{"id":15559,"date":"2017-07-17T09:53:53","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T13:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2017\/07\/17\/15559.html"},"modified":"2018-03-09T15:46:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T20:46:04","slug":"book-report-castle-hangnail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2017\/07\/17\/book-report-castle-hangnail\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Castle Hangnail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hunh. I just did a search of my blog for mentions of Ursula Vernon, and, well, I’ve mentioned her twitter feed a couple of times, but have never written a Report on any of her things. I assume that’s because I started reading her stuff mostly after I stopped writing reports, but it’s probably also because her stuff is, well, it’s a wide range of stuff, much of which I probably wouldn’t have written Reports about at any point. The Youngest Member liked the Danny Dragonbreath<\/cite> books enormously, and they impressed me as a grupp as being extraordinary works in the reluctant-reader category, but I didn’t so much read<\/I> them. I have read the Harriet Hamsterbone<\/cite> books, which both my children adore, but I can’t say that I would have bothered writing about them. I’ve read a few of the T. Kingfisher short stories and novellas, which I liked but didn’t love enough to write a report; even when I was logging books, I didn’t report on stray short stories unless I was doing to equivalent of grabbing people by the lapels and shoving the story at them.\n

Digger<\/cite>, well, Digger<\/cite> is a horse of a different color. I am surprised I didn’t write about Digger<\/cite>. I mean, it’s an amazing work, really a magnificent achievement. I should have written about Digger<\/cite>.\n

Which brings me to Castle Hangnail<\/a>. This one, I am totally doing the equivalent of grabbing you by the lapels and shoving it at you.\n

I’m not sure I’m going to say anything more about it. Oh, it’s a middle-grade book, I suppose I should say that—not as gritty as YA, but with more thump<\/i> to it than you might expect from the cover. In Pitchbot<\/a> terms, it’s the Oz books crossed with Dianne Wynne Jones, but with moles! Or something. I’m tempted to say if you liked such-and-such<\/i> but I don’t know how I would end that list. I think if you like any sort of imaginative children’s literature, you should read this.\n

And, yes, it’s a patriarchy-smashing, trope-subverting joy of a book from a political standpoint. I want the Youngest Member (y’all know he’s ten years old now, right?) to grow up reading this sort of thing, not as we were sometimes given The Paper Bag Princess<\/a> or Free to Be You and Me<\/a> or other excellent things that were designed to break through our chauvinist expectations and rear us with open minds, but because that’s what is out there these days: excellent things that happen to also comment on the flaws (and strengths) of our inherited institutions, values, symbols and rituals, because that’s what art does.\n

That was the last time I spoke with President Trump,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger reread this recently and loved it all over again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16284,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15559\/revisions\/16284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}