Playing Under the Table and Dreaming

I love love love to read, but unfortunately I am super picky about the books I read, so I am often disappointed and don't even make it past the first chapter. I can't really explain what my requirements are, except that I need the writing to be inventive and smooth, and it can't be sad, and I like it best when it's a little bit creepy and there's a tiny bit of romance. Often I find myself enjoying books that were written for kids, which is kind of embarrassing because I am a grown-up. I do like grown-up books, but for some reason it's hard to find books that meet my specific criteria in the grown-up section of the library. So many kids books are really creepy in ways that only kids books can be, like with evil family members and a tiny bit of magic and weird stuff that doesn't exactly make sense. Here is a list of my favourite books that I am way too old to enjoy.

1. "The Phantom Tollbooth" - Norton Juster. About a bored kid who receives a mysterious package, which turns out to be a little tollbooth that transports him into this place called Beyond Expectations. There's a king of words and a king of numbers who hate each other, and lots of creepy stuff that comes from plays on words, like a Senses Taker who takes away your senses and a guy who has no face! Now whenever I get a package I am hoping it is a little tollbooth, but of course it never is.


2. "Jellybeans" - Sylvia van Ommen. About a cat and a rabbit (I think it's a cat, the drawings aren't very detailed) who talk about what happens after you die, and jellybeans.

3. "Everything on a Waffle" - Polly Horvath. About a girl whose dad goes missing at sea, so her mom goes after him, and everyone but her thinks that they're dead. So her crazy uncle comes to take care of her, but there's this social worker who keeps trying to get her taken away and sent in to foster care. Plus, she accidentally chops off a finger, and there's this restaurant that literally serves everything on a waffle.

4. "The Willoughbys" - Lois Lowry. About these four kids who think that their lives should be like the lives of kids in stories, so they try to kill their parents so they can become orphans (because kids in stories are always orphans). At the same time, their parents are too busy to deal with having four kids, so throughout the book they try to murder their children, or sell the house with the kids still in it, and stuff like that. It's super creepy and awesome.

5. "Midnight for Charlie Bone" - Jenny Nimmo. About this kid named Charlie who turns out has magical powers, just like his two aunts and his uncle, so he gets sent away to magic school. Only, it's EVIL MAGIC SCHOOL and he almost dies a million times, plus when he comes home his aunts try to kill him also. But he makes friends with a lady who owns a used bookstore, and maybe she can save him.

6. "Sorcery and Cecelia; or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot" - Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. About two cousins, one of whom gets sent to London with an evil aunt and one of whom has to stay home because of some incident with a goat. Somehow they both get embroiled in this scheme that two wizards developed to take over the world, plus there is a bit of romance that I totally did not see coming. I was really excited to read the sequel, but the sequel is a bunch of crap. I hate it when that happens.

Maybe later I will create a list of grown-up books. But right now I am going to try skipping! I bought a skipping rope from Wal-Mart because I remember skipping being fun and I think it is good exercise. Plus, my hair is shorter than it was the last time I skipped, which is good because the last time my ponytail kept whipping me in the face or getting tangled up in the rope and it was the most annoying thing to ever happen in the history of time.

(Discovery: I need some grown-up hobbies. Ideas?)