Thursday 15 December 2011

Moominsummer Madness

I'm going to start this review with the words Never Read This Book.
It's insane.
It's incomprehensible.
It's silly.
Not the nice, funny-cos-it's-so-weird kind of silly, the Oh-my-god-I-can't-make-sense-of-what-they're-saying kind of silly. Through the jumble of strange words I managed to pick our some sort of storyline in which a flood hits their home and so the family goes to live in a floating theatre. Then the family gets separated and the son and his girlfriend are arrested while the mother and father put on a play. Then they all meet up and go back home.
I think that this book is really to be read out loud to 4 or 5 year olds. One of the most negative points about this book is that when you read something you should not have to go online in order to find out who on earth these strange people are. After reading a few chapters I realised that there weren't going to be any hints about who the characters are so I was forced to go to their website and read their character summaries.
Due to its lack of sanity and incomprehensibility I'm giving it 29 out of 100.

Jay Writes
I love a bit of whimsy, but I'm with Luke on this one. Because this book is part way through a series, and the author gives no quarter to the uninitiated, he and I floundered about having no clue who anyone was, nor their relationship to one another. The book would have been immeasurably improved with a cast of characters - including illustrations - so newcomers to the Moomins would have a fighting chance. Thanks to a Canadian childhood I'd only ever heard of Moomins as illustrations on a friend's coffee mugs Ss I was as clueless as Luke. Ah well, one fewer book to read for the challenge!

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