January 2009

  • The Golden Compass (Northern Lights)

    By roskopp on 1/30/09 2:32am
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    The Golden Compass Book CoverPhilip Pullman’s magnificent trilogy, His Dark Materials, starts out with The Golden Compass (also released as Northern Lights). It has been hailed as one of the best children’s books ever to be published and even for an adult reader this rich fantasy has a lot to offer. This is a complex and adventurous work which is beautifully written and enormously imaginative.

    The Golden Compass tells the tale of Lyra Belacqua, a wilful young girl who lives in a parallel universe. In her world everyone has a separate soul called a daemon and they take on the shape of an animal which reflects the personality of the person. She lives in Jordan College, Oxford and the kindly professors keep an eye on her although she frequently escapes their gaze to have mischievous adventures with her best friend Roger the kitchen boy.

    Lyra idolises her uncle, Lord Asriel and by spying on him she learns there is a wider world outside the college where a complex battle rages for the future of her world and many others.

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  • Fungus The Bogeyman

    By roskopp on 1/28/09 7:16am
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    Fungus The Bogeyman book coverThere’s no denying that it is good for kids to read from an early age but a lot of children’s books are too “cutesy-poo” to capture their imaginations. One book which you could never accuse of being overly cute is the classic graphic novel created by Raymond Briggs, Fungus the Bogeyman. I remember this fondly from my youth and it appealed to my childish interest in all things disgusting. It also managed to be extremely funny and poignant at the same time.

    The book follows a typical Bogeyman as he goes about his job of scaring people and being generally revolting. Fungus is a working class bloke, he has a wife named Mildew and some Bogey children and he goes to work each day dreaming up ways to create disgusting, slimy and thoroughly revolting messes. The Bogey people live underground and they get up when we go to bed.

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