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Recent reading: kid's lit edition
Apr. 12th, 2024 09:36 pmRead Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, which was fun, but completely not the story that I was expecting it to be?? For one thing, I had somehow gotten the impression that it was a Magical Boarding School story, rather than a Magical Country House Foster Home story. I was also surprised - but delighted! - by the ( midpoint twist. )
Re-read The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, which was one of my childhood favorites - a middle-grade spy novel full of wordplay and puzzles, about a team of clever, lonely kids who are recruited for an undercover mission at a nefarious boarding school - and, honestly, holds up really well to revisiting it as an adult. Reading this as a kid, I don't think I noticed or appreciated the way it's about how different types of intelligence are all equally valid and important— of the kids that make up the spy team, one is good at puzzles and patterns and has the most emotional intelligence; one is a bookworm with an eidetic memory; one isn't as big on book learnin' but has a talent for gadgets and thinking outside of the box. ( ... ) The lesson that has lived rent-free in my head for years is that you should always read test questions very, very carefully.
Also read Stewart's latest installment, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Mystery of Ages— published in 2019 after a ten-year gap, I got the sense that Stewart wrote it with both actual middle-grade readers and the now-young adults who grew up on the original books in mind, and I feel like he strikes the balance well. That is: it's definitely a middle-grade novel, but on a thematic level, the characters are on the cusp of Growing Up and torn between being excited for new opportunities and not wanting things to change, which would certainly resonate with the type of young adult who revisits a beloved children's series out of nostalgia, and on a practical one, both the main characters' nostalgia and Stewart's introduction of a new character allows for some fairly organic recapping of the previous books for, say, someone who hasn't read the series since 2009.
Re-read The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, which was one of my childhood favorites - a middle-grade spy novel full of wordplay and puzzles, about a team of clever, lonely kids who are recruited for an undercover mission at a nefarious boarding school - and, honestly, holds up really well to revisiting it as an adult. Reading this as a kid, I don't think I noticed or appreciated the way it's about how different types of intelligence are all equally valid and important— of the kids that make up the spy team, one is good at puzzles and patterns and has the most emotional intelligence; one is a bookworm with an eidetic memory; one isn't as big on book learnin' but has a talent for gadgets and thinking outside of the box. ( ... ) The lesson that has lived rent-free in my head for years is that you should always read test questions very, very carefully.
Also read Stewart's latest installment, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Mystery of Ages— published in 2019 after a ten-year gap, I got the sense that Stewart wrote it with both actual middle-grade readers and the now-young adults who grew up on the original books in mind, and I feel like he strikes the balance well. That is: it's definitely a middle-grade novel, but on a thematic level, the characters are on the cusp of Growing Up and torn between being excited for new opportunities and not wanting things to change, which would certainly resonate with the type of young adult who revisits a beloved children's series out of nostalgia, and on a practical one, both the main characters' nostalgia and Stewart's introduction of a new character allows for some fairly organic recapping of the previous books for, say, someone who hasn't read the series since 2009.
