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Trolls (Little Golden Books)

£9.9£99Clearance
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Aunt Sally’s stories are hilariously, heartbreakingly funny—heartbreaking because you wish your own childhood had been like that, outrageous and funny and full of larger-than-life characters and adventures. So they’re quite unprepared for the charismatic and whimsical figure that arrives, with her towering blonde beehive of hair, her fondness for green beans and surprise meat loaf, her talent for drawing, and most of all her storytelling abilities. Language: Melissa and Amanda are cutting and a bit rude to their little brother, constantly telling him to shut up and that he doesn’t know anything. Sally has no patience for this. One could argue that the girls learning to treat Pee Wee well is the whole point of the book, so their unkindness is there to teach a lesson.

It starts when Melissa, Amanda, and Pee Wee's usual babysitter "came down with a mild case of bubonic plague and called tearfully to say she didn't want to spread the buboes around." So her parents (who are going to Paris for a week) are forced to call on Aunt Sally, whom they have never met and their father never talks about.The three Anderson children’s parents are going to France for a week’s vacation. With the usual babysitter out of commission, the kids are left in the care of their Aunt Sally, whom they have never met before. Aunt Sally came to stay with Melissa, Amanda and Pee Wee while their parents went to Paris. From the beginning, I wondered why she was the last resort, and Dad did not want to call his sister. Three kids leave their spoiled little brother for the trolls on Halloween night. The parents realize that the child is missing, and eventually a search party finds him. He never speaks of what happened to him that night, but he’s never able to bond with those siblings again either. When Aunt Sally arrives she is a surprise to the kids. Tall, wearing very high heels with chunky soles and laces that wound up her legs. She had a lot of yellow hair that was piled high on the top of her head, sparkly eyes and long dangle earrings.

I read this with my 8-year-old son and found it more thought-provoking than the "grown-up" novel I was reading at the time. This book centers on Aunt Sally, a sophisticated kind of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, who comes to stay with her 2 nieces and nephew when their parents vacation in France. Every chapter is another fanciful story told by Aunt Sally, involving her family in Canada growing up. The story includes the children's father (the youngest sibling of Aunt Sally in the story). There is a subtle undercurrent of family brokenness....why did Dad never talk about Aunt Sally? Why was Dad hesitant to have Aunt Sally come stay with the children while they were gone? Politics and Religion: Louis accuses a local pastor of leaving four consecutive wives for the trolls. Each night, the children would beg for green beans. Pee Wee built them into log cabins before eating them. And each night she would tell of the family history. Aunt Sally told them about Uncle Lewis who came for two weeks and stayed to six years. There was also a tale of Great Aunt Hatty and the mysterious man.

Everyone needs an Aunt Sally. Someone who mixes truth with play; deeper meaning, for those who wish to extract more than just what the surface of listening carries within it. Most of the stories within "The Trolls" went well over my kid's heads (6.5; 8; 10; and 11 year's old respectively). They were waiting for the trolls to appear and didn't like that the story never made them known; and, they didn't like an ending without end. This book was no winner for them.

I have a problem with the story of the Fat Little Mean Girl. Even the chapter title is unkind to fat people! If I were reading the book to children, I might leave this chapter out, or just leave out the word fat, though it gets a bit more complicated than that in one or two places. The chapter also involves Wiccans, but does not portray them in a very attractive way and I wouldn't mind reading that part to kids, despite my Christian faith. (It doesn't portray them as Satan-worshippers either, but plausibly, as fairly ordinary eccentrics, one of whom is mean.) If I gave the book to a child, I would talk to them about calling people fat and about Wiccans. I remember how that first sentence hooked me, carpooling with a friend in second grade. That family always travelled with audio books. I don’t remember the name of the narrator but she was outstanding, with this very clean, sharp line delivery and perfect diction that sealed each line in your memory. It’s been in my head ever since. I don’t think Horvath’s opinion on either Christianity or Wicca can be inferred from these incidents, but your mileage may vary.

For Sally’s stories so transfix her nieces and nephew that they’d rather listen to her than watch TV. They’re the stories of growing up on Vancouver Island in the late sixties and early seventies that their father has never told them. The tales are full of witty observations, sometimes uproariously funny, but there lurks an undercurrent of darkness. Pee Wee is too young to notice, but his sisters do, and are drawn to it even as they dread it…

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