive?

“That magic, your unique abilities, they’re already within each of you. All you needed was something to believe in. And sometimes it’s easier to believe in a charm or a totem than it is to believe in ourselves.”

Again with the believe in yourself/follow your heart Disney-esque advice. And if you find it difficult to believe that you are a god and your heart is always right, make yourself a harmless little idol to convince you of your own omnipotence.

Finally in the end, Rye makes the right decision about her future, but again it’s just based on her feelings. She doesn’t feel like becoming a tough outlaw chieftain in order to bring about good for the town, the Luck Uglies, and her friends:

“I don’t want to use fear as a weapon and struggle for power. I don’t want to be the one to lead the Luck Uglies out of the dark if it means I must first step into the shadows myself.”

But the contorted, murky, and turgid moral reasoning that comes before that fine declaration is not what I needed to read in this contorted, murky, and turgid swamp of a political season. And the story itself is morally ambiguous, wth the bad guys sometimes seemingly not so bad, or least there’s always something badd-er for the villains to fight against and thereby become somewhat redeemable. I needed clear, bright lines between good and evil, lucid and rational ethical thought, and a real hero who trusts in some standard besides her own heart. I tend to believe that we all need those things, especially kids, especially now.

Maybe the timing was wrong for me to read this book. Maybe (probably) I’m loading way too much baggage onto a middle grade fantasy novel. If you enjoyed the first two books in the series, you’ll probably like this one, too. I would suggest that you read the three books in the trilogy in order. There are a lot of characters and creatures to keep straight, and I don’t think jumping into the middle (or the last third) of the story will work well for this one.

My review of the first two book in the Luck Uglies series (in which I was bothered by the moral ambiguity of the novels).

Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard by Jonathan Auxier

“The most priceless possession of the human race is the wonder of the world. Yet, latterly, the utmost endeavors of mankind have been directed towards the dissipation of that wonder . . . Nobody, any longer, may hope to entertain an angel unawares, or to meet Sir Lancelot in shining armor on a moonlit road. But what is the use of living in a world devoid of wonderment?” ~Kenneth Grahame, epigraph at the beginning of Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard by Jonathan Auxier.

What indeed? Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard, a sort of companion novel to Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, is full of wonderment and adventure and storytelling and friendship and bravery and magic. The antagonists in the book either want squash nonsense (stories, magic, wonder) or to use the magic for nefarious and selfish purposes. Sophie, a twelve year old book mender and reader of all sorts of stories, wants to preserve and guard the stories, which brings me to my only quibble with this book itself. Sophie finds out fairly early in the story that she is the Last Storyguard, so I’m not sure why the book is called Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard. I guess the symmetry with Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes was too much to resist.

Peter Nimble does return to play a major role in this novel. He is Sophie’s rescuer, even when she doesn’t want to be rescued, her helper, especially when the skills of a Master Thief are called for, and her admirer, although the admiration is abashed and from afar. Peter Nimble is accompanied by the intrepid Sir Tode, part cat, part horse, part human, and Sophie picks up her own sidekick along the way, an enormous silver tigress named Akrasia. Together these friends adventure across the Grimmwald and through the city of Bustleburgh to stop the villains who are planning to stop, destroy and immolate all nonsense (stories, magic, wonder, books!).

I found this book to be thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking. The themes, implied in the Grahame epigraph, and demonstrated throughout the story, have to do with the power of stories and the need for magic, good and bad, and wonder, in a life that is worth the living. The book never comes out and says so, but one of the ideas that I gleaned was that it is necessary to have choices and villains to fight and goodness to aspire to for our stories to make sense. For reasons we do not, perhaps cannot, fully understand, it is God’s plan for the wheat and the tares to grow together until the judgment day (see Matthew 13:24-30). Maybe I’m getting too philosophical in response to a children’s fantasy book, but that’s the way my mind works.

Enjoy the story. Guard the stories. After all, what is the use of living in a world devoid of wonderment?

Sincerely,

Sherry Early, Bookmender, Preservationist, Librarian, Storyguard.

School of the Dead by Avi

I’ve read and enjoyed other books by prolific children’s author Avi, but none were remotely like this horror story of a boy named Tony who sees ghosts or maybe zombies (although they are never called that), lots of them. It’s certainly not for everyone. If you don’t like horror and occultic elements, you’ll want to skip this story. But if you’re a fan of Hitchcock movies and paranormal fantasy, School of the Dead fits right into the Halloween genre and the Halloween season.

