Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

Summary

Danny loves his life. He lives in a gypsy caravan parked behind the filling station his father owns. His father is a car mechanic, the best all around. And by the time Danny is seven years old, he can take apart an engine and put it back together all by himself.

Danny's father also happens to be a pretty spectacular fellow. He builds Danny a co-cart, teaches him to make a kite and a hot air balloon. In fact, Danny's father is Danny's favourite person in the whole world. He'd rather be with him than anyone else.

So, when Danny finds out that his father has a criminal hobby, naturally, he wants to join him.

What I liked

The story was excellent. Probably one of the funniest I've read in a very long time. It was also very well written, and full of rich and witty commentary. For example:

"While I was still a baby, my father washed me and fed me and changed my diapers and did all the millions of other things a mother normally does for her child. That is not an easy task for a man, especially when he has to earn his living at the same time by repairing automobile engines and serving customers with gasoline."

Also, Danny's narration brings childlike wonder and excitement to even the most mundane events. I don't think I have ever read a more suspenseful account of a person changing gears in a standard transmission automobile before.

What I didn't like

Well, morally speaking, I don't think that a man being horribly evil is any kind of justification for stealing from him. And enticing a child to participate in criminal behaviour is reprehensible. Also, for a police officer to participate in and encourage said criminal behaviour is pretty much disgusting.

That being said, there wasn't really anything I didn't like about this book.

Summary

The story was funny, well-written, exciting and wonderful. It was easy to read and very short. I recommend it to anyone who wants to take a vacation from heavy reading and just lay back and read and laugh.

This book gets 5/5 child mechanics.

Edward's Eyes by Patricia MacLachlan

Summary

Jake's little brother Edward is one special kid. He can make anyone smile. He's the only one around who can throw a perfect knuckleball. He loves fireworks and music and singing and he loves his little sister, Sabine, almost more anyone else in the whole world. He loves to hold her and sing to her.

And then, tragedy strikes.

What I liked.

I liked the characters. They're a pretty neat family of crazies. They made me want to have children.

Patricia MacLachlan's writing is of the best quality, as ever.

What I didn't like.

The title and the jacket summary totally gave away the whole plot.

Also, it was really hard to figure out who the characters were at first. It took me a while to figure out that Albert Groom was an old man. Maybe it's just because I'm slow. By the end of the story, I still didn't know what his connection to the family was. (I mean, aside from his obviously being a family friend.)

The writing was a little jumpy and loose and jumbly. The story goes back and forth between the past and the present, without really establishing when the present is, except that it's after the events of the past. (Janelle disagrees, she says it seemed very smooth to her. In any case the story doesn't suffer much.)

Also, I didn't like all the talk of signs. It was weird. The characters would point to events and coincidences and say "It's a sign!" But they wouldn't really say what the sign was supposed to indicate. Except once when a bird flew over the baseball game and someone said, "It's a sign!" And then Edward hit the ball that he hadn't been able to hit before (or something like that.) Anyway, it all just seemed a little unnecessary to me.

Conclusion

It's a good story and it's short. So I'll give it a rating of 3/5 knuckle balls. It's worth the time it takes to read it.

Funny Story; Strange Dream

So, the other day I was watching an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, in which Captain Janeway, while arguing for the rights of an artificial person refers to humanity's past with words something like: "It was only a few centuries ago that only landowners of a particular gender and race had any rights..."

And my initial reaction to her statement was a sudden tightening in my chest and the panicked thought: "Oh no! I don't own any land!"

Yeah, I thought that was funny too.

Okay, so here's my strange and funny dream:

Last night I dreamed that I was in Kapuskasing on a Sunday morning. Immediately before morning meeting, my father asked me to preach afterwards and I felt that I had no choice but to agree, so I did.

I planned to think up a message during the breaking of bread, but every time I opened my Bible my mind would wander and I would forget. So, suddenly it was time to preach and I had nothing. I was sitting in the front row, desperately leafing through my Bible and thinking, The Psalms? No. I don't know the Psalms that well. One John? No, I did that last time I was here. Philippians? No, I did that the time before... and becoming more and more panicked.

But when the time finally came, I was getting ready to get up and make up a message on the fly when an older gentleman got up and started preaching. I was confused, was he going to preach instead of me? Was he only introducing me?

As I was thinking this, Jesse, who was sitting directly behind me put his feet through the crack in my seat and pressed them against my back. I was irritated and tried to shove his feet away, but he shoved back. He shoved back so hard that, to my extreme embarrassment, I fell out of my chair and landed on the floor in front of everyone.

But I didn't have a long time to be embarrassed. I began to slide along the curvature of the earth, faster and faster, unable to stop. I could see the continents rushing by as I slid. Finally I came to a stop. When I returned to my ordinary size, I was in Russia.

I thought, Okay, no problem. I'll find an airport and take a plane to Toronto; I'll be home by bedtime. So I started walking. I followed a bus into an airport. On the bus, though, I saw my coworker, Chad. (Not my brother, my coworker at the stupid store.) He asked me what I was doing and I replied that I was an international spy. (Weird, huh?)

So, anyways, I decided to try to find a telephone so I could call my parents so they wouldn't worry about me, so I entered one of the buildings in the area and asked the first person I saw if there was a telephone I could use. It was a girl and she turned out to be Marie-Helen, the girl I had a crush on in grade six-seven. So, she took me down to a dungeon like basement where there was a telephone. So I dialed my parent's phone number and my mother answered, but I could hear her asking whoever was with her, "Who in the world is..." and the number of the phone from which I was dialing--there was one in my dream, but I can't remember it now, just that it had an awful lot of sixteens in it. I had to yell into the phone to get her attention.

So, when I did get her attention, I told her my situation and that I would be home shortly and that I would pay for the flight with my credit card, but that I expected her to reimburse me upon my return. (Can you imagine the audacity?)

Then I tried to get Marie-Helen to take me to the terminal, but instead she took me to the local campus of Lakehead University and disappeared. And then I woke up.