Harry Potter (Books One Through Three)

Harry Potter (Books One through Three)

            Harry Potter has lived under the stairs for eleven years and before he gets a mysterious letter in the mail via an owl, he’s understood life to be quite miserable since growing up with his Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Cousin Dudley outside London. In the first novel of the widely popular Harry Potter series, Harry befriends an ogre-ly giant, stumbles across a three headed dog and becomes the star seeker in a silly game called Quidditch and learns he’s a wizard. In a world where he feels at home, Harry surrounds himself with witches, wizards, goblins and dwarfs in the first of the seven book mega franchise. In the first three stories of the hit series, Harry goes on a quest to find the Sorcerer’s Stone, awaken and kill the beast known as a Basilisk and learn that his godfather also known as the Prisoner of Azkaban are on a journey to defeat and ultimately kill the dark force known as (only say it in a whisper) Voldemort.    

            There’s no questioning that Harry Potter has not only changed the lives of millions of children (starting as young as eight years old) but has changed the world. We muggles, as J.K Rowling so eloquently describes us have literally become obsessed with the world of the Harry Potter characters and their pets, wands and spells (everyone from Harry and his two best friends and the infamous professors like Severus Snape and Hagrid). Don’t tell me you haven’t assigned yourself to one of the four dorms, I took the quiz I belong in Gryffindor.

            One of the major reasons why children fell in love with these novels was the fact they were growing up with characters that were close in age to the reader. Although we understand there are not two worlds (the muggle world and the magic world), I think the relation between the age of the characters and the readers is one of the biggest draws of the series. Knowing a book was to be released each year or two, children couldn’t wait to see and read what had gone on in the life of Harry, Hermione and Ron while the readers themselves were growing up. While most of the stories revolve around a journey or a quest to ultimately meet up with Voldemort, most of the story centers on tween related issues like friendship, bullying, first crushes and learning the importance between being good and evil.

           

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The One and Only Ivan

The One and Only Ivan

            One of the greatest works of Children’s Literature, The One and Only Ivan written by Katherine Applegate is one of the greatest stories I have read in a long time. Winner of the Newbery Award last year, The One and Only Ivan focuses on the life of a silverback gorilla named Ivan and his friends that remain caged up in a mall. Ivan grows up and spends most of his life in a small habitat where he can watch television (with a particular liking of old westerns) and drawing for his visitors. Most of his time is spent either in seclusion or talking with his friends who aren’t exactly other gorillas. His friend Bob is a dog and Stella is an elephant. Throughout the story, we learn Stella has passed away due to living her life in small quarters and not living with her family and other elephants in the wild. Before Stella dies, a new younger and spunky elephant named Ruby joins the gang and is relentless when it comes to questions. Before Stella dies, she wishes that Ivan takes care of Ruby and find her a better and more suitable home than being locked up in a mall. Then there’s Julia, a little girl who is the daughter of the Mall’s janitor who often comes and spends time watching and talking with the animals. With Ivan’s promise to help Ruby, Ivan is persistent and finally is able to communicate with Julia that he must free and find Ruby a new home. With Julia’s help, Ivan, Ruby and the other animals at the mall are finally freed and taken to a zoo where they can live a better life.

            After reading and looking over the criteria and terms for the Newbery Medal and thinking about the story of The One and Only Ivan, there’s no question why this novel won the award. The author paints a beautiful and quite clear picture of this gorilla and his life in a very small cage in a mall. The detail and description creates a clear picture in the readers mind of what is going on behind the cage of each animal that is presented in the story. It’s a story that in a simple and fresh tone explains the life of a caged animal and away from their natural habitat. With a complicated concept of understanding the lives and characters of these animals, the author does a wonderful job describing the loneliness and sadness each animal is faced within this story. This particular novel is written at a third grade reading level making easy for young readers to really engage in the story and really learn about each character.

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The Book Thief

The Book Thief

            A particular story, The Book Thief written by Markus Zusack is set in Nazi Germany and is told from the perspective of death who has a secret fascination with a little girl named Liesel. It begins in a small town right outside Munich where Death chronicles the life of many but focuses on the life of a peculiar little girl. An interesting approach at storytelling, Zusack does an fantastic job at telling the story from this particularly different point of view. The Book Thief starts with on a train looking in at a young and frightened girl who has a mother and a brother. On their way to live with foster parents, Liesel arrives at her new parents home with a brother who has passed away and never hearing from her mother again. On her way to her new family, her brother is buried and in shock of his death Liesel takes her first book, it is in fact a book on how to properly bury the dead. Throughout the story, Liesel’s book thievery is used in many ways to comfort her even though she knows she can barely read. In a world where death surrounds her and she must salute a dark power she doesn’t believe in, her books become her friends. It was a source of comfort, a piece of her brother that she would always have. Throughout the story, Liesel comes across many friends like Rudy and the Jew that is hiding in the basement of her foster parents home but through time the stories, the ones she kept and the one should write remain an important part of how she overcame so many hardships.

            This book received The Michael Printz Award and has been nominated for several others and remains to be a national best seller as well as recently being adapted for the big screen. Like most awards, the criteria is simply looking for literary excellence. Zusacks does an incredible job at painting an extremely visual story through his profound text in The Book Thief and is definitely a story that readers can remember in great detail. The profound use of death as the voice and narrator is an excellent source at grabbing the attention of the reader and the characters he creates are truly unforgettable. I think one of the reasons why this novel is so engaging, beloved and unforgettable is because it deals with a child’s experience during war time and her trying to make sense of the world and her place in it especially as an orphan living with parents who are not her birth parents. Although Liesel grows to love her foster parents and the friends she makes throughout her life, it’s really about her growing into a woman during an incredibly dark period in her own life and around her in a Nazi occupied village when she despises what Nazism stands for.    

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