Review: Charles Gilman; Tales from Lovecraft Middle School #1, Professor Gargoyle and #2, Slither Sisters

Professor Gargoyle

Published October 2012 and January 2013, Quirk Books. Hardback. List price, £10.99

Appropriate for ages 7-11.

From the cover of Professor Gargoyle:

‘Strange things are happening at Lovecraft Middle School. Rats are leaping frm lockers. Students are disappearing. The school library is a labryinth of secret coridors. and the science teacher is acting very, very, perculiar. Robert Arthur knew that seventh grade was going to be weird, but this is ridiculous!

With the help of some unlikely new friends, Robert discovers theres more to Lovecraft Middle Schol than meets the eye. Can he uncover the secrets of the school before it’s too late?’

It’s really difficult to stick to the old adage of never judging a book by its cover when you get a book with a cover like this.The lenticular covers of each book in the Tales from Lovecraft Middle School series morph as you move them: the dignified looking bearded man becomes a horned beast; the svelte, wan twin sisters become scaled hydras. It’s sure to pull in reluctant readers and it made me want to dive in immediately.

It is, perhaps, a little odd to describe a paranormal story with an antagonist who eats live hamsters as ‘comforting’ and ‘warm’, but that’s exactly what the first two books in Charles Gilman’s middle readers series are. Similar to RL Stein’s Goosebumps but far wittier, far creepier and far more intelligently written, Professor Gargoyle and Slither Sisters follow awkward pre-teen everykid Robert Arthur as he arrives at the newly built state-of-the-art Lovecraft Middle School, a place where the mysterious, gilt and dust world of the supernatural sits beside the digital chalkboard and brightly anonymous fittings of a super-modern school campus.

slither Sisters

The stories are engrossing. What child does not fantasize that their science teacher might secretly be a demon or the cool, popular girls running for class President Medusa- headed monsters? This is the force that drives the series, which, though inspired by HP Lovecraft, has none of his overwrought prose. It’s clear Gilman knows his characters inside out and cares deeply for his audience. Never condescending, always bright and often funny, its difficult to find a downside to Gilman’s storytelling.

Intertexual references to Lovecraft abound. Monsters are borrowed from the Cthulhu Mythos, philosophising that,

The Great Old Ones have the intelligence of ten thousand men combined. We should not question their actions.

Professor Gargoyle, p. 73

Though the books don’t explore too deeply Lovecraftian philosophy the groundwork is laid for future books in the series to delve further. In another nod to Lovecraft the books’ accompanying website plays Camille Saint-Saëns Dance Macabre.

Review: Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Cabin Fever, Jeff Kinney

Diary of a Wimpy kid: Cabin Fever; Jeff Kinney

Published November 2011, Puffin. List price £12.99

Appropriate for ages 7-12

From the cover;

‘Greg Heffley is in big trouble. School property has been damaged, and Greg is the prime suspect. But the crazy thing is he’s innocent. Or at least sort of.

The authorities are closing in, but when a surprise blizzard hits, the Heffley family is trapped indoors. Greg knows that when the snow melts he’s going to have to face the music, but could any punishment be worse than being stuck inside with your family for the holidays?’

Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series has spawned six novels, two full-length cinematic releases, a movie tie-in, activity book and a boat load of merchandise. To say it’s popular would be a gross understatement.

Cabin Fever begins with a discussion of the problem of Santa. Can he see you all the time? What if he sees something from the wrong angle and misconstrues nice as naughty? Can you be mean to people who don’t celebrate Christmas, since Santa won’t be looking over there? Unfortunately, this is the high point of the book, and it’s over within ten pages.

It’s worth ignoring the various criticisms of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise as histrionic pearl clutching. Yes there’s some irreverence and an undercurrent of anti-authoritarianism but this is not the reason to disuade your children from reading the books; disuade your children from reading them because they are, well, crap.

The plot is flimsy, the jokes are not quite as laugh-out-loud as we’ve been lead to believe, and the overall effect is of a slow puncture in an airbed – irritating and ultimately deflating. The occasional truism about modern living is not enough to pull the book from the gutter. So… blah is the book that it’s astonishingly difficult to find anything to say about it. This is not a case, you understand, of trying to find something complimentary to say, but to find  anything at all to say. Cabin Fever is 216 pages of nothing. I’m surprised Kinney managed to get it to stretch that far.

It’s lucky, then, that Greg, the 13-year-old protagonist is such a brilliantly realised creation. He’s occasionally startlingly observant, selfish, egotistical, sometimes mean, vaguely witty and a little precocious. Indeed, it is Kinney’s characters that are his saving grace when it comes to Cabin Fever.Even characters we glimpse only briefly appear rounded and realistic. It is for this reason alone that Cabin Fever deserves 2.5 out of 10.

Reluctant Readers? Boys and Books

Comics need to be recognised as valid reading material

Boys don’t like to read. It is, apparently, a fact. One of those extra facty facts that doesn’t require citation; it just is. It’s so true, so universally acknowledged, that to cite a source would be to undermine its factiness. Everybody knows it. It is because it is.

The significantly less facty fact, but the one that has actual science in it, is that boys read only slightly less than girls (Topping 2010). They tend towards less challenging literature, it’s true, but ultimately the reading habits of girls and boys are remarkably similar.

Yet we believe beyond doubt that boys are usually reluctant readers who don’t read outside of the classroom and only read inside it with some hesitation.

The genesis of this myth is likely the type of reading boys indulge in. They are more likely, in their leisure time, to read graphic novels and comics, magazines (the number one choice of reading materials for both boys and girls) and websites. Each of these media has a value – graphic novels may be picture heavy, but they use similar narrative techniques to other fiction, magazines are as likely to be informative as they are to be vapid and being able to surf the internet effectively is a valuable skill. If your children are clicking on Perez Hilton as often as Wikipedia, they’re still practicing functional literacy. If we started to view time spent online or with a comic book to be legitimate reading, the perceived gap between girls’ and boys’ readerly habits would look much smaller.

But it gets kids reading! Some thoughts on critical literacy

Goosebumps: Scary House; RL Stine

BUT IT GETS THEM READING!

I’ve used this phrase myself, but what does it actually mean? Or, more importantly, what do we mean when we say it?

It’s a phrase used to excuse what we perceive to be poor quality literature; to imply value in books that would otherwise be dismissed as pulpy, badly written or simply non-canon. It indicates snobbery; it is an apology to the self – a platitude to excuse fiction that doesn’t fit the value system we want to impart. It may not be morally improving, but at least it constitutes practice. But practice at what? Functional literacy – the level of reading comprehension and writing ability necessary to get by day-to-day – might be the go-to excuse. But is that really what we mean?

We want our children to be functionally literate because we want our adults to be functionally literate; because functional literacy is, well, useful. It’s difficult to operate in the world without being able to decipher the intricate squiggles on road signs, on food packaging, in instruction manuals. It’s useful to be able to write a shopping list, to sign our names. Functional literacy helps us apply for jobs and mortgages. It helps us navigate from A to B. The intricate cognitive processes by which we decipher the random marks on a page and assign them meaning are second nature to most of us; we read all the time, and we read without thinking about it.