Post by Mark T. Locker.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

If you are looking for a good teen mystery peppered with eerie and supernatural elements, try this out. Interspersed with a number of strange and creepy photographs (I can’t tell if they are found images or original creations) which help propel the story forward, Ransom Riggs creates an interesting supernatural mystery.

As a small child, Jacob loved the wondrous tales his grandfather told him. Although full of fantastic and supernatural characters on an island off the coast of Wales, he always told Jacob that they were true and Jacob believed him. But as he grew older, the tales of levitating girls, invisible boys and grotesque monsters seemed more like figments of a mind traumatized by the horrors of World War II. But when his grandfather dies terribly under unusual circumstances, Jacob can’t shake the feeling that these were more than mere fairy tales. So off Jacob goes with his father to Wales to uncover the mystery of his grandfather’s past.

Tags: bed, bedtime stories, Books, Charles P. Rogers, Ransom Riggs, Reviews

Post by Mark T. Locker.

Divergent by Veronica Roth.

This bedtime story should be reserved for those who don’t mind a little heart-pounding action before lights out.

Please read the following in your best movie trailer voice: In a world where war has divided humanity, there exist four factions: Candor, for those who value honesty above all else; Erudite, for those who seek knowledge; Dauntless, for those with no fear; and Abegnation for the selfless. One sixteen-year-old girl is about to change all that. She is…Divergent. Meet Beatrice. Like all children, on her sixteenth birthday she is to undergo tests and determine which faction she belongs in. She was born into Abegnation, the selfless who shun any sort of vanity (including mirrors) and live to help others. But when her tests come back inconclusive, she is forced to accept that she is Divergent, one who fits no faction clearly and is seen as a danger to others. She chooses a faction (Dauntless, which is unheard of for one from Abegnation) but none can know her real identity. She changes her name to Triss and becomes embedded in a strange, ruthless, and violent new world. Though she loves to be Dauntless, when she uncovers dark secrets about her faction, she must choose who she can trust and who to stand by.
This first installment in the newest teen dystopia series has been dubbed “the next Hunger Games” but don’t pick it up expecting that. Part action, part romance, part teen angst, it is a good, if at times bloody, adventure.

Tags: beds, Bedtime, book reviews, Books, Charles P. Rogers, Children, Divergent, family, Veronica Roth

Post by Mark T. Locker.

The Wizard by Jack Prelutsky. Illustrations by Brandon Dorman.

Here’s my boy’s new favorite bedtime story. It’s perfect for Halloween, but I think we’ll be reading it year-round. It’s both funny and maybe a bit spooky if you are a total sissy (or three). Looming over a normal looking suburban cul-de-sac is an imposing stone tower, at the top of which lives an evil wizard. He peers over the neighborhood, pondering what evil deeds he will perform. He turns a toad into a pair of mice, then a cockatoo, then into a piece of chalk. He is evil but his acts are sort of pointless. Think of the wizard Tim from Monty Python and the Holy Grail who mostly just blows stuff up for no reason. At the end, we see a chameleon on a skateboard where a boy stood a moment before. Great fun for all ages.

Ghosts in the House by Kazuno Kohara.

Another cute Halloweeny book is Ghosts in the House which is about as un-scary as could be. A girl moves into a house, but there’s one problem: the house is HAUNTED! Not to worry, for this girl happens to be a witch! Along with her cat, they get to work cleaning house. All the ghosts are caught, laundered, and put to good use as curtains and tablecloths. Even while in the dryer, the ghosts are smiling (though some look understandably surprised). Printed on orange paper with bold black lines with tissue ghosts, it is a sweet, simple but visually striking book.

Tags: Bedtime, Books, Charles P. Rogers, Children, family, Jack Prelutsky, Kazuno Kohara, stories

Post by Mark T. Locker.

Caldecott Medal-winner Brian Selznick has struck again with another mammoth “picture book”. Like The Invention of Hugo Cabret (to be released next month as a tepid-looking 3-D movie—ironically, all the magic seems to have been sucked out of  of the film version of this book about film and magic) Wonderstruck is a behemoth to behold, weighing in at a whopping 640 pages. But fear not: over 400 pages are just his trademark black and white full-page pictures. Like Hugo Cabret, it tells the story in both picture and text. This time, however, the picture story and the text story are two separate tales which follow certain parallels and, eventually, converge into one cohesive story.

The print story, set in 1977, is about a boy named Ben, around twelve years old. He just recently lost his mother to illness and never knew his father. While guiltily poking around his mother’s room, he finds a small book entitled Wonderstruck with an inscription and a bookmark that offer him a potential clue about his father. He picks up the phone to call a number just as lightning strikes the house, and the ensuing electrical charge travels through the phone and strikes Ben, destroying his hearing. Now deaf, he is still determined to try and find his dad, who may or may not live halfway across the country in New York City.

The picture story, set in 1927, tell about a deaf girl in Hoboken who runs away to New York. I can’t tell you more about it without ruining some of the wonderful surprises.

Although Hugo Cabret was more tantalizing and incredible to me, Wonderstruck is an incredibly sweet and clever story that just might bring a tear to your eye.

Tags: Bedtime, Books, Brian Selznick, Charles P. Rogers, Children, family, stories, Wonderstruck

Post by Mark T. Locker.

Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers

What can I say? I’m a sucker for penguins. There’s just something about them, their waddly gait, their plump bodies, that makes them seem so innocent and cuddly. This book is no exception. A young boy comes across a sad-looking penguin in town. Thinking the penguin is sad because he is lost, the boy sets out to try and get the penguin home. In the end, they take a rowboat together to Antarctica (do NOT try this at home!). On the way, the boy tells the penguin stories and they have a very nice trip, all things considered. But when he drops the bird off, he looks even sadder than ever. Perhaps he wasn’t lost after all; maybe he was just lonely. It’s cute. Go read it.

Flotsam by David Wiesner.

Unless you live under a rock, you’re probably familiar with David Wiesner, the three-time Caldecott Medal-winner whose incredibly imaginative, sparsely-worded books include Tuesday, which is about flying frogs, and  June 29, 1999 about giant vegetables floating to Earth. His most recent award winner is Flotsam which is another of his stories without words. In it, a young boy finds an old-timey camera washed up on the shore. He takes the film to be developed and discovers a bunch of pictures featuring an incredible underwater universe no one has ever seen. I’m not going to say any more about it; his pictures without words do a far better job than I could ever do. It was a well-deserved Caldecott Medal. “Read” it tonight. And dream of robot fish.

Tags: Bedtime, Books, Charles P. Rogers, Children, David Wiesner, family, Oliver Jeffers, stories