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readallthenewberys2012-07-17 05:16 pm
justice_turtle) wrote in readallthenewberys2012-07-17 05:16 pm
Review: The Old Tobacco Shop, A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure
Summary: A little boy about five years old befriends a weirdly creepy tall-tale-telling tobacconist and his maiden aunt. Three-quarters of the book consists of a trippy expedition to the Spanish Main, possibly real or possibly (as we learn in the last chapter) a delirious hallucination by the little boy; the expeditioneers are the boy, the tobacconist, the tobacconist's wooden advertising figure come alive, and various figures from the tobacconist's tall tales, plus a mime.
Reaction: This is possibly the only book I have ever read that needed improvement where SUDDENLY, PIRATES didn't actually improve it. O_O It is intensely creepy, sometimes ableist, often disappointing, occasionally racist, and has absolutely no coherent throughline at all. If you think something is foreshadowed, it isn't, and whatever happens instead is not only completely out of left field but not quite as cool as what you expected.
I can only conclude that the Newbery committee was either so dazzled by the hyper-cloying use of description (seriously, I swear two-thirds of the book is babbling about irrelevant details of settings) or so sentimentally heartwarmed by the "there's no place like home and also be yourself" message of the last chapter but one, that they failed to realize this is actually a terrible book, fit for neither children nor grown-ups - except possibly the really annoying sort of self-satisfied grownups who think the nasty adults in this book are the proper sort of people to be around kids. :P
Conclusion: No stars. I said in the liveblog that this author should have been set to write acid trips behind the scenes of the universe instead of anything near kids, and I stand by that assessment. This book doesn't deserve to be dredged out of obscurity, although for completeness' sake I include the Project Gutenberg link. ;P
If you want a kids' book with better writing, equally unexpected silliness, and lower creepiness levels, I recommend anything by Edward Lear. I know he's not American; I think I had something else I was going to recommend that this reminded me of, but I've forgotten it. :P
Reaction: This is possibly the only book I have ever read that needed improvement where SUDDENLY, PIRATES didn't actually improve it. O_O It is intensely creepy, sometimes ableist, often disappointing, occasionally racist, and has absolutely no coherent throughline at all. If you think something is foreshadowed, it isn't, and whatever happens instead is not only completely out of left field but not quite as cool as what you expected.
I can only conclude that the Newbery committee was either so dazzled by the hyper-cloying use of description (seriously, I swear two-thirds of the book is babbling about irrelevant details of settings) or so sentimentally heartwarmed by the "there's no place like home and also be yourself" message of the last chapter but one, that they failed to realize this is actually a terrible book, fit for neither children nor grown-ups - except possibly the really annoying sort of self-satisfied grownups who think the nasty adults in this book are the proper sort of people to be around kids. :P
Conclusion: No stars. I said in the liveblog that this author should have been set to write acid trips behind the scenes of the universe instead of anything near kids, and I stand by that assessment. This book doesn't deserve to be dredged out of obscurity, although for completeness' sake I include the Project Gutenberg link. ;P
If you want a kids' book with better writing, equally unexpected silliness, and lower creepiness levels, I recommend anything by Edward Lear. I know he's not American; I think I had something else I was going to recommend that this reminded me of, but I've forgotten it. :P