Review: Good and Bad
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 22, 2013
After reading this book, I'm still not sure whether I liked it or hated it overall.  I liked some parts and hated other parts.  It was better than the first book in some ways, but worse in different ways.The story was certainly entertaining, and kept me turning pages.  I really did want to know what happened next.  So, in that sense, the book is a success in its own right, and a worthy successor to book one.However,  this book is sold as a middle grade book, but I find it entirely inappropriate for the average middle grade kid.  It might be okay for those on the older end of the spectrum, depending on the individual's personality and such.  I would definitely not want MY kid reading this.(That is particularly sad, because the first book was well-suited for the middle grade reader.)The book begins well enough, with Flea and his foster mother now living in a new town.  If you read the first book, you know that much was expected.  To my pleasant surprise, Flea has finally found a bully-free zone.  His life is pretty good; he's even making friends.  Of course he misses the North Pole, but he's finally found a good school in the normal human world.  Not bad.Then, the book angered me for the first time.  For no apparent reason whatsoever, we sit in on one of Flea's science classes, where the teacher lectures the class about how we now know that global warming is false.  She claims this is "proven" and her reasoning seems to be that there is a freak snowstorm.  Aside from the terrible science of claiming that one freak snowstorm somehow "proves" anything at all, the thing that bothered me was that a SCIENCE TEACHER was spouting this nonsense to a class of children.  At first, though, I thought that this was obviously some major plot point - a stupid plot point, but clearly important.  I was wrong.  It isn't.  It is just some throwaway garbage.  We never revisit this concept again.  Nor do we ever go back to the teacher and somehow weave this into her as a person (which would make it a character point).  Now, you might suggest that putting this scene in helps play up the oddness of the weather and how people are struggling to understand it, but I don't think so.  It struck me as nothing more than a pitiful attempt at political brainwashing.  In fact, the scene was entirely gratuitous.(If any readers are reaching for a dictionary, gratuitous means unnecessary.)While I am on the subject of things that annoyed me, I have to mention that the grammar is terrible.  The author claims that this is a revised version where the grammar has been cleaned up.  If that is true, then I wince to imagine what the original must have looked like.  The most persistent and annoying grammar issue was the author's apparent hatred of "a" and "an" throughout the text.  He either drops the indefinite article completely, or replaces it with the definite article ("the").  This is especially annoying in wrongly-worded phrases like "all of the sudden" and "in the matter of minutes" (both phrases he overuses to the point where you could make a drinking game out of finding them).Also, another issue was stupid inconsistencies.  Is Scruffy a male or a female?  If you go by the pronouns, Scruffy must like getting gender changes often.  We also have name inconsistencies, where someone is doing something and then some other name will continue the action.  As a result, you are wondering whether the characters are randomly name swapping or whether you missed some crucial bit where two characters actually switched places or something.So, anyway, we get to the North Pole, and the book annoys me again.  Don't worry, I won't spoil any major plot points here.  So, Scruffy invites Flea to come visit the stable anytime.  Then, just a few short pages later, Flea is bored and has nothing to do because all his elf friends are hibernating.  So, you'd think he would pop in and visit Scruffy, right?  Nope.  He chooses to remain bored instead.  He also doesn't explore the rest of the North Pole village.  He has a reason for avoiding the Ice Bank (fear of what could happen to him if he gets too close), and of course he hasn't earned entrance to the Toy Factory yet, but the rest of the North Pole is wide open and much of it unexplored.  This is why Flea sits around with nothing to do for days.  But then, later, when things get busy (he's back in school and his elf friends are awake), THEN Flea decides to find some time to visit Scruffy.  Go figure.And, of course, we also invoke the maxim that Flea's questions must remain unanswered.  We're used to Niko refusing to answer Flea's questions; we all know he never has time for anything but expounding on how he doesn't have time for anything.  But, when Flea confronts Santa with a direct question, you'd think a simple "yes" or "no" would be in Santa's capabilities.  (A "maybe" or "I don't know" might have sufficed, if that were actually the answer.)Fair warning: the ending is grisly.  Many readers will be very upset by it, especially the younger ones.I also believe that many younger ones will be very upset about how the author handles Rudolph.  In fact, I'm older, and I was, well, let's just say not pleased.Some of the smarter younger ones will pick up on the fact that Santa is a liar, too.  I don't think you can do anything worse to the Christmas legends than turn Santa into a bald-faced liar.  It's subtle and most kids probably won't realize it, but there will be those that do.  I imagine most young kids won't appreciate it.On the plus side, this book does a better job of explaining the motivations of the secondary characters than the first book did.  I spent less time shaking my head and wondering why someone would do this or that thing.  This area could still use some improvement, but it is leaps and bounds better than the first book.This author's ability to keep me hooked and turning pages despite not really liking many of the places we were going on the journey is truly remarkable.  I have to give him kudos for his storytelling talent.  I can find no fault with his execution.The problems all lie within the content itself.There is currently a fad for twisting classic and traditional tales and icons.  This book caters nicely to that crowd.  Unfortunately, that fad is primarily an adult phenomenon, and this is marketed as a middle grade book.  As I said at the beginning, I think this book is not appropriate for a middle grade audience.