13 Treasure Trilogy by Michelle Harrison

The series I just read was very hard to find in the library because they are called 13 Treasures, 13 Curses and 13 Secrets.  My mother didn’t know which one was next because they all had the number 13 in the title. She got the wrong one out for me once. 

You should read the trilogy if you like books that are fantasy and mystery. The story is all about the adventures of three kids: Tanya, Fabian and Rowan (who went by Red in the first two books). They get mixed up in dangerous fairy stuff all involving Rowan’s baby brother who turned out to be her cousin. Rowan is half human and half fairy and works against the changeling trade. When she discovered that her mother was not her mother but her aunt she also discovered that her father was a fairy and she was not meant to be born. The fairies in this book are ugly. They can be human sized if they want to be and they can be seen by non-second sighted people if they want to.

I have a few bad comments about it and a few good ones. 

I loved the books. It was a good series but I didn’t like how the author, Michelle Harrison, once made the characters think that when something was good it was actually bad. There was a scene where the main character Tanya was being punished by Gredin, who is Tanya’s guardian fairy, the punishment was that when she went back home her old dog had turned into a puppy. It wouldn’t be a punishment for me! I think it would be fun for both of us.

I didn’t like the names Michelle Harrison made up for a lot of the places and characters. For example these names I do not like: Fabian, Gredin, Crooks, Tino and Oberon. I chose to pronounce them them wrong because I don’t like them and I changed them to Fabin, Grendin, Tinto and Auburn. The place that Tanya took her vacations at with her grandmother (who was second sighted like her) was called Elvesden Manor. It is hard to pronounce.

I couldn’t put the books down while they were exciting.I read a chapter every night and 3 chapters every morning in bed and then 4 chapters in the middle of the day. Each book has about 420 pages.

I also didn’t like how when you finish one book you don’t have to read the next book. In fact you don’t even know that there is another book. None of them end in a cliff hanger. I do like cliff hangers. 

I recommend that you do not look at the 13 treasures trilogy website because it will give you a sour taste in your mouth. There is only one video on it about Michelle talking about how she got her ideas from someone else. I didn’t like that they weren’t her own ideas.

It was kind of disappointing because the first two books are all about getting Tanya’s friend Rowan’s baby brother back from the fairy realm. They got there just when Seely and Useely Count were switching over from Summer to Fall. When they got to the courtroom they had to do a task and they completed the task. They went back to the fairy realm which is now ruled over by Useely Count. The Count said that they could have the baby brother BUT then when she saw him he was in a fairy family who loved him and he loved them. He didn’t even remember Rowan. So she just left him there. It was disappointing because the work up to the goal was great and then it failed at the end of the second book. I think it is unusual and not that good to end a story badly.

I can tell you about the Counts. There are 2 chief fairies who rule and all the fairies follow one of them. The Useely Count takes over rule of the fairy realm for Fall and Winter. The Useely Count is the bad Count. One fairy rules at a time then all of the fairies follow him.

I personally would not want to be second sighted (which means that you can see fairies). Because I find that it usually it gets you into a lot of trouble!!!

by Claire

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I just read the Little House in the Big Woods and I liked it a lot. It's a true story written by Laura, a little sister with Mary, baby sister Carrie and their mother and their father, her father is a hunter. They live in a log house where "as far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month there was nothing but woods". They have cows and they have horses. I want a horse to ride through marshes and look for frogs (I don't think there was many marshes around for them to do that). It is seven miles to town and they only go once a year which I think is crazy. The kids have only gone ONCE to town in their lives!

I would like to go back in time and live then but I wouldn't like the Sundays though. "On Sundays Mary and Laura must not run or shout or be noisy in their play. Mary could not sew on her nine-patch quilt, and Laura could not knit on the tiny mittens she was making for Baby Carrie. They might look quietly at their paper dolls, but they must not make anything new for them. They were not allowed to sew on dolls clothes, not even with pins... They must sit quietly while Ma read Bible stories to them or stories about lions and tigers and white bears from Pa's big green book The Wonders of the Animal World. They might look at pictures or they might hold their rag dolls nicely and talk to them. But there was nothing else they could do."

I liked reading the stories that Pa told to Mary and Laura while he was cleaning his gun and then he played his fiddle to them while they were trying to go to sleep in their trundle bed. Pa tells Laura and Mary the story of Pa and the voice in the woods and the story of grandpa's sled and the pig.

I sped through this book because it was my favorite book I have read yet. I couldn't stop reading it. Garth Williams has made good black and white illustrations.

When I watched the TV show I was terribly disappointed how they acted. They were too dramatic compared to the book but the acting girls I pictured the same way as in the book.

Now I am reading The Little House on the Prairie which is the next book in the series. I think it is good but they are not being very nice to their dog because they are making him walk from Wisconsin to the Indian Country which is Kansas. They were not very happy when they had to move out of the big woods. They didn't like how everybody kept on moving into the woods they were living in every day. The new people were killing too many animals that the Ingalls needed to eat.

I think everybody would like this book.

by Claire Shamgochian

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol reviewed by Claire

Anya's Ghost is a murder mystery ghost story. It is a comic book. My favorite books are comic books. The colors of these pictures are gray, black and white and dark purple.

There is a teenager girl, who doesn't have the best life ever, called Anya that falls into a deep hole. The hole has a skeleton in it. A ghost appears sitting on the skeleton. The ghost is named Emily and she can't go very far away from her bones so she is stuck in the hole too. She says she was murdered. Anya is rescued but accidentally has Emily's finger bone in her bag. The bone must have fallen into the bag somehow. So Emily can get out of the hole.

The rest of the book is about Anya trying to solve the mystery of who killed Emily. Emily was a nice ghost for most of the book. But the ending was not what I expected. The ghost got stronger and became able to pick things up and move things around. Then Anya went to the library and she was shocked  to discover a newspaper article that showed a picture of Emily and said "local girl missing after double murder". Now Anya knew that Emily was not murdered but a murderer!

Anya went back home to dispose of the bone but Emily had taken it and moved it around the house. She has turned very mean and scary. So when Anya finally finds the bone she brings it back to the hole to drop the bone in. Emily gets really mad and tries to push Anya in the hole but it had no effect. So Anya drops the bone in the hole and the ghost is dragged down with it. But a minute later Emily's skeleton climbs out. She doesn't look at all as nice as the ghost did before Anya discovers she is a murderer. Emily's skeleton starts falling apart and then she falls back into the hole.

This book was filled with smoking teenagers who called each other hot chicks.  There were lots of teenagers trying to be cool. My favorite line was "Dude, I have like only one sucky friend. My life is total crap".  Most of the books I have read are not as vulgar as this one. But is was very funny for me. Every time I came to a funny line (like the Dude one) I read it out loud to my family.