Wicked, Gregory Maguire

The Wizard of Oz was a huge hit when it was released, but Maguire had a different view to the well known story. Wicked expresses his views of what a politically disturbed, and dangerously unstable Oz might have been like at the time of Dorothy’s visit.

 

                Wicked takes a deeper look into the characters, and mainly, follows Elphaba’s (the Wicked Witch of the West) life. The Wizard of Oz gives an extremely bad image to the Witch. Wicked completely topples that idea around, looking at it from the Witch’s side: what if the Wizard was in fact the bad guy, and what If Dorothy was just a bother, or a cause for gossip, not in fact the hero she is presented as in the Wizard of Oz.

                I loved Wicked, simply because it was so realistic. I have never read a book where a fantasy world is so well described as here. The book takes time in describing seemingly insignificant details, and they seem to be there more so you can build yourself an image of Oz than for the benefit of the story. But however realistic Oz may seem, Maguire still leaves Oz the magic and mystery Lyman Frank Baum originally put in the story.

                But a book being so complete causes problems in the ease of reading: I found it difficult to understand some of the writing, mainly because of my limited vocabulary knowledge. This may have slightly deterred my interest from the book: it was a book you would be reluctant to read, yet equally reluctant to leave. Also (though for some, this may not be a disadvantage) there is a lot of speaking, which seems to polite for what it  is: people don’t interrupt each other despite their next point being mentioned at the beginning of someone’s say and some people don’t talk through a whole discussion, whilst more important characters talk throughout the whole of it.  One last, more minor point is having to rectify the difference between an animal and an Animal.

 

Overall, this was a very good book, and the good points win over the bad. Gregory Maguire discusses Evil, and it is interesting to see how he gives different characters different ideas, despite only being one author. One last point: after watching the musical, the book seems long and you are waiting for the major events depicted in the play. If you do have the opportunity to watch the musical, I think you should read the book first; you’ll have a deeper insight on the characters and a more complete story: the musical will be like a fun summary of the story.   8/10

The Witness, James Jauncey

After seeing the Blackriggs massacre; an atrocious act of cruelty, 15 year old John is on the run from the government, with information which could save Scotland from the one acre act. All he has to do is get that information to the rebels. Only one problem. He is accompanied by Ninian, a Fragile-X kid who has no way of expressing his emotions. No way of telling John how close much he knows the rebel leader.

                John is a natural hero in any sort of book: traumatized by the death of his younger brother, he keeps to himself and is generally the loner type. So he has devoted himself to hunting and music: or, more specifically, hunting and violin. He plays the ‘fiddle’ to his brother all the time. Until his house is stormed. By the government. Looking for him.

                Halfway through the story, he meets Lila, a girl willing to help the 2 boys. But with the government risking a heavy price if the information John knows gets out, every decision John takes could play a crucial part to the threesome’s survival. Trusting a friend could mean trusting an enemy. And lying to a stranger could mean losing a vital ally.

                I really enjoyed this book, and if it wasn’t for difficult timing, reading it in a sitting would have been no problem. From the beginning of the book, questions are being formed, and your curiosity starts to grow. The book also keeps the action going, with little drag or boringness to the story.

                This came as a shock to me, but this is based on a true story. A true story well worth reading. 8/10.

The umbrella Killer

Miho wrote this, and i think its great. I’ve just put the first part of it.

Killing is like falling in love,

It’s always with someone special…

 

Him

 

It was a stormy afternoon. The clouds were grey, causing the sky to be dark as night.

He watched her struggle through the storm.

He waited.

He cleared his throat.

“Would you like an umbrella miss?”

She smiled not suspecting the things going through his mind.

“Yes please!”

Her last words

 

Mary Jane

 

She sat at her window observing the view, it was raining, the street outside was empty. There were no people except for the young woman getting soaked. Behind her an old man with a limp followed. Was he her father? No she showed no acknowledgment of knowing he existed, to her he must have been just another figure in the rain. Mary Jane wondered what he was doing, and froze.

 

Her body went rigid; her blood ran cold as ice making goose pimples stick out on her arms. That face, that horrible deranged face, the evil one that she had to see when she closed her eyes the one that brought back memories that Mary Jane wanted to forget forever, those cold, dead eyes that lit up with fire from the very depths of hell.

