From: Katy Southern <kasouthern>
Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 19:18:21 -0500

The Pratchett novels are wonderful - I would also include his The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, which won the Carneigie Medal for Children's Literature. But they are all exceptional and funny!

I'm currently enraptured by Kai Meyer's books. The Dark Reflections Trilogy is a wonderful example of 'dark' fantasy. Granted, I tend to read his books in German, but translations are starting to come out and they seem to be quite good.

Katy Southern University of Wisconsin-Madison Teaching Assistant - Department of English Ph.D. Candidate - Department of English (Composition and Rhetoric) Graduate Student - School of Library and Information Studies


----- Original Message ----- From: Monica Edinger <monicaedinger at gmail.com> Date: Saturday, May 6, 2006 11:46 am Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Fantastic Fiction: New Fantasy Literature To: Kathleen Horning <horning at education.wisc.edu> Cc: Subscribers of ccbc-net <ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu>

> I sometimes feel these days as if I'm in a fairy tale myself.
Fantasy
> is my hands-down favorite genre and my wish PHP* was that it would
get
> more respect in this country. Well, that is the case...sort of.
That
> is, there's a whole lot more fantasy being published, but not a
whole
> lot more being taught in classrooms. So I feel that I must have
> wished on that coin from Edgar Eager's Half Magic and be happy
> that I
> got half my wish in a way that didn't result in total mayhem.
>
> This year I've got a bunch of eager fantasy readers in my classroom,
> including three incredibly precocious girls who have all made their
> way through Philip Pullman's HIs Dark Materials trilogy. One
> haunts a
> couple of fans sites (and will no doubt, on Monday, want to talk
> about the latest news about the film). They are also big fans of
> Cornelia Funke's Inkheart and Inkspell and are after me about when
the
> next will come up. Several kids have read Jonathan Stroud's
Bartimaeus
> Trilogy which, to my mind, gets better with each book. The final,
> Ptolemy's Gate, is one of my favorites of the year thus far; the
> ending is breathtaking.
>
> I haven't given these next books to my girls yet, but I absolutely
> adore Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The
> King of Attolia. This last is an extraordinary work on its own ---
> another favorite of the year for me (and probably top on my list).
> Certainly, those who have read the others first will have a different
> experience from those who have not, but I think both readings
> would be
> wonderful. What a world Turner has created, what characters, what
> plot!
>
> Then there are Rick Riodan's entertaining Percy Jackson books, clever
> updates of the Greek myths. His newest, The Sea of Monsters, is
> to my
> mind even better than his first, The Lightning Thief. These are both
> making the rounds of my classroom; I've got one girl who keeps asking
> me for "more books like those." (She is very specific that she wants
> more updated stories about the Greek gods --- any recommendations?)
>
> What else? Rowling is still going strong, so's Nancy Farmer ('ve got
> a kid happily plowing her way through The Sea of Trolls right
> now), or
> how about Kenneth Oppel? The bat fantasies are great fun as are those
> grand Verne-like adventures, Airborn and Skybreaker. And then there
> is the wonderful Terry Pratchett with The Wee Free Men and A
> Hatful of
> Sky. Loads more, but I'll let others chime in.
>
> Monica
> * Pre Harry Potter
>
>
>
> --
> Monica Edinger
> The Dalton School
> New York NY
> edinger at dalton.org
> monicaedinger at gmail.com
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Received on Sat 06 May 2006 07:18:21 PM CDT