Review: The Ember Stone

The Ember Stone by Katrina Charman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Minus one star right away for being written after the Guardians of Ga'Hoole and not even having pictures in color. But the Guardians of Ga'Hoole actually make biological sense, here, on the very first page, we are introduced to our hero, "a young barn owl" with a recognizable picture of a Barred Owl nearby. Come on guys, Tito and Stryx actually do look different. The leader of the owls is an obvious Great Horned Owl named Grey, but he sounds like a Screech Owl. Great Horned wouldn't be caught dead saying SCREE-EEE. And those tiger bats? More like tiger Pteranodons. Why not simply admit that there are still dinosauri around in this forest? The last straw for me was the firehawk itself, which is of course a phoenix, but apparently elementary school children are not supposed to know such words. I wonder how it wasn't "translated out" of Harry Potter.

The plot is just marvelous. If this book was written with 1st-3rd grades in mind, they were given a fabulous role model and a way to implement natural selection with a variety of tools. The book is just brimming with dangerous, stupid, and illogical behaviour of our young heroes. Very educational.

Two stars only because my first grader enjoyed it so much he even talked me into reading it.

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