 

It was him. Mary Jane’s eye’s lit up with fear. Fear raw and fresh oozing all over her, wave upon wave of it hit her inside. Her brain began to pump, her blood pressure soared, her heart rate began rising rapidly up to such dangerous heights. All the monitoring machines began to beep excitedly. She twitched dangerously frothing at the mouth, screaming on the inside. Her eye’s rolled backward as she trembled and shook. A doctor and two nurses ran in, grabbing her arms. “Inject her!” the doctor roared. The syringe plunged, and the needle entered. Mary Jane stopped dead, her eyes closed alarmingly; her body went slack her face went blank and expressionless. She slid silently into a deep sleep. But still her fear was there, and you could tell she was dreaming about him. How awful were those dreams? Let me put it this way, nightmare is an understatement.

 

Billy the lead up

Billy walked out of the elevator, dumping his school bag onto the sofa, casually shouting out to his parents, “Hey! I’m home!” They didn’t reply, and Billy raised an eyebrow, and walked towards his parent’s room. Any other day, Billy’s mum would have already been out and heading for the exit. She left when Billy came home so he didn’t have to witness fights between his parents. He put his hand on his parent’s room’s door, and was about to push it open when his hand was pushed away. He jumped back and saw his mum. Or what looked like his mum. She had a black eye and her lip was all puffed up, red from blood. Any other ten year old boy would have been halfway to Alaska in the first seconds of seeing the face. But Billy just raised an eyebrow and smiled. His mum was always like this.

 

            Ever since the first fight, Billy’s parents had become more and more irresponsible. They were minor changes at first. Instead of home cooked meals, the family began eating frozen foods. Billy’s mum stopped making him breakfast.

The family began to become more distant, and Billy became more and more used to seeing his mum in a sad state. Billy began to cook his own food, and organize things for himself. It came to a point where the only things Billy’s parents knew about him was when he was in and when he was out. If they were sober enough to care.

 

 

The first fight

 

Billy had come home as usual, calling out to his parents as usual. They didn’t come out of their room. That, was unusual. He knocked on the door of his parent’s room, and was about to step in when his mum jumped out and pushed him away, shouting at him, “What have I told you about coming into this room? What are you doing? Go get you homework and leave us alone!” The door shut and more shouting could be heard. That was a shock to Billy. Not only because he was seven. Not only because he had wanted to show his passing test marks to his parents. What had really shocked him was his mum’s face. One eye looked smaller because the skin around it was puffed and swollen. She had bruises on both of her cheeks, and she spoke as if she had lost all her teeth.

            It took Billy a couple of minutes to get over the shock. He then shook his head, walked into the kitchen and got his snack ready.

 

           

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The Pig Scrolls, By Paul Shipton

 
OK the world is going to chaos, so what do you do? Well you don’t recruit a talking smarty pants pig, a junior assistant, assistant pythia in training and well…bumscruff as your first choices for heroes do you? Well in The Pig Scrolls it comes down just to that. Yep the whole story is told from Gryllus’s point of view. Err did I mention Gryllus is the talking pig? Yeah you probably were expecting that but I’d definitely rate this book 8/10 because it’s told with good humour, accurate Greek history and is an original and interesting book and overall just really good. Oh yeah you might want to buy it to find out whether we are trapped forever in eternal chaos or not. Yeah that’s just one of those things I thought you might just want to know.
 

Why is Snot Green, Glenn Murphy

It’s rare to see both a funny yet factual science book, yet I witnessed this reading ‘Why is Snot Green’. ‘Why is Snot Green’, as the name suggests, is a question and answer book. It tackles general science; space, our planet, animals, the human body and the future, all named more amusingly than here.

                This book has many advantages, but the sense of humour makes it particularly attractive. Also, you can build on the voices; you can establish what kind of people they would be or what they would do. The questions are questions we would ask, and more complicated answers are aided with diagrams.

                But my friends didn’t seem to enjoy it so much – it wasn’t so much the style of writing as the lack of colour which made them back away from it; the other books were loaded with pictures and seemed to appeal more to the teens.