Twelve year old Tony has a weird uncle, Great Uncle Charlie, the kind of guy everyone asks about, saying, “What’s the deal with him anyway? How come Uncle Charlie is so weird?” The answer: “Every family has a weird uncle.” When Uncle Charlie moves in with Tony and his parents, however, Tony finds out that Uncle Charlie is really a great guy, lots of fun. And when Uncle Charlie dies, Tony is devastated. The only thing that Tony looks forward to is his transfer to Penda School, the school in San Francisco that Uncle Charlie graduated from and recommended to Tony.

From the time that Tony enters Penda School, things get really weird. No spoilers, but the plot involves voodoo, haunted corridors, secret rooms, zombie-like creatures, and soul-snatching. And it all takes place on and around Halloween. Again, it’s pretty creepy, and Tony has a hard time deciding whom to trust—or whether there’s anyone he can trust. His parents are suitably, for a scary story, useless and oblivious. In fact, all of the adults in the story are either part of the evil weirdness or else ineffectual and unhelpful.

The story is well written, as would be expected in the hands of such a veteran author, and Tony is a frustrating but understandable character who does all the things the reader would tell him not to do in a horror novel. He opens the door he shouldn’t open, drops the flashlight, shuts himself up in dark places, listens to the bad guys, fails to trust the good guys, etc. etc. But as the narrative progresses, he seems less stupid and more just trapped in an overwhelmingly evil place with an entire contingent of soul-sucking monsters.

Read it only if you’re immune to horror-induced nightmares.

The Secrets of Solace by Jaleigh Johnson

I read Ms. Johnson’s The Mark of the Dragonfly, the first book set in the World of Solace, and I enjoyed it. I called it “techno-steampunk fantasy science fiction.” This book fits into the same genre and is set in the same world, but it’s a companion novel, not really a sequel. Either book could be read on its own terms and appreciated with or without the other.

The Mark of the Dragonfly features a super-cool train, and this new Solace book has a sentient airship. Both books feature feisty, adventurous female protagonists with kind and supportive male friends. In The Secrets of Solace, Lina Winterbock is an archivist apprentice in the Archivist stronghold of Ortana. The war between the Merrow Kingdom and the Dragonfly Territories is bringing many refugees and difficult decisions to the mountain strongholds of the Archivists, who are trying to remain neutral in the war.

Lina herself must make some hard decisions about whom to trust when she discovers a valuable artifact in the depths of a secret cavern in the mountain. Can she trust Ozben, a refugee boy with his own secrets? What about her teacher and mentor, Zara, who has been too busy to pay much attention to Lina for a long time now? Can anyone other than Lina herself be trusted with a secret that might change the course of the war?

Although the pacing and the balance between action and explication felt “off” to me as I read, children who are really interested in this sort of thing might not mind or even notice. It takes a long time to get to the climax of the plot, and then all the political stuff is hurriedly explained and within two chapters, resolved. Lina and Ozben develop a good strong friendship, but Lina’s mentor has a rather lame excuse for her neglect of her ward. If this sort of book interests you, I would suggest The Mark of the Dragonfly first because I think it’s the better book. Then, if you like that one, you might like this one, too.

Cybils 2016, Middle Grade Speculative Fiction

What is Middle Grade Speculative Fiction?
This Cybils award category includes books with “talking animals, time-travel, ghosts, and paranormal abilities, and all the other books that might not have obvious magic on every page, and which are set here on Earth, but which push past the boundaries of daily life into what is almost certainly impossible.” Science fiction and fantasy books are speculative fiction. Books nominated in this category should have been published between October 16, 2015 and October 15, 2016 and should be appropriate for children ages eight to twelve, or from third to seventh grades.

Who can nominate books for this award?
Anyone. ONE book per CATEGORY per PERSON.

