Customer Reviews

Rairarubia (Rairarubia Tales)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It started out so innocently. Molly Doogan's mother was a doctor. Due to the many cases of the flu, Molly and her dad had to wait in the car until the last patient had left the clinic so they could all go home. To kill the boredom, Molly and her father decide to make up a story.

Rairarubia (Rare - A - Ruby - Uh) was ruled by an evil man called Mammoth. Young Romey had no knowledge of her past, but was taken in as a pupil by Bovert and Herman. Sam, a boy her age, was in the same situation. The two teachers train Romey and Sam in all types of fighting, weaponry, and how to live with nature. They become a team, but had no idea what was in store for them.

Each night Molly and her father continue to make up the story. However, the story was somehow leaking out of Molly's imagination and into her REAL daily life!

**** Here is the beginning of what promises to be a compelling series! For anyone as young as age nine to anyone over one hundred. (Come on, admit it, those of us over twenty-one still LOVE this stuff!) This author grabs onto the readers quickly and holds onto them as tight as Super Glue until the very end. Highly recommended reading! ****

I picked up Rairarubia browsing through a bookstore one day and after reading just a couple pages I was hooked. This is a brilliant children's novel, captivating and exciting. I can't wait to start reading the next one.

Rairarubia is one of those rare books that is equally loved by boys and girls. Every one of my students could relate to Molly's amazing adventure, the colorful characters, the puzzling riddles, the magic. This book is a gem, delivering its story with humor and suspense. The ending demands a sequel- now!

This book kept my attention the whole time I was reading. I couldn't put it down. I love the way there is a story within a story. Romey, the main character in the story within the story, is brave, independent, and smart. She can do anything boys can do. I'm reading the second book, Return to Rairarubia, and it's maybe even better.

Rairarubia is one of those rare books that is equally loved by boys and girls. Every one of my students could relate to Molly's amazing adventure, the colorful characters, the puzzling riddles, the magic. This book is a gem, delivering its story with humor and suspense. The ending demands a sequel- now!

An absolutely wonderfully written fantasy for all readers by a truly engaging writer!

When Molly Doogan asks her father to tell her a story just to pass the time while they were waiting for her mother (a doctor), they combine their imaginations to create a wonderful story. As Molly and her father develop the story, unexplainable things begin happening. The story they created begins to slip into Molly's real life. The adventures they create for their characters are strong models for all kids (and adults too). This is a timeless story and one which I'm looking forward to continuing in the next book.

I really wanted to like this one, but as Roger Ebert would say, I'm giving it a marginal thumbs down. I feel a little like Scrooge doing this since this book does have some things that particularly 5th graders will like: A fairy tale with a kind of modern gimmick that almost worked for me, but as I said, not quite enough and I'll say why in a moment.

The story begins in our time: Molly Doogan, an imaginative 11 year old girl and her father begin making up a story together about a medieval land called Rairarubia and for its main character, they invent a character that Molly names Romey, a girl the same age as herself. There is also a boy named Sam who enters the story later. Neither Romey nor Sam apparently know who they are (it's not revealed why that is) but they both have a kind of mythic adventure in Rairarubia where they are tested and trained in survival and marshall arts by some mysterious teachers. So far so good.

But there is this intriguing gimmick which is that throughout the book, elements of the Rairarubia story begin to mysteriously bleed into the "real life" of Molly and her family. She finds dirt in her hands after waking up from a dream in which this dirt was depicted. Later she finds an arrowhead in her hand when she awakes which also seems to come from Rairarubia. Finally, at the end of the book she finds nine pebbles, also from the Rairarubia story.

Well, it's a great conceit if it works, but the problem is, there's no payoff. The book ends and now we're supposed to buy the next one to find out what's going on. And this is not the only thing that's not resolved by the end. We still don't know who Sam and Romey are, where they're from, and what the purpose of their quest is, as well as several other loose ends I don't have space to mention. As Bob Dylan says: "Nothing was delivered."

So the upshot is that Rairarubia turns itself into an elaborate shaggy dog story with a big come on at the end to hang in for the next book. No thanks, I feel too manipulated by the first one to bother with the next. As our illustrious and literary former President might have said: "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me again and I'm not interested."

This is one of the best books I've ever read. It's a great fantasy-adventures story that holds your interest. I can't wait for the second book. It's a series!