                Overall, I believe the writing in a book to be more important than the pictures displayed, rating ‘Why is Snot Green?’ high on my list of good books. And the lack of pictures was made up for by the injection of humour. What a great book. It definitely hits a 9/10

 

 

 

Ryans Brain, A Jiggy Mcue story by Micheal Lawrence

 

Jiggy barely just got out of his last mishap but he’s gone headfirst and landed himself into another one, taking his 2 best mates and fellow musketeers Angie and Pete with him. This time strange things are happening to Jiggy, like herds of horses stampeding after him and lemon meringue pie throwing itself mysteriously out of his hands and onto the head’s of his teachers. All after his arch nemesis Bry-Ry put himself into a coma trying to put Jiggy into a coma. Are all these strange happenings connected? Or is it coming from a source that the 3 musketeers hadn’t considered? Just go read it because you wont find out from this review.

 

This review was written by Miho. More of her reviews can soon be found in her category.

Billy, end

This is the end of my story. It doesn’t really spoil it as the point of the book is HOW Billy deals with the situation, not what turns out of it…

 

Billy’s cheeks were soaked with tears, something that didn’t happen often. He was standing in a courtroom, in between his parents. They both seemed to be trying to get as close to him as possible, and were suffocating him as a result. Thoughts were shouting in his head, and he couldn’t stop himself from shaking. His parents were getting divorced! Unable to stay in the room, which, despite air conditioning, was extremely stuffy, Billy squeezed himself from his parent’s trap, and ran out of the room, despite all warnings. He sprinted out of the building, and nodded at the security guards, whose jobs were to keep people out, not to keep people in. Once outside, Billy jumped into his mum’s Lexus and awoke the driver. She doesn’t deserve the car anyway. Billy tried to shrug off the guilt, but anyone could see that the boy had an extremely strong sense of right and wrong, and was having trouble with what he thought was stealing a car. He signaled Will’s house to the driver, and tore off his suit top, revealing a red t-shirt with a cross on the word divorce.

            Billy stepped out of the car, but was stopped by his driver. His mum’s driver. He was shrugging and pointing at the car, obviously asking what to do. Billy also shrugged, and when he spoke, his voice was soft, barely audible, “I don’t care what you do. Go back to the court, or whatever. I don’t care.”

            Once the driver had gone, Billy walked towards Will’s house, casually untucking his shirt. He saw a box marked ‘Pets 4 life’, and realized that had been the shop where he had first admitted his thoughts of his parents getting divorced. And now, it was happening. He knocked on the door, wiping the tear marks off his face.

When Will’s mum opened the door, she laughed, and nodded towards Billy’s t-shirt, “You know, I think that’s rather appropriate… where are you’re parents?” Billy, attempted a laugh, but it came more as a gurgle, “Ah. I wore it for the occasion.”

            Billy had known his parents were getting divorced for reasonable long now, but nothing could have prepared himself for the actual event. Billy pointed at the stairs, “Can I see Will?” Will’s mum had only just understood what Billy meant, and nodded hurriedly, “Go ahead, Billy.”

 

27 Years later

 

Billy was lounging in the sun, looking at his mum’s divorce form. She had died soon after his dad from over smoking, and they had both given him their divorce forms as the last gifts they would give breathing. Billy was disgusted. He stuck his head in the house, and shouted, “Hey, Will!” A ten year old hopped onto the porch, juggling a football with his other foot, “Yeah dad?” Billy handed him the divorce forms, “play with fire a little, okay?” Will nodded and ran to the front of the house, where there was a stone floored garage.

            Billy smelled a whiff of smoke, and closed his eyes. He had a perfect family, perfect house… perfect life. He thought about the divorce again, and shuddered. Seeing grey clouds closing in, Billy stood up and walked into his house, picking up the family laundry. He had the life his parents had deprived him from. He was happy.

 

Boy kills Man, Matt Wyham

In the streets of Columbia, the poverty is so high that rich gang leaders can hire kids to do their ‘dirty work’. And they do just so, getting kids to kill and paying them next to nothing.

            Alberto and ‘Shorty’ have known each other since they can remember, and the two kids have all day to kill in the streets of Medellín. But when Alberto comes home with a wad of cash and a new jacket, Shorty is suspicious, and obviously asks questions. Questions Alberto won’t answer. And then, Shorty gets a glimpse at Alberto’s gun.

            A great book, about love and hate, with an ending just as shocking as the subject itself. Matt Wyham obviously put a lot of thought into this book, as the Shorty’s feeling are described in such a way that you feel he thinks he’s right, but you also have doubts about the way he considers his surroundings. 8/10