Sarah Pi read and liked Chandra's review of Smoky The Cow Horse:

"*2.5 stars rounded up to 3

Smoky is a spirited mouse colored horse. This story follows his adventures and misadventures and largely centers on his friendship with a gentle cowboy named Clint. It’s an earnest story about kindness, loyal...more *2.5 stars rounded up to 3

Smoky is a spirited mouse colored horse. This story follows his adventures and misadventures and largely centers on his friendship with a gentle cowboy named Clint. It’s an earnest story about kindness, loyalty and friendship and I think it has a lot to offer young animal lovers – particularly horse lovers.

But this book does have some things going against it too. The 'cowboy dialect' is really awful. It feels unnecessary in that it’s not just the dialogue, but the entire narration. It makes for a distracting and sometimes confusing read with constant tense shifts and a multitude of run-on sentences. This book is also very long. Some readers might appreciate the slow paced narrative, but others will feel like it drags. It also should be noted that this is a book from the 1920s and does, unfortunately, contain some passages with overt racism with constant derogatory references to ‘the breed’ – a mixed race renegade. There are also some really heartbreaking depictions of animal cruelty – not for the faint of heart!

Truthfully, I didn’t find this as much of a drudge to read as I did the previous two Newbery winners (Tales from Silver Lands and Shen of the Sea). Perhaps my expectations have been lowered by those two books, but overall I found this a fairly pleasant and engaging read. Near the end I actually got really wrapped up in Smoky’s story and couldn’t stop reading until I found out how it all turned out!
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Sarah Pi read and liked Martine's review of Cloud Atlas:

"Cloud Atlas was the most challenging book I read in 2006. It was also the most rewarding. A bravura literary performance if ever I saw one, Cloud Atlas weaves together six vastly different stories which are all, in a way, about story-telling. We star...more Cloud Atlas was the most challenging book I read in 2006. It was also the most rewarding. A bravura literary performance if ever I saw one, Cloud Atlas weaves together six vastly different stories which are all, in a way, about story-telling. We start reading the journal of a nineteenth-century traveller, then move on to an English snob's letters from 1930s Belgium, a 1970s California thriller, a contemporary horror film of sorts and two tales from a dystopian future, one of which is written in a somewhat-hard-to-decipher phonetic dialect. Each of these stories is completely different. Mitchell has a fabulous command of language which enables him effortlessly to switch personae and change perspectives. The result is an impressive mix of styles and genres, full of stimulating ideas on human nature and, well, lots of other things. At first, none of the six stories seems to have a proper ending (one of them even ends mid-sentence!), which is disappointing as you don't want to leave the characters just when you've become emotionally attached to them. However, once you've reached the end of story No. 6, you realise why the previous stories didn't have endings -- because Mitchell takes you back to the characters he left earlier, to show you where they fit into the magnificent tapestry he has woven, to close the circle he has begun drawing. He also subtly shows you how the stories are interconnected. It's fun picking up on these clues, though puzzling is not what the book is all about.

Now the above probably sounds like a lot of literary gimmickry, and it is. Yet the stunning thing about the book is not how well Mitchell blends genres (although he does so extremely well), but how engaging it is on an emotional level. I deeply cared for some of the characters and really, really wanted to find out how their stories ended. So there you have it -- a stylistic, intellectually stimulating tour de force which is also, somehow, a page turner. Definitely one to cherish.(less) "

Sarah Pi read and liked Chandra's review of Outside Over There (Caldecott Collection):

"According to Sendak Outside Over There is the final installment of his trilogy which also includes Where the Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen. The books, he says, 'are all variations on the same them: how children master various feelings - a...more According to Sendak Outside Over There is the final installment of his trilogy which also includes Where the Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen. The books, he says, 'are all variations on the same them: how children master various feelings - anger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy - and manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives.' This might sound like a bit of psycho-babble nonsense to those who don’t believe in the literary power of picture books. But the truth is that children really DO respond to these stories in a unique and intense way. I think that Sendak's book are so memorable because they are all disturbing and challenging in a way that children aren't likely to forget.

The most popular of the trilogy is undoubtedly Where the Wild Things Are, and while it’s a fantastic book it is my least favorite of the three. I enjoy the story and art, but its themes never spoke to me as a child. But, in my mind there is no better preschool read aloud than In The Night Kitchen. Its cadence, story, mood and illustrations are all pitch perfect for bedtime (or anytime) reading. Our battered copy is a testament to its massive appeal. I always give it at baby showers (hoping that I don’t learn that one of my friends is uptight about nudity).

Like the two that preceded it Outside Over There features a child protagonist who has adventures in a fantastical realm. The differences there are that our heroine is a girl (Ida) and a little older (approximately 9) than Mickey and Max . It’s also more ominous –Ida sets off alone to rescue her baby sister from goblins after they leave a frozen changeling in her place. As Sendak said himself, ‘This last part of my trilogy is going to be the strangest.’ Boy was he right and so it might leave some parents scratching their heads and/or feeling disturbed. I couldn’t say if it’s the creepy factor or the universal themes, but it’s one that sticks in a child’s psyche after only one reading. And in fact I finally broke down and got our own copy because my daughter kept asking for the book with the ‘ice baby’.

My feeling is that all parents who read aloud to their children should have all three books in Sendak’s trilogy – just be aware that this last installment is darker and is better suited for a slightly older child than the first two.

**Quotes came from The Art of Maurice Sendak by Selma G. Lanes - a fantastic/must-have book for his fans. I also learned that this book was directly influenced by Mozart's The Magic Flute and so that's a big clue for anyone who has wondered who the man in the cottage is. This book also includes fascinating information about his artistic process for this book - which, again, is very different from its two predecessors.(less) "