Odd and the Frost Giants

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What a great little story! Having waited an extra year for it (it was announced for last year, before the unexpected hoopla over The Graveyard Book), I was disappointed that it was so short. It's the perfect length for the story it tells, in which a lame boy becomes a hero and saves the hide of the Norse gods Loki, Thor, and Odin One-eye himself--in addition to saving the entire planet from endless winter.
This is how much I liked it: having returned my library copy, I shall now buy it!

Perfect for read-alouds or middle-grade reading. And of course, for anyone already hooked on Neil through his other wonderful books. Would also make a great movie.

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Terry Pratchett's Nation

Nation by Terry Pratchett

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
My favorite book of the last year just won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for teen fiction.Hurray for the Horn Book and whoever voted! This is a wonderful true myth with death and wonder and knowledge and hope--life in an alternate Earth island chain after a tsunami. This is the first book he's written since his Alzheimer's diagnosis and I believe it should have won every award it was nominated for; there's really no way that Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book (see my review) is better. It should certainly have been nominated for a Hugo. Comparing theses two books is like comparing Rowling's Harry Potter series and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials. The latter has a depth the former lacks, despite its popularity. Gaiman is Rowling and Pratchett is Pullman in this instance. And it's usually Gaiman who's dealing with the mythic! At any rate, Nation in its way is as perfect a book as Sherri Tepper's Beauty. Read! Read!

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