BHH Reading

Book

I read The Real Boy for a book club. This book was about a young orphaned boy who is taken in to work as a magician's hand. In other words, the help. When things go arry and the citizens fall ill or are struck by an unknown creature, Oscar, and the healer's apprentice, Callie, work together to fix it. The question is, is the plague back, or is magic to blame? 

You will find this book is narrated from a third person point-of-view, but it is written with Oscar's perspective in mind. 

The author sets up a new world that can mostly be understood from reading between the lines. However, she, Anne Ursu, wants the readers to know the visual layout to follow along with. She illustrates a map of Aletheia that can be found before the start of chapter one. This was helpful in understanding the journey that the characters go on when they leave their town. 

Head

When I first read the synopsis and saw that there was going to be magic, I immediately connected this book to Harry Potter. It surprised me how different it was from it even though, concept wise, it could be similar. It gave me a stronger appreciation for the imagination that J.K. Rowling has in her books. What also surprised me was that the author created a soil/rock monster that comes from magic and yet is hungry for more magic. I thought that it was a silly direction to take the book because it added one more part to the many unresolved parts of the book. 

I also noticed how incredibly long it took for something interesting and exciting to happen in the book. It took 100 pages for something new to happen. This negatively affected my interest in the book. Before, I hadn't realize how important the pace of a book might be. 

Heart

 I learned that I dislike having to learn about a new and complex world in books. The author spent too much time setting this world apart from the real world that it made it difficult to pick back up. Having completed a book that I disliked, it really pushed me to think about how I could possibly use this in a teachable way, or even reference to a reader. One way is finding plenty of examples of personifications, simile's, and metaphors. When it comes to introducing this book to a reader, I would only recommend it if he/she is interested in magic and knows of the story of Pinocchio (that background knowledge helps to understand part of the plot).