The Bananaverse

I have a friend who has a daughter. I adore them both. We were discussing books we’d read recently and I mentioned that I hadn’t spent a lot of time reading for fun lately, it’s all been the MySQL book I’m working through and researching this or that and what it comes down to is not a lot of “fun” reading. I like to read, and I have been known to devour books from time to time (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire took one day), and I like to read all kinds of stuff. So my friend’s daughter K said she had a great book for me to read. (It should surprise precisely no one that K and I have quite a bit in common. She is seven.) She brings me Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville. Then her mom says they read it every night before bed and even she was excited to see what happened next. It got rave reviews from the whole house so after I promised to take very good care of this book, K let me borrow it.

It was great! I remembered a lot of being a sixth grader while I was reading (my sixth grade year had, sadly, 100% less dragons than this book did though) and only a couple of times did I think “Wow, how’s that going to turn out?” and every time I thought that, whatever it was got neatly tied up at before the end.

I read the note from the author at the end, and he said he wanted to write a series of books about the magic shop he wished he had stumbled across when he was a kid. So far this is the only one of this series I’ve read, and I can easily see a book about at least two other characters in this book alone. Sadly, it was reported to me the other Magic Shop books aren’t as interesting, but since it didn’t take me very long to read this one, I think I’ll try my hand at one or two more and see how they are.

Now I have to return this book to K. I see why she was nervous about loaning it out, she was probably worried she wouldn’t get it back! So thank you very much K, and thank you to your mom for convincing me this was a book I would enjoy. I should have guessed you would be totally correct. (: