I haven't posted in a while, but now that school is back in session, I'm ready to start sharing reviews and thoughts on Children's Literature again.
So what have I been reading? Perhaps the better question is what have I been listening to? Over my semester break I found that I wasn't reading as much as I normally do, but I did listen to several recorded books.
I listened to Daniel Gerroll's performance of The Fire Eaters. This is another of David Almond's lyrical and sorrowful novels. Like Skellig, Almond's best known novel about children who discover a broken angel in their back yard, this novel too exists in the realm of magical realism, but, instead of a contemporary setting, The Fire Eaters is also a work of historical fiction, taking place during the Cuban Missle Crisis. The language, for US readers may be a challenge since Almond draws on the vocabulary and dialect of his own native northern England.
I had difficulty listening to this novel. While I appreciate Almond's poetic voice and Gerroll's evocative reading, the pain, both physical and emotional, that is laced through this book was hard to stomach. The title character, McNulty the Fire Eater, is masochistic and Bobby Burns, the young narrator is drawn to that masochistic nature. He wonders if, by inflicting pain upon himself, he can take pain from others.
As I write this, I wonder if this is a children's novel - though I did not doubt the fact when listening to it. I think this would appeal to those older middle-schoolers and high schoolers as well.
