Tag Archives: Karen’s Pick

Why? and Terrible Things

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Nikolai PopovCross-posted with Kidzone, because I would that everyone read both these books.

There are books that you don’t expect to gut you. Least of all when you’re browsing through the junior picture book section. But here are a couple that will do the job quite nicely, whenever you’re in the mood for it.*

Why? is propelled mercilessly forward until the end (as though inertia should apply to the plot of this book, except there is nothing to stop it because the plot isn’t physical and encounters no such impediments – though friction of a different sort you will encounter here, between the two sides), and all the while you’re desperately clinging onto the hope that perhaps Popov will spare us from the inevitable. Alas, Popov does not. (Or perhaps thankfully, because it tickles me pink to see that some picture books don’t shy away from a dash of reality, which can occasionally be dismal.) The colour palette reinforces the somber story as it progresses, the landscape becoming ever more torn. The suit that the frog is wearing also takes on a whole other possibility when we consider that this skin-like suit might have been rendered from… but I’ve said enough already. Beautifully illustrated and told, Why? should become a childhood staple.

And if you’ve already read Why?, then I’ve got something else to recommend you under the cut.

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Amerika and The Miner

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Franz KafkaGiven the sort of novels I generally go for, it will probably come as a bit of a surprise that this is the first Kafka novel I have ever finished. And given that I’ve never read Kafka before, my statement just now was based completely on the plot plot (i.e. plotting the shape of plots on a graph) of Kafka’s novels by Kurt Vonnegut (as seen in A Man Without a Country). To save you the work of tracking a copy down (though we do have it!), here’s how he described Kafka’s Metamorphosis:

A young man is rather unattractive and not very personable. He has disagreeable relatives and has had a lot of jobs with no chance of promotion. He doesn’t get paid enough to take his girl dancing or to go to the beer hall to have a beer with a friend. One morning he wakes up, it’s time to go to work again, and he has turned into a cockroach... It’s a pessimistic story.

Who wouldn’t want to read that?*

 

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Following on the Tails of Venomous

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Mark SiddallNote: There’s going to be a lot of “this book does this thing kind of poorly… but it does have a redeeming feature to buoy it back up!” I really wouldn’t write about it if it was so mediocre – I don’t have that much time – and if it was outright horrible, you’ll see no trace of it from me here, because I prefer to showcase examples I consider interesting and well-written in whatever topic it is that the material is about. Now, onto Poison!

I picked this one up while refilling a display around the library (after reading this book, you might think twice before nonchalantly picking up something small like this book with black and red colouration) – proof that our displays are working marvelously, as I took home about 3 or 4 other items about ocean critters that day – and was thinking it’d be a great follow-up to Venomous by Christie Wilcox. Alas, Poison: Sinister Species with Deadly Consequences is actually rather less informative, though perhaps I should have gathered as much by the size of the book and the overall feel of it. I say it is less informative only because it strives less to provide a comprehensive introduction to poisonous animals, than to introduce readers interested in the like to various insects, animals, and other creatures that can pack a punch if you get on their bad side – the great thing about this list for me personally was that I didn’t know about many of the animals introduced here: who knew there were poisonous birds?

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