What hasn’t been nominated yet?
Lots of great science fiction and fantasy books for middle grade children haven’t been nominated so far. If any of the following are on your favorites list, rush over to nominate your pick at the Official Cybils Nomination Page. Not picked yet (and feeling blue):

A Little Taste of Poison by R.J. Anderson. Sequel to A Pocketful of Murder.
Fuzzy by Tom Angleberger and Paul Dellinger. Robots. NOMINATED
Rebel Genius by Michael Dante DeMartino. NOMINATED
The Girl Who Could Not Dream by Sarah Beth Durst. NOMINATED
This Is Not a Werewolf Story by Sandra Evans. Shapeshifting. NOMINATED
The Voyage to Magical North by Claire Fayers.
The Imagination Box by Martin Ford.
A Most Magical Girl by Karen Foxlee.
Fortune Falls by Jenny Goebbels. A town where superstitions are real. NOMINATED
A Clatter of Jars by Lisa Graff.
The Dastardly Deed by Holly Grant. The League of Beastly Dreadfuls, Book Two.
The Crimson Skew by S.E. Grove. The Mapmakers Trilogy, Book 3. NOMINATED
Lucky by Chris Hill.
The Secrets of Solace by Jaleigh Johnson. Sequel to The Mark of the Dragonfly.
Time Stopped by Carrie Jones.
Shadow Magic by Joshua Khan. NOMINATED
Armstrong: The Adventurous Journey of a Mouse to the Moon by Torben Kuhlman.
Foxheart by Claire LeGrand.
Vault of Shadows by Jonathan Maberry. The Nightsiders, Book 2.
Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure by Ann Martin.
27 Magic Words by Sharelle Moranville.
A Bird, a Girl, and a Rescue by J.A. Myhre.
Wishing Day by Lauren Myracle. NOMINATED
The Secret of Goldenrod by Jane O’Reilly. A doll story.
The Doorway and the Deep by K.E. Ormsbee. Sequel to The Water and the Wild.
Forest of Wonders by Linda Sue Park. Wing and Claw, Book 1.
The Gathering by Dan Poblocki. Shadow House, Book 1.
The Glass Castle by Trisha Priebe and Jerry Jenkins.
Railhead by Phillip Reeve. Sentient trains. NOMINATED in YA.
The Lost Compass by Joel Ross. Sequel to The Fog Diver. NOMINATED
Curse of the Chocolate Phoenix by Kate Saunders.
Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders. Inspired by E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It stories. I’m unclear about the publication date on this one but if it’s eligible, it’s a good book.
Gears of Revolution by J. Scott Savage. Mysteries of Cove, Book 2. NOMINATED
The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman. NOMINATED
Red by Liesl Shurtliff. Little Red Riding Hood.
Hawking’s Hallway by Neil Shusterman and Eric Elfman. Accelerati Trilogy, Book 3.
Rip Van Winkle and the Pumpkin Lantern by Seth Adam Smith.
Ember Falls by S.D. Smith. Green Ember series, Book 2. Rabbits with swords. NOMINATED
The Storyteller by Aaron Starmer. The Riverman trilogy, Book 3.
Sunker’s Deep by Lina Tanner. The Icebreaker Trilogy, Book 2.
Behind the Canvas by Alexander Vance.
The Midnight War of Mateo Martinez by Robin Yardi. Thieving skunks? NOMINATED
The Haunting of Falcon House by Eugene Yelchin. An historical fiction/mystery/ghost story set in 1891 Russia.

That’s a LOT of books that haven’t been nominated. I am on the judging panel to choose a shortlist of recommended titles in this category from the long list of books nominated. We want to choose the best books from this year’s books with the finest literary quality and kid appeal. SO if any of those are likely to combine good writing and an engaging story, please nominate it. If it’s not nominated, it can’t be considered.

When do nominations close?
Saturday, October 15th, is the last day to nominate your favorite books in this and other categories for the Cybils awards. Get your nominations in now.

A Clatter of Jars by Lisa Graff

Lisa Graff’s A Tangle of Knots was a National Book Award nominee in 2014, and it was highly recommended by many people I trust. However, I never did manage to read it. If 2016’s sequel, A Clatter of Jars, is any measure, then I missed out and need to go back and pick up a copy of A Tangle of Knots.

A Clatter of Jars is an intricate, multi-layered story of giftedness and ordinariness and sibling jealousy, the suffering it can cause, apology, reconciliation, and forgiveness. The story, told from six different viewpoints of the campers in Cabin Eight at Camp Atropos for Talented Children, weaves in and out of the lives and magical talents of these campers to produce a sometimes confusing, always fascinating, tale of how family and community can grow strong if only we give up our place in the spotlight for the sake of others and ask forgiveness for our selfish and impulsive misdeeds.

