Thursday, March 6, 2008

Book Review - YA Challenge

I can't figure out where to post links to reviews for Joy's YA Challenge, but here is the reiview anyway...

Bryn and I read The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo (actually I read and Bryn listened). This is the second book of hers I have read and I can't quite decide how I feel about her books. I really like them, but they have a sort of sad and deep component to them that makes them different from many of the other YA books I have read.

This book tells the story of an unusually small mouse, a beautiful princess, a hard-hearted rat and a servant girl. When the mouse, Despereaux, is sent to the castle dungeon for talking to the princess (that he has fallen in love with) the tale begins to unwind. Despereaux must find the strength within himself to save all of them from a dark fate and a life without soup (you'll just have to read the book to find out what the heck that means!). Armed with a needle and some thread, Despereaux does save the day in the end and everyone learns a little about love, life and forgiveness.

4 comments:

Stacy at Exceedingly Mundane said...

Good review, love that you guys read together!!!

Debi said...

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Kara. What did Bryn think? The boys liked it, but weren't totally blown away. I think I enjoyed it far more than they did.

To link your review to Joy's, just go to her blog (as opposed to the original sign up post). She has buttons right in her top post for each of her challenges, so just click on the YA one and add your link to the Mr. Linky. (And by the way, if you already tried that and the Mr. Linky was missing, just try again...I know Annie's Mr. Linkys disappeared a couple days ago, but things got fixed up pretty quick and are back to normal now.)

Karen Hossink said...

My fourth grader's teacher is reading this book to his class at school. He really likes it. (And I just spilled the beans to him that the mouse will, indeed, save the day...)

Susan said...

Wow...did she listen and follow the whole book? I think it's extremely DEEP and FILLED with some very tough vocabulary. In fact, I can remember rereading several places. I did, however, love the book.

:-) Susan