I received a promotional packet from Ripley’s Entertainment Inc which included book covers, the first book in the RBI series, and information about the books in the series. I was quite impressed by it. The packet informed me: “We have heard from many librarians and educators that Ripley’s should publish a series for younger children especially aimed to boys and reluctant readers. From this suggestion we are happy to present the RBI series.”

I really like the idea behind this series. Books for children and young adults that tells a story while at the same time incorporating some non-fiction into the mix as a group of teens from the RBI work to solve a mystery. Peppered throughout the pages are facts about aspects of the story in sidebar and plenty of illustrations to help kids imagine the action. I think this series is well-designed and thought out. It interests kids who like non-fiction and fiction, it appeals to young kids with the illustrations and older kids with the modern feel of technology and gadgets the teens in the RBI use which are pictured throughout the book. There are trading cards included in the book not just for characters, but for some of the facts (or fiction) found in the story. The characters are multicultural and a good mix of character types. And while the focus may have been boys and reluctant readers, I think this series will appeal to any kid in its age demographic.

The covers are slick and colorful — certainly eye-catching. The books aren’t too long so as to turn off reluctant readers by its size. And they’re affordable at $5.00 each. And I believe that books are some of the best gifts you can give. Especially when they’re interactive and fun like these.

I enjoy reading books that take a well-known story and twist it into something new, such as Gregory Maguire does for the land of Oz in Wicked and Son of A Witch. Which is why I’ve started reading Frank Beddor’s series of books based on the stories of Wonderland, from Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland. While Maguire’s books are targeted for adults, Beddor’s books are classified by my public library as being books for the juvenile audience. Although, with the violence and death in it so far, I’d say these books are almost better suited for the young adult  and adult audiences.

Beddor’s Wonderland is not the light and airy world we remember from Disney’s adaptation of the book. It does start out that way, when the world is ruled by Queen Genevieve of the Heart family. Her Queendom is one of singing flowers and beautiful, shining cities. It is a land of imagination, where those who are inventive are able to create things out of nothing, just by using their thoughts and the power of the Heart Crystal. It is said that ideas that pass through the Heart Crystal are beamed out into space where they will reappear in similar forms in other worlds. It is a wondrous world, ruled fairly and kindly by Genevieve. But it’s also a world on the cusp of a war with Genevieve’s sister, Redd. Redd is gathering her card soldiers and inventing new weapons and tactics as she plans her takeover of Wonderland. Redd was once the heir to the Queendom, but when it became apparent she preferred to practice Black Imagination instead of White, she was exiled by her parents, and Genevieve was chosen as the next queen. Redd has never forgiven her family for the exile, and, together with her assassin, the Cat, she orchestrates a brutal attack that leaves Genevieve and her husband, King Nolan, dead. It would also leave her neice, the 8 year old Princess Alyss, orphaned and forced to escape Wonderland through the Pool of Tears, a lake into which no one who goes in ever comes out.

You’d be correct to assume that Alyss is the Alice in Wonderland character. In this version, she’s a princess and the next in line to take the throne, although with Redd’s coup d’etat and Alyss entering the Pool of Tears, that future seems very unlikely. Alyss’s entry into the Pool of Tears takes her to Earth, and Oxford, England in particular. Her bodyguard, Hatter Madigan, was sent with her by her dying mother’s last request, but they are separated in mid-transfer, and he ends up in Paris. On her own in a strange land with not nearly as much imagination as Wonderland, Alyss is forced to live as a street orphan, performing tricks of imagination to earn pennies in the street. She is caught one day and put into an orphanage where she is adopted by the Liddel family, and raised as Alice. Her stories about Wonderland are hushed by her adoptive parents, pushed down as silly imaginings, until she meets a friend of the family who takes an interest in her story. The Reverend Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carrol, listens to her stories and asks Alice if he may publish them into a novel. Alice agrees, hoping the book will open others’ eyes and help her find a way back to Wonderland. Instead, the Reverend turns her stories into a childish fantasy, and Alice is heartbroken. It seems Wonderland is lost to her forever.

Having given up hope, Alice tries to convince herself that she did imagine Wonderland, and that perhaps there was no such place. She lives in England for the next 12 years as the obedient Alice Liddel, and even finds herself engaged to marry a true prince. It is at her wedding day that unexpected visitors arrive and bring her back through the Pool of Tears to Wonderland, where she leads a new rebel army, the Alyssians, in a raid against the tyrant Redd, who, in Alice’s absence, has turned Wonderland into a dismal and bleak world of Black Imagination. Together with the Alyssians, the returned Alyss faces her Aunt Redd and the assassin Cat in a battle for the throne.

