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January 2020 Rave Reviews by Jean E. Eustance
Cornelia Funke has written a children’s picture book, The Princess Knight. It is illustrated by Kerstin Meyer. Find it downstairs in the children’s department of the Pine Bush Area Public Library, under JP FUN for juvenile picture books.
The king has three sons, whom he is raising as he had been raised—how to ride a horse, and fight and yell very loudly at everyone. The queen gives birth to a daughter, and then the queen dies. The king raises his daughter, Violetta, the same way he has raised his sons.
Violetta is a game little girl, and goes along with it. Her brothers think this is hysterically funny. “And they would laugh and laugh at their little sister as she struggled to mount a horse in her heavy armor, as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever seen.”
She is a determined little girl, and “From that night on, Violetta slipped out of the castle in secret, while the rose gardener’s son kept watch for her. She started to practice all the things her brothers could already do so much better. Violetta practiced in her own way, without shouting and without using her spurs. Indeed, she was very quiet about it—as quiet as the night itself.” You can see her riding her horse, and then, on foot, practicing with her sword. She gets much better at it, and is able to slip past her brothers without them touching her, and she can cut the roses out of the strawman’s hands, when the boys could only cut the strawman’s head off.
In the charming illustrations, you can see the rose gardener’s son helping to keep an eye on the princess. And the princess has another ally, her nursemaid Emma, who knows how determined Princess Violetta really is.
Eventually, her 16th birthday arrives and the king wants to do something grand for it, but he gets it wrong. A big tournament is planned—this sounds good to Violetta who is wondering which suit of armor to wear—and the king wants her to just watch the tournament, and then to marry the man who wins it. Violetta explodes. She “turned as red as the roses beside the castle moat. What!” she cried,” You want me to marry some dimwit in a tin suit? Just look at your own knights! They whip their horses and they can’t even write their own names!” For having let loose with this, Violetta gets locked into a castle tower for half a day.
When the day of the tournament arrives, someone (Emma) wearing Violetta’s best dress and a veil is seated next to the king. Guess what? Violetta is wearing all-concealing black armor and is seated on her favorite horse down on the tournament grounds. She gives her name as Sir No-Name. Of course she beats the other knights, and wins the tournament. She cannot marry herself so she has gotten herself out of that little problem.
She says, “I hereby proclaim that no one will ever win Princess Violetta’s hand in marriage without first defeating Sir No-Name.” Then she …rode away, far, far away. And she didn’t return for a year and a day. And when she did? Why, her father, King Wilfred the Worthy, gave her a horse as black as her armor. And nobody, not even her brothers, challenged the princess ever again.”
“And who did she marry? Well, if you must know, many years later, she married the rose gardener’s son and lived happily ever after.”
This is a satisfying book. It tells the story in an economy of words, and the pictures are just right for the action. It’s nice to see a gutsy woman solving her own problems. Find The Princess Knight in the picture book section under Cornelia Funke’s name, in the Children’s Section of the Pine Bush Area Public Library. And in your life, wear your own armor and ride your own horse.
Come into the Library and purchase raffle tickets for these beautiful Christmas baskets! The winner need not be present and will be notified by phone.
RAVE REVIEWS BY JEAN E. EUSTANCE December 2019
Just in time for Christmas, we have three books by David Rosenfelt, with adorable dogs on the covers. Deck the Hounds features a sleeping litter of golden retriever puppies, and each puppy is wearing a Santa hat. The Twelve Dogs of Christmas is equally adorable, and someone saw it when I had it, and she took it right out of my hands. The newest book by Rosenfelt is Dachshund Through the Snow, instead of “Dashing Through the Snow.” Look for them in the Adult Services section of the Pine Bush Area Public Library.
David Rosenfelt has a whole slew of books about his character, Andy Carpenter, who is an attorney defending the good guy (who ever he is) in court. These books feature adorable dogs on the covers, which may have nothing to do with the contents, but hey, they sell the books. This is not an accident. We also have the book Dogtripping, which is not fiction. Dogtripping is in the non-fiction section, near the rest of the books about dogs and dog training.
In it, David Rosenfelt wrote, “I had decided I wanted to try other things, and since the books were selling only moderately well, the sixth in the series, Play Dead, was going to be the last one. That book more directly involved a dog in the plot, and the publisher decided to put a gold retriever on the cover. And sales went through the roof, or at least my version of a sales roof. People would e-mail me with the same message: they loved the book, but were embarrassed to say that they bought it only for the dog on the cover.”
So now you know. Despite the litter of puppies on the cover, Deck the Hounds has a grownup golden retriever in it, who defends a homeless man and who bites his attacker. The dog ends up in Andy Carpenter’s dog rescue foundation, and the man ends up in court, on trial for a murder he did not commit. The big question is, can Andy prove his client’s innocence, and get him off the hook and reunite him with his dog? Hands up, the first to guess the answer.
I read Deck the Hounds but I got a real charge out of Dogtripping: 25 Rescues, 11 Volunteers, and 3 RVs on Our Canine Cross-Country Adventure. David Rosenfelt and his wife Debbie ran the Tara Foundation in California, and needed to move somewhere else, to a place which did not have annual wildfires. They bought a house in Maine, in a remote area where there are few neighbors to be disturbed by the sound of 25 dogs all barking at once. They packed 25 rescued dogs into three rented RVs and the whole kit and caboodle was named, not Winnebago, but Woofabago. They somehow found 11 other people who were as crazy as themselves, to look after the dogs and to help drive, and they set off cross country from California to Maine. And they made it! Got everybody there, safely.
The book is about the trip, the prep for the trip, and the rest of life—ie. Before the trips when they were acquiring more than 25 dogs, because Debbie and David Rosenfelt ran the Tara Foundation. This is a rescue operation, mainly aimed at the golden retrievers who are a fashion statement in California. But the book is about a lot of different dogs, whom they have saved. They found homes for many of them, but some they just had to keep and take to Maine.
The chapters are short and reading them is like eating corn chips. “Oh, just one more.” I read the book twice, and each time I tried to finish it in one day, although that just isn’t possible. The second time, I knew how it turned out, and did not need to read it all in one go, but I wanted to do so, anyway. David Rosenfelt can write the equivalent of corn chips. You want to just keep cramming it in.
I did not feel that way about his Andy Carpenter books, but I did gobble down Dogtripping just as fast as I could go. You will too. Look for it in non-fiction, upstairs in the Pine Bush Area Public Library. You’ll woof it down.
About: Julia Lenihan
For as long as I can remember, the world around me has always been filled with art; patterns and colors everywhere I looked; music in the sounds I heard;characters in the people I observed. I learned early on that I wanted to share these little things in life that people sometimes forget to appreciate. I wanted to create worlds that no one had ever seen before, characters that people could relate to and images that had the ability to evoke certain emotions from even the most cynical individual.
Being introduced to the world of animation changed my life forever. The fact that a single art form could incorporate many others, such as acting, music, drawing, writing and storytelling, left me reeling with delight and thoroughly inspired. Everything I loved, all bundled up into one coherent form. My passion knew no bounds and I found it difficult to reign in even to this day. Although it is a cliche, having the ability to bring my worlds and characters to life for others to see has always been my dream. When I am able to create something that the world will see, it will be nothing short of a dream come true.
Julia is a 2015 graduate of Pine Bush High School.
