BOOK NOTES by Joan Ruddiman
Ally’s off on a summer adventure and Harry will not be going with her. Even if she finds a copy of the latest Harry Potter, the 896-page hardback edition is a bit much to pack.
Many Harry Potter fans who have waited so long for the fifth installment may face similar delays in diving into J.K. Rowling’s "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Book 5." There are, however, some great alternatives to Harry. The clever plots and often-sophisticated humor of fantasy books offer entertaining beach reading for adults and are tried and true favorites of the 9 to 14 set. For families with children in the elementary to high school range, consider the Philip Pullman and particularly Lemony Snicket selections as family read-alouds.
Before we had Harry Potter, Mr.Pullman captivated teen readers with "The Golden Compass, His Dark Materials." Over the course of too many years for avid fans, Mr. Pullman completed the trilogy that includes Book 2 "The Subtle Knife," and final installment in this fantasy adventure "The Amber Spyglass." This is a wonderful series. Mr. Pullman develops inventive images such as the personal daemon, an alternate soul that comforts and guides the growth of each human. Unforgettable characters move through time and space in a dark struggle with evil. The heroes are children who, like Harry Potter, mature to young adulthood through the trilogy. Many of the elements that make the Harry Potter books so popular are evident in Mr. Pullman’s series, but in a deeper and richer context. Mr. Pullman does Harry Potter several times better! Eoin Colfer hit the shelves running with his offbeat character Artemis Fowl. Readers love the ingenious 12-year-old, his goofy sidekick Butler, (literally, his butler) and the plot set in fairy-tale land with clever elements of our 21st century world. In the first book, "Artemis Fowl," the plan is to steal the fairy-folks’ pot of gold. However, Artemis meets more than his match with Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon, as in Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance and the intrepid Commander Root an elf! The Artemis Fowl series continues with "The Arctic Incident" and "The Eternity Code." One happy fan refers to Mr. Colfer’s work as "folklore, fantasy, and high-tech funk."
Kids will devour Lemony Snicket, and with nine in the series, they can satiate their taste for what kids find is outrageously good fun. The author Lemony Snicket is also the title of what is called "Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography." Kids love the extended conceit of this "extremely dangerous" and "objectionable" autobiography as the author’s identity is further protected with the blurry text on the copyright page, a false obituary for Lemony Snicket, and the reversible book jacket to help readers hide that they are reading this dodgy text.
Like the science fiction discussed here recently, fantasy is another favorite genre of young adults. They willingly enter into times and places that are outside the realm of our reality. They appreciate the cleverness and intrepid spirit of the heroes who, like themselves, are struggling to overcome evils and injustices that threaten the places and those they love.
Much has been written on the debate over the morale tone of Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Some of the great Roman Catholic philosophers have weighed in with an analysis of the inherent goodness of Harry. The morally upright tone in these books, as well as the benchmark for them all C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series encourages young readers to explore the essence of good and evil as they realize they have more in common with these fantastic characters than just being a kid. They, too, can do great things.
Such is the worth of literature. Happy summer reading!