{"id":2553,"date":"2005-01-12T14:34:34","date_gmt":"2005-01-12T19:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/01\/12\/2553.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:47:30","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:47:30","slug":"book-report-the-tale-of-desper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/01\/12\/book-report-the-tale-of-desper\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Tale of Despereaux"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I believe I had mentioned, some time ago, that I was half-way through The Tale of Despereaux<\/a>, Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo. Well, and a while later I finished it, and it’s really very good. It’s aimed at slightly younger kids than my usual YA reading; the publisher claims it’s for 7 to 12 year olds, but I suspect that many nine-year-olds would find it hopelessly babyish. I don’t know. Mice, Princesses, Thread, Soup.\n

On the other hand, people treat each other very badly in the book, and mice treat each other even worse. So perhaps seven-year-old would find it unpleasant, and perhaps nightmarish. Or not. I have a hard time imagining what children find amusing and what frightening. I can’t go by my instincts, as (a) I have no reliable memory of what books I read at five and which at twelve, (2) my reactions wouldn’t extrapolate well to other peoples, combining (as I still do) squeamish timidity with cloddish insensitivity.\n

Now I wish I could remember more of the books I liked when I was five. I feel sure I was well past Ramona the Pest<\/a> at that point, but not yet at Tunnel in the Sky<\/a>. When did I read the Anne McCaffrey books? When did I read Treasure Island<\/I>? When did I read The Little Prince<\/I>? Ah, well. It’s just idle curiosity, really. The only test of whether a particular seven-year-old will like a book is if he reads it; the proof of the pudding is always in the eating.\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I believe I had mentioned, some time ago, that I was half-way through The Tale of Despereaux, Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo. Well, and a while later…<\/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-2553","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\/2553","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=2553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17257,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions\/17257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}