BABYMOUSE

BABYMOUSE by Jennifer L. Holm 

Jennifer L. Holm is a gifted storyteller and is praised and loved for her success with her pink graphic novel series, BABYMOUSE. A Newbery Award winning author and three time recipient for the Newbery Honor, Jennifer Holm created a story that focuses on the life of a young female mouse and her life at home and in the halls at school. Much of the story revolves around the life of young mousling who is trying to fit in at school. She wants to be popular, pretty and essentially queen of the world but will she ever fit in and befriend the inner circle of the popular crowd? While this story is a great way to promote early literacy for young readers, the message it sends to young readers is superficial at times.

      BABYMOUSE spends most her time compensating for the like of beauty, glamour, excitement and adventure in her daily life by mentally believing herself to being Queen of the World, prettiest or most popular girl at school. While everyone is certainly concerned where they socially stand in school, so many books appropriate for tween readers seem to be saturated in the same themes of popularity, striving for perfection and being famous. While I enjoyed reading BABYMOUSE, I was left feeling like I had read the story before. With the market for tween books focused on such a narrow topic, are these series and graphic novels becoming unhealthy for our kids to read?

The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass

Before watching The Golden Compass, I couldn’t help but do a little research on the background of the story.  Based on the British Series, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (the North America title) was originally released as Northern Skies in England in 1995. The Golden Compass was the first in the trilogy and was successful enough to be made into a hit movie starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Sam Elliot and Dakota Blue Richards as the young and adventurous Lyra Belacqua. Told as a fantasy novel, the story revolves around the young Lyra Belacqua and the journey she makes through time and space to save the ones she loves. It is beautiful coming of age story as Lyra travels through a series of parallel universes against the backdrop of adventurous and sometimes life threatening events, with friends, enemies and animal spirits.

            Having not read the book and only watching the film, the story was a bit confusing at times. Much of the story revolves around the powerful Magisterium (which is obvious it represents religion-specifically the Catholic Church?!)  The almighty Magisterium is looking to rid all tolerance and free thinking, therefore their mission to destroy all alethiometers, which is also known as a truth teller (what looks to us like a compass). We learn they have succeeded and have obliterated every compass except for one in which only one can read, precious little Lyra. Most of the story follows Lyra on an epic journey to find her friends who have been taken by the Gobblers and to save her Uncle. Throughout the story, we learn that everyone in this alternate world (that looks very similar to earth) has an animal spirit that walks along the side of humans. They are also referred to as daemons. Children’s daemons are able to change shape and form, while at a certain age an adult’s daemon, takes on its permanent form.

            Like any typical tween or young adult novel, it’s a story of a child growing up and finding who they are and what their voice is. In this case, we learn early on that Lyra is an orphan. Not growing up with a parent, Lyra is this young girl who is trying to make sense of the world around her despite her upbringing and little guidance. Most of the story focuses on Lyra being the only person who can read this compass and finding the confidence and pride she needs that she is the one who will save all these worlds from clashing and going to war with one another. This young girl is the protagonist of the story and will rise to become a leader and the voice of all the orphan children she must save in the first novel. I think this story is an excellent source of literature for young children, particularly to ‘tween’ age children, this is the age where children start to make sense of the world and their place in it.   

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.

           

(images via pinterest)