I did like the characters and the complexity of this fantastical story. Lily can levitate objects by concentrating her mind on them. Chuck and Ellie, the Frog Twins, can identify the species of any frog within croaking distance. Renny is famous for reading minds, and his brother Miles may have his own secret Talent. All of the other children at the camp have Talents, too, and the way the talented children learn to work with, and sometimes against, one another makes for a wild ride of a story.

BUT. I was repeatedly thrown out of the story by two plot issues, one major and another minor. Am I behind the times? I know things are changing fast, but does any summer camp for middle schoolers—ages eleven, twelve and thirteen—house boys and girls together in the same cabin? Really? Lily, Renny, Miles, Chuck, and Ellie are assigned to Cabin Eight at Camp Atropos–two boys, brothers, and three girls. Really? This cabin assignment was just weird. There’s no boy-girl attraction, no crushes, in the story; it’s all about sibling rivalry and brothers and sisters trying to work out their sibling relationships. BUT. I kept wondering whether the author had any specific camp in mind when she wrote the book. I even looked it up. Coed camps for this age group are a thing, fine, but all of the ones I found on the internet separated boys and girls into different cabins. I can only begin to imagine the possible problems a camp would run into if boys and girls this age were assigned to share cabins. (The minor problem was the swimming policy. I don’t think camp administrators would allow children, even talented children, to just jump into the lake, anytime, and go for a swim by themselves, either.)

If you can ignore those two mistakes(?) or plot decisions(?), then you might just enjoy A Clatter of Jars quite a lot. You don’t have to read A Tangle of Knots to understand the sequel, but it might work better if you read the first book first. Or you can read them as I will be doing, backwards.

Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi

Alice Alexis Queensmeadow is a dull, colorless girl in a land full of color, and she is quite un-magical in a place where magic is the sustenance of life. When her father goes missing and her mother neglects and spurns her, Alice is determined to make something of her colorless, ugly life in spite of her lack of talent.

There’s a lot of falling involved in the course of the journey that Alice makes to find her father, and of course, the girl is named Alice. And Alice and her friend Oliver meet lots of strange creature in land of Furthermore, as they also encounter loads of nonsensical situations and obstacles. It all sounds like that other Alice, in Wonderland, but I would recommend that you read Lewis Carroll’s Alice books before or instead of this one. Mr. Carroll’s nonsense made some sense.

The writing is witty and imaginative at the sentence level, but the actual story starts out slowly. Over a hundred pages of introduction and set-up before the real adventure begins is a little too much of a muchness. Nevertheless, some delightful sentences and scenes kept me reading and enjoying the journey, even though the incessant squabbling between Alice and Oliver and the sheer ridiculousness of it all was a bit overwhelming.

Examples of lovely sentences:

“Humility had gotten lost on its journey to his ego, but the two had finally been reunited, and the meeting appeared to be painful. Oliver swallowed hard and looked away.”

“People are so preoccupied with making sense despite it being the most uninteresting thing to manufacture. . . Making magic . . . is far more interesting than making sense.”

“Laughter was a silk that would soften even the roughest moments.”

“Birds were pirouetting through the air and lambs were bleating their woes and flowers dipped and swayed in the wind like this was just another perfect day. But Alice wouldn’t believe it.”

Examples of sheer nonsense:

“Few come to Furthermore in search of decent pastures.” (decent what?)

“So she pet him between the ears and he nuzzled right into her hand.” (Isn’t the past tense of pet, “petted”?)

” . . . her feet kept moving even when she didn’t want them to. Not only did she not want them to keep moving, she wanted them to do the very opposite of keep-moving, but there was no one to tell her feet anything at all, as her mind was always missing when she needed it most.” (What does that mean?)

Alice and Oliver argue and lie to one another and and generally make their own lives miserable as well as the lives of those around them. On the other hand, they have excuses for their behavior. Alice feels rejected by her mother and abandoned by her father; Oliver has his own childhood sob story. And both of them are quite unkind to each other in the beginning of the story. If you can get past all that and enjoy the imaginative language and the nonsensical world of the story, maybe Furthermore will be just right for you. I liked Alice in Wonderland much better, thank you.