tony diterlizzi and holly black's the spiderwick chronicles (books 1 and 2)
um, ok. this series wants to be, like, lemony snicket meets edward eager (and/or e. nesbit). maybe it's because they're aimed at a slightly younger audience than either of those series, but i was really unimpressed. part of the problem is, like, nothing HAPPENS in these books. in the first one, one of the characters find a book about faeries! in the second, another is kidnapped by goblins! there's not much dramatic tension or character development or anything really. on the plus side, the illustrations are cute, and i can read one of these books in about 20-25 minutes. don't think i'm going to spend the hour reading the other three books in the series though; i'd rather reread edward eager.
(to be fair, jon raises the point that sometimes the books we love as children and still love as adults seem so good b/c of childhood nostalgia, etc, but i really think eager is a much better writer than these two--and of course, i didn't read the lemony snicket books as a kid, since they didn't exist then, and i really like that series a lot.)
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