Suburban (in)Sanity

Book Review - Infinity Ring Book 1: A Mutiny in Time by James Dashner

I've been reading a ton in advance of the kids' fall book fair (which they do through the awesome independent bookstore Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, IL.) It's so much better to be able to hand a kid a book I've read and be able to say "You liked 39 Clues. This book is pretty similar but has *time travel*!" which is what this review is about. I'm trying to keep my Goodreads account as current as I can so feel free to friend me or follow me over there if you want the absolute latest.

Infinity Ring Book 1: A Mutiny in Time is a quick read about kids in a alternate future history world where the Americas were discovered by two brothers, not Christopher Columbus.

Dak and Sera are best friends and 12 when the story opens. Dak's into history, Sera's a science geek. These interests prove helpful when the two become embroiled in an international time-traveling scheme to reset historical "breaks" where history went wrong.

In the vein of 39 Clues (even comes with some trading cards packed into the cover.) Looks to be a fun new series for middle-grade readers.

I found some of the characterization overly simplistic, little view into the main character's motivations aside from what is obviously stated/required due to the events of the plot, and some cardboard cutouts holding places for what will hopefully be more interesting characters in future books. A good quick read for kids looking for action-based middle grade. 

Your parenting tip for the day: Bookmarks for the kids

Parenting Tip: Create a folder of Bookmarks for each child

My kids love playing on the computer. I'm on the computer a lot during the day while they're in school and I often come across a site or activity that I think they would enjoy.

After a few too many "browsers of doom" where I had 12, 15 open tabs just waiting to show the kids, I started a bookmark folder for each kid. This way I can put bookmarks in for pages I think they might be interested in and then *close the webpage.* This has done wonders for my digital sanity, though I still have a digital hygeine problem as explained below.

My own bookmarks are ridiculous, I don't keep anything in there, at least not anymore in the tangle of sites I originally bookmarked in 2003. It's the curse of a visual-spatial person, I can't ever find the things I want no matter how carefully I try to create folder structures and organizational schemes. I swear my digital organization is worse than my physical organization, and that's saying something!

However, for my kids I can manage a reasonable number of bookmarks. Right? (Right??!)

Some of the tidbits in there right now:

Liam's folder:

• Crowdsourcing space exploration tool called Zooniverse that I want to be a part of, too!
• Legends of Druidawn interactive creative writing game (click the link at the very bottom of the page to see the genesis of this site - creative writing solutions it says.)
• A site to convert text to multimedia, like the bunny/mouse characters speaking in tinny computerized voices reading scripts that people wrote....whatever that one is called. Note to self, this would be great to use in Media and Design classes...
• The requisite Lego recreation of something totally AWESOME, this one is Middle Earth.

Anastasia's folder:

• Tree of Life web project - collection of information about biodiversity compiled by amatuers and experts alike.
• How to make friendship bracelets (I'm totally in the clear on the website name since she thinks WTF stands for Why the Face?)
• A music video of an 8 year old girl singing a hardcore (punk rock) song. She's always making videos herself and I think needs a little inspiration, since the script is often the limiting factor.
• A make your own snowflake picture (online) site. Love this.

So I challenge you to go forth and make a folder for each of your children and drop in fun tidbits and cool sites that they might like. Also a good place to put book recommendations, particularly if you're parenting a tween who might not want to actually ASK you for ideas. (P.S., if you don't know this about me already, know that I can talk your ear off with recommendations for books for kids ages 8-18. Please ask! Give me an excuse to talk your ear off!)

Come back and report on the great sites you found! Perhaps one day we'll do this all in pinterest... ;)

Psst....did you know I wrote a novel?

Well, actually I've written several. Four at last count, though the 30+k words sitting on my computer at the moment are giving me the stink-eye. They're not a FINISHED novel yet. (Adrift, the hairy-eyed work-in-progress, is probably going to land right around 50k when complete and is a middle-grade science fiction story set on a family space ship that gets taken over by pirates.)

But THIS one, Convergence by Karen T. Smith, this is my pride and joy, my first ever novel. I wrote it in 2007 for National Novel Writing Month (which takes place in November of every year and I can't recommend highly enough.)

I finished November of 2007 with Convergence in first draft form at about 55k words and I honestly was sure I could do *anything.* The thrill of finishing a book is unmatched, in my opinion. It took me an awful long time to finish finish it, as the first draft was on the rough side to say the least (first novel! most people hide their first novels from the entire world. I beat mine into submission instead.) And then I did try the standard NY submission process for quite some time. And then...you know what? It's a changing world in publishing today. I decided to independently publish this book and other forthcoming titles (including Adrift, perhaps sooner than later, depends on how enthused I get about edits to A Star to Lead Me, which is my planned next release...)

