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Full title: The Floppy Sleep Game Book: A Proven 4- Week Plan to Get Your Child to Sleep. Some elements of this book really worked for us - for example, my daughter is very engaged with stories, and so she loves the guided relaxations and the Dreamland mythology Teel creates (she was devastated to learn that Dreamland wasn't a place she could visit while awake). I would have liked more of the guided relaxations on the CD. But weirdly, she fought against the floppy sleep game itself - the game of stretching, tensing, and relaxing muscles that is the core element of this book. And Teel doesn't address this problem anywhere in the book (she addresses actual medical problems and things like autism, but not what to do if your healthy ordinary kid just literally will not do the program). Maybe we'll try again when she's older? I do feel like going through the process Teel outlines (setting up a new bedtime rhythm, different stories each night, etc.) has helped us get her to sleep more easily. I really admire the thoroughness of this book and the fact that every night for four weeks is outlined in detail. Highly recommended.
Aug. 3rd, 2016
What I found most interesting about this book was the preface describing how it was written and how Wrede revised it when it was reprinted. As a book, it's a perfectly fine fantasy novel of the 1980s; you can see Wrede striving to create a strong female character here. But other than the lead, the characters are a little hollow, and I didn't really feel the romance happening. It's Wrede's first novel, and I am grateful for it because it led to all the others that followed after.
I enjoyed this, but not as much as Wicked Lovely; the main plotline and the characters (other than Niall) just weren't as engaging to me. Also, there was a lot of violence. I'm ready to go back to Aislinn now even if she is kind of a goody-goody.
Wow, what a delight this was. It had been on my list for a while, so I grabbed it from the library without reading the description; the first couple pages were a little tedious, but then there's a dragon egg in the middle of the British Navy and I was hooked. The whole concept of "it's the Napoleonic Wars but with dragons" just feels so fresh to me, and I love that Novik stays absolutely within the world she creates while exploring it fully.
The star of the book is Temeraire himself, of course; Novik does a great job giving him his own voice. But it was also great to see Lawrence, who starts off stiff, come into his own as he falls into a new career and a new friendship that he loves.
The worst part was the book 2 teaser chapter at the end. The library cannot deliver it soon enough.
The star of the book is Temeraire himself, of course; Novik does a great job giving him his own voice. But it was also great to see Lawrence, who starts off stiff, come into his own as he falls into a new career and a new friendship that he loves.
The worst part was the book 2 teaser chapter at the end. The library cannot deliver it soon enough.
I'm of the generation for whom The Dark Crystal was a formative moment in development, a movie we watched again and again, and in that sense, it was so exciting to return to that world in this book and to learn more about gelfing culture. ( Read more... )I'm glad to see that this is the first in the series and will absolutely keep reading.