I enjoyed this novel. I thought it was fun, and an interesting take on the Wonderland stories. I don’t much like the cover of the book very much — it is quite boring in comparison to the sequels that follow. I’m looking forward to the rest of the novels in the series, including Seeing Redd (which I am reading now) and Arch Enemy. I hear that Frank Beddor, who also happens to make movies (he produced There’s Something About Mary), is in the process of turning these novels into screenplays. I think they’d make great movies. I’m also looking forward to seeing the new Alice in Wonderland movie slated for release in early 2010, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Like this novel, it has a dark feel to it, which I think works so well for Wonderland lore. And, also related to that dark feeling, I recall playing a videogame called American McGee’s Alice, which was wonderfully sad and creepy, and had an accompanying soundtrack with equally sad and creepy (but fun!) music. Check them out, and visit Frank Beddor’s Wonderland site for some fun interaction with the books. (more…)

Thirteen-year-old Mary and her eight-year-old brother Peter are the only survivors of a plane crash in the middle of the Australian desert. They should stay near the plane and wait for someone to come find them, but it’s hot and there’s no food or water nearby and they do not know how long it will be until someone comes for them. Instead, they decide they will walk towards Adelaide and search for food and water as they go. Along the way, they meet with a young Aboriginal boy on a solo trek of his own across the desert. For the Aboriginal boy, the trek is a rite of passage — to survive is a testimony of his manhood to his tribe.

Peter recognizes that the Aboriginal boy is their only hope of survival, but Mary is wary of the naked, dark-skinned boy. She has been raised in a society where people wear clothes and treat each other differently, and she is not used to the way the Aboriginal boy looks so curiously at her. She is cautious around him, careful to keep her distance and watch out for her brother. The Aboriginal thinks the children are odd, with their strange clothes and pale skin and hair. They speak a different language and come from a world he can’t even begin to imagine, but he recognizes that they are the same as him in one critical way — they are all trying to escape death out in the harsh desert. These strange children need his help, so the Aboriginal boy decides he will help them cross the desert, at least to the valley of waters underneath the earth where there is no shortage of food or water to aid them the rest of their way.

A story of survival and death, this is a well-written novel that puts the reader in the middle of the Australian desert with its beautiful description of the land, the vegetation and the wildlife. I enjoyed it.

Ben is a young college student just a few semesters away from graduating and becoming a geologist. He agrees to work as a guide and take a businessman and hobby hunter named Madec out into the desert near his hometown to hunt the elusive bighorn sheep. Though Ben doesn’t agree with Madec’s desire to shoot the bighorns, which are slowly dwindling in numbers, he is a poor man with no family and he needs to earn money to continue his studies.

The two men set out on a week-long hunting trip, and when Madec sees a movement off in the distance through the barrel of his .358 Magnum rifle and shoots, he tells Ben he saw the antlers of the bighorn before he made the shot. They go towards the sheep to collect it and bring it home, only to discover that it was no sheep Madec shot: it was an old prospector, shot dead straight through the chest by Madec’s rifle.

Ben says he knows it was an accident and that the authorities will understand, but Madec doesn’t want to take any chances with the law and tries to work out a deal with Ben: he’ll pay for the rest of his schooling if they just bury the body and tell no one about the accident. But Ben refuses and insists on doing what is right. As he turns towards the Jeep to get a blanket to bundle the body in, Madec takes Ben’s Hornet rifle away from him. Then, with both guns in hand, Madec gives Ben two choices: he can shoot him dead now, or Ben can take all his clothes and his shoes off and try to make it out of the desert with no food or water. Either way, Madec knows Ben will die, but if Ben takes the second choice, Madec will get the sadistic pleasure of spending the next few days hunting Ben through the desert, making sure he has no chance of making it out alive.

Ben’s survival instincts set in and he takes choice number two. He flees from Madec with nothing but his undershorts to protect him from the scorching sun. Over the next few days, Madec follows Ben as he tries desperately to escape him and find water to survive the trek across the desert. But nothing seems to go Ben’s way — any time he gets too close to anything that could help him, Madec drives him away from it with a spray of bullets aimed near his feet. What follows is a thrilling survival tale as Ben desperately attempts to save himself while dehydration and the sun and rocky desert strip his body apart — all while Madec watches him dying a slow, painful death.

This book was absolutely riveting and suspenseful — there is not much dialog, but full of raw and often-cringing description of Ben’s painful fight to survive his mad hunter and the elements that seem to work against him every step of the way. An adventure about one boy’s sheer courage and determination to survive even against a sadistic and calculating man bent on destroying him to save his own reputation. A fantastic, quick read.