This is a very exciting time to be a writer, and a very exciting time to be me simply because I'm really fascinated with the whole process - dreaming up book ideas, writing books, submitting to NY, submitting to agents (something a lot of people do but I long ago decided I didn't want to go that route), formatting for ebook peculiarities, doing covers, writing blurbs, figuring out marketing and promotion (er, scheduling time to write the blog posts...) and on it goes. It's a fascinating time!

At any rate, check out my announcement over on my author blog, and if you've read the book, let me know what you thought! (and if you have a moment, could you please write a review? Reviews help sell books, it's just the way of it.)

Thanks so much for letting me share my excitement with you.

Book Review - Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

This book surprised me. It came up on a bunch of "people who read X read Ship Breaker" lists and I started tracking it around. When I read the acknowledgements and learned that Paolo Bacigalupi is friendly with other MG and YA writers I adore (Sarah Prineas, Greg van Eekhout), it started to click. But beyond the fact that this writer knows others I like, this book is just flat out excellent.

This is the story of Nailer, a light crew member, teen boy living on the gulf coast in a post-apocalyptic world of brutality, riding from one storm to the next. His father is unbelievably cruel, his life full of work breaking down big old ships on the coast, hoping to find a "Lucky Strike." When he and his friend discover a small yacht wrecked after a storm, they've hit the bigtime, until they find a girl hurt inside. The process of figuring out what to do about the girl, avoiding his brutal father, and eventually leaving his gulf community is the meat of this fast-paced story.

For parents, the story includes quite a lot of violence, adults against each other, adults against children. The characters pull through for the most part. There is also some youth drinking, which helps illustrate how foreign a world these kids live in, even while we can envision it from trips to Florida. I would suggest it's best suited for kids old enough to handle these mature themes, which to me is 13ish and up, 7th gradeish and up. Depends on the reader. The violence and drinking are not any worse than that portrayed in Hunger Games (though the kids partake of the firewater in this book.)

The way this book surprised me is that I'm generally a little sick of YA dystopias. I'm a super-fan of science fiction and a writer of YA/MG sci-fi myself, and get tired of the bleak and dark future portrayed in so many. While this book does paint a pretty desperate picture of the future, the spirit of the characters carried me up and out of that bleakness. I really enjoyed this book.

I enjoyed the pacing, I enjoyed the way Nailer had a plucky spirit that made me root for him from the very first moment. I enjoyed the richly painted future world that was similar but oh-so different from our current world. I found the book immensely compelling, very hard to put down. I hope you will, too.

Book Review - The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander books 1&3

I'm in the process of considering a move from Shelfari to Goodreads, and decided to look at some of my book reviews on Shelfari (one of many reasons I'm only *considering* the move, since I would hate to lose all that intel!)

In doing so, though, I realized I had reviewed two of the Prydain books by Lloyd Alexander. These are books I often recommend to other readers and other parents of voracious readers, so I thought these might be of help. I only reviewed the first and third in the series, but each book is excellent in its own right. We listened to the five on audio book and really enjoyed them, we can't recommend them enough.

The Book of Three:

The story of the assistant pig-keeper and how he goes off on an adventure and learns much about his land and himself in the process. There's an excellent sidekick-type of character, a girl he meets about 1/3 of the way through. Her voice and quips lend a richness to the story, and much comic relief. My kids (ages 6 & 8) absolutely loved this story, which surprised me. We listened to it on audio, and it was read by a very talented british voice actor, which made it even better. Highly recommend.

The Castle of Lyr:

Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles have been a wonderful source of audio entertainment for my family. We particularly love the audio recordings of these books, as the voice talent is exceptional. Gurgey is our favorite head - a creature of indeterminate origins, Gurgey often speaks of "my poor tender head" and is known for semi-alliterative phrases like "crunchings and munchings" that are very funny.

 

In this third book of the Prydain series, the princess Alanwe (by the way, only long long after we read this book did I learn that it's spelled Eilonwe - ah, well, this is one of those risks of listening to books rather than reading them in print. And I am one of those lazy people that is not going to go fix it all...) is going to another castle to learn to be a lady. Taryn and Gurgey accompany her, and meet up with the Prince of that castle - a flighty nimwit named Ruun. Before long, there is interest and intrigue when Alanwe goes missing, in the company of the ambitious chief steward, Maag. Taryn and friends join the search, with Taryn agreeing to protect Prince Ruun for the king.

 

They encounter tangles and mishaps, and everyone's character is tested.  

 

The real value in these books is in the way the characters are each so unique, yet also so distinct. It is pretty easy, even without the benefit of the added dialects and inflections that the voice talent on the audio cds provides, to tell who is talking just by the kinds of things they say. They each have a way of speaking and a way of getting their points across that is hard to miss.

