From: Christine Hill <chill>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 15:16:16 -0400

A minor point, which nevertheless irked me about all the HPs, particularly four: I admit that quidditch sounds like fun to play, but can it really be fun to watch? The action is so far away and the snitch barely visible. The only students who actually play are the official house teams. There seem to be no intramural teams or pickup teams, so only a fraction of its fanatical fans actually play. This seems very weird to me. And the competitions in Goblet of Fire are even stranger. One takes place under water and another in a maze. No one packing the stands can see a thing! This is too wacky. A belated postscript to last month's Beverly Cleary discussion. Someone noted that BC's YA novel The Luckiest Girl was heavily autobiographical so I read it. It seemed to have been written by the anti?verly. It had none of the respect for its heroine that the Ramona books have and was shockingly didactic. Every thing that happened to the teenage Shelley seemed designed to teach her a lesson, which, goodie-goodie that she was, she dutifully learned. The main lesson was "parents are always right." Was this written by the same author who, thirty years later (TLG was published in 1958) let it all bitterly hang out regarding her own mother in A Girl From Yamhill and My Own Two Feet? Amazing that it's still in print. Christine M. Hill Willingboro Public Library One Salem Road Willingboro, NJ 08046 chill at willingboro.org My new book! Ten Terrific Authors for Teens, Enslow, 2000
Received on Mon 18 Sep 2000 02:16:16 PM CDT