My weekends have been Fantasy Death Marches recently. In order to finish all of the "R" authors, I had to get through Philip Reeve and Emily Rodda.
If you have students who have never read fantasy but need to or would like to start, this would be a decent introduction. There are many standard fantasy elements-- quasi-medieval setting, magic, a quest, good versus evil, riddles, etc. The first series is 8 books long; I don't have the other books in my library. For a complete listing of titles in order, please consult:
The Shadow Lord has made the king of Deltora all but useless; removing the jewels from the Belt of Deltora is the final act that unseats the royal family and brings despair to the entire kingdom. In order to fight the evil, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine go to each of the kingdoms to locate the jewels, then need to locate the heir to the throne. There are some nice twists and turns, and the books are short (about 130 pages each), but there are a lot of cliches, and not much new. We did have some fun when the group met evil doers that spoke English, but backwards: I went around chanting "fresh meat soon!" and unnerving the children.
I asked several of my students about their experience with the book, and many had picked them up in the 3rd or 4th grade, and that seems about right for these books.
My 4th graders are falling all over themselves every time a box comes into the library and saying, "Stacy is that the Deltora Quest that you ordered!?!?!?"
ReplyDeleteBoth my boys (now 10 and 12) have read as many Deltora books as they could get their hands on (and they buy them at book fairs, so we have a good number of them in our possession). I've been "forced" to read them occasionally aloud and have found the writing to be well written -- for the reading level. I'm not keen on the story lines, but I'm not a huge fantasy fan, so there you go.
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