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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Strange Indeed...Worth Reading!, December 24, 2006
This is the kind of book I would have chosen when I was 8-10 years old...all those year ago! Strange Happenings is a collection of five short stores by one author around the central theme of transformation. In this slim tome, the author covers all manner of transformations - we get animal transfiguration with a twist; a girl who creates her own image and discovers perfection is not all it's cracked up to be; the curious boy who gets more than he bargains for when he becomes fixated on finding out just WHO is in that mascot costume; an old-time favorite...the many faces of Ol' Scratch himself and what human greed can make us do for no real reason; and lastly, the Story of Simon who demanded the best...who above all else prized wealth and image and who discovers that getting what you want doesn't always mean getting what you want!
Overall the theme is well illustrated in the selection of stories; they are both simple but most have a "gotcha" twist at the end that has become standard for this type of story. Strange Happenings is not really a horror book, not is it wholly sci-fi...the author's style is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury (where there is always a moral to the story, even if it is somewhat ambiguous) but the stories themselves are subtler. My favorites here were Bored Tom (the transforming Cats) and Babbette the Beautiful. My least favorite was The Shoemaker and Old Scratch which was the least interesting and most drawn out of the stories (I felt). That said, none of the stories was bad and all of them were well written! I enjoyed reading these five tales and quick reading it was. This would make for find classroom discussion around a central theme...each story is simple yet engaging and all of them can lead to relevant discussion of self image and motivations. I can see this being entertaining AND food for thought! I'd recommend this highly to young readers (ages 8-12, with 8-10 being ideal) who've transitioned fully to chapter books but still need relatively simple plots that are both SIMPLE and INTERESTING!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favorite book from 3rd grade, April 22, 2009
A Kid's Review
This review is from: Strange Happenings: Five Tales of Transformation (Paperback)
Hi, my name is Kaitlin, and I'm nine years old, and I read Strange Happenings. It has five stories and they are really cool! The stories are about: a boy named Simon, an ugly lady, a baseball playing boy that met an alien, two boys that wanted to be a cat, and there is one more, but I can't remember it. I'm telling you, it's really cool!
I liked how the author made five stories because it's very interesting. I liked the one about the ugly lady. It was awesome! If you've never read it, read it, because it's a very funny book!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Some promising ideas and intriguing dark fantasy, but bogged down by lack of inspiration and bone-dry writing. Not recommended, March 26, 2009
This review is from: Strange Happenings: Five Tales of Transformation (Paperback)
Strange Happenings is comprised of five independent tales of transformation--a boy turned into a cat, an ever-changing devil, a man turned halfway into a bird. The tales vary in tone from folkloric to mundane, but most maintain a sense of wry humor and all are written in a paired-down text. This book is better in concept than in execution: some of the stories are promising, but the dry writing style strips away anything interesting about them. This is an immemorable text, and not worth reading. I don't recommend it.
Somewhere between the Brothers Grimm, Aesop, and modern-day America lie these various tales of Strange Happenings. "Babette the Beautiful" and "Simon" are not unlike fairy tales, "The Shoemaker and Old Scratch" has an ending not unlike Aesop, and "Bored Tom" and "Curious" both take place in the American Midwest. It's an odd combination and not entirely successful, perhaps because Avi harvests the least appealing aspects of each influence: similar to translated Grimm, his writing style is repetitive and bone-dry; the Aesop-like moral is punny; the American settings are so mundane that they seem out of place against the other fantastic tales.
Which isn't to say that Strange Happenings is entirely bad; rather, it's simply unsuccessful. The premises of some of the stories, like the shape-shifting cats and the man halfway transformed into the birds he hunts, are outright intriguing, and Avi sometimes manages to work in just enough fantasy and black humor to affect a Gaiman-like sense of dark magic. But despite these reaches towards greatness, Strange Happenings is largely uninspired. Stories are predictable, or unexciting, or simply mundane; the entire work is bogged down by writing so plain and dry that it strips away any sense of magic. Sad to say, but the lovely cover may be the best part of this book. The rest is an exercise in failed potential. It's a short read, and largely harmless, but it's entirely forgettable. Don't waste your time or money. I don't recommend it.
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