Frances Sackett
Autor/a de The Misadventures of the Magician's Dog
Obres de Frances Sackett
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Gènere
- female
Membres
Ressenyes
Llistes
Premis
Potser també t'agrada
Autors associats
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 2
- Membres
- 24
- Popularitat
- #522,742
- Valoració
- 3.0
- Ressenyes
- 3
- ISBN
- 4
If you ever want a story that covers just how selfish a child is accurately, this is definitely a book for you. The main characters are kids, and they behave like kids.
Peter, our main character, is very much a child complete with unrealistic wants and a dislike for dogs. He treats The Dog how a child that doesn't want a dog would. He lies. He gets mad. He gets power, and he sees everyone as inferior and weak.
The characters are not likable. That's a strong thing. Writing children this young and making them likable is very hard to impossible. Children are awful, children are selfish. The kids in this book are violent, they're moody, they say and think bad things. They are kids. It's hard to find anyone pleasant, even The Dog is passive, emotionless most of the time, and simply seems to let bad things happen. His loyalty shouldn't be as it is, yet he goes back to an abusive owner to help him, knowing full well -and we get it said easily three or more times in this short book- he might up and obliterate Peter and everyone around him.
As for the plot, which I should have covered at the start, but couldn't. Peter, Celia, and Izzy all are siblings whose father is deployed to war. Peter encounters a magic dog, gets told "you're a wizard, Petey" in so many words, and is told if he can help with a backfiring spell, maybe the magician will help him magic his dad home from the field(let's not look into the legal ramifications of abandoning the field and going home).
Peter hates The Dog, won't name him, and is a jerk to him in every way possible. The Dog rolls with this despite being fully sentient and magic.
It takes until well near the final few chapters, into pages 130 and such for these characters to express a sense of humanity beyond childish behavior, and even then it is questionable as half of the exchanges are angry and moody. Chapter seventeen is where there's more to the story than a slow crawling of a young boy's inner selfishness and anger. It's from there on that things are good.
It has a good message,
"People aren't perfect. They're just . . . they're people."
but that too gets muddied by the end.
Because the ending is a dream, an undoing. The angry horrible child who harmed his parents and his pet? Gone, undone into an amnesiac boy. The memories the girls Izzy and Celia gained on their adventures? Erased. Poof! The talking magical dog? It's over, done with. Begone! Only it's not for The Dog, or is it?
The ending falls into a disappointing area of no-consequences and nothing really happened. Which is a common trend in so many children books. It's horribly frustrating and underdone to the point I had to drop this book's rating down again because I had more faith in it despite the slow pacing, and it still let me down.… (més)