 

The kids find the different charcter's voices engaging, and the action and battle scenes (very mild battle, adequate action to keep an 8 year old boy entertained) hold their interest throughout the whole book.

 

I find these stories a little slow moving at times, but the unique characterizations and fun little magical details or lore of the land to be really interesting. Very much worth it, and if you can get it - do the audio book!

Book Review - The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout

Because the Internet is Awesome™ (more on this later) I have had a chance to read an Advanced Reader Copy of the forthcoming MG sci-fi novel The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout.

 

The middle-grade age range has very little science fiction published in it, I get frustrated at the lack of space and robots and stories about the future that are particularly geared toward middle-grade readers, as I happen to have two sharing my home at the moment. I also am weary of the very dark and depressing dystopias that occupy the YA space and pass for science fiction. While I loved Hunger Games as much as the next person, it's not something I'm comfortable reading with my soon-to-be-fifth and second graders. Too much.

So I'm here to tell you that while Boy (I am also growing weary of typing the whole title out, so you're just going to have to cope with a shorthand...) is a future dystopia, it's also a really interesting and active book, great for middle-grade readers, a special appeal to boys.

This is the story of Fisher, who wakes up in an "ark" that he has only cursory knowledge of (he has cursory knowledge of many things.) Click the robot assists him in escaping, as the ark is under attack. Fisher is a boy, and knows some things but not others. He's been pre-loaded with the Fisher profile, so his specialized knowledge runs deep in the fishing arena, but not much else. But he's a plucky kid, very determined, and he has a large vocabulary of curse words (referenced obliquely like that, in a way that's very funny) that he can use when things get tough. He sets off to get away from the ark, since it's under attack and all. Click the robot follows, trying to keep Fisher safe as he has been programmed to do. Before long they find a mastadon (a small mammoth/elephant like thing) that Fisher nicknames Protein. Protein accompanies them on their travels, never saying a word but having an impact on the action here and there. Fisher figures if things get desperate enough, he can always kill Protein and eat him (hence the nickname.)

We follow Fisher as he and his ragtag band walk across a post-apocalyptic United States seeking other surviving humans living in other arks. Along the way they encounter all kinds of challenges and Fisher has to use not just the knowledge and information he was "pre-loaded" with (according to Click the robot) but also the new skills he develops during the journey. He befriends a sentient prairie dog, Zapper, who is critical to the final conflict.

I'll leave the details of the plot off to avoid spoilers, but a few points about the book for potential readers. This is a great book for boys, but would be appealing to girls as well. It's aimed at middle-grade readers. My fourth grader read it in almost one sitting (before bed one night and after waking the next morning.) It clocks in at 210 pages, thus does not feel particularly intimidating for those reluctant readers. The action keeps the story moving, another plus for boy and/or reluctant readers.

As an adult, I appreciated the way the story provided all kinds of instruction about environment, survival skills, etc. as incidental to the storyline. Fisher tries to set traps to catch small game, for instance, and has to figure out how to travel (by foot for the most part, traversing huge swaths of the former US in the process.) Some kids might realize they're being taught in the course of reading, but the instruction is well buried in the narrative, I think it works well for the story. The story ends tidily (some sadness) - but there is a final chapter that easily leaves the door open for a sequel, which I hope Greg van Eekhout pursues!

In short, I highly recommend this middle grade science fiction novel, particularly for boys. The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout, due out June 21st!

 

P.S. The Internet is Awesome™ because I got this ARC by being friends with another author whose work I love, Sarah Prineas, author of the Magic Thief book series. We've never met in person, love that internet thing and all my imaginary friends therein.

 

Writing with my kids

So I've been doing a lot of non-writing lately. Or, more accurately, writing for purposes other than other's enjoyment, as that's the only way I can think of accurately describing a Needs Assessment document or a Benefit Communication Piece. I mean, I'm sure the people reading the needs assessments and benefit communications feel very...entertained in some way or another, but those venues are not typically accessing the creative part of my brain, thus I don't think of them as "writing" exactly.

Think this will be them at their own book signing in a few years?

So I've been missing writing, and thus I've been thinking to myself that I need to come up with a good idea for another book and just WRITE. 

This is the part where other writers will laugh, because making the decision to just WRITE and actually, you know, doing some writing, are quite separate things.

Nonetheless, tonight I was lamenting this need to the family and the children offered to help me think of things to write. Normally this makes me twitchy, as their ideas aren't always in line with the direction I'm heading with a piece, but since I had literally no idea what to write when we began this exercise, I didn't figure it would hurt to just play around. And bonus - I have an iPad now, I whipped it out and turned on the note-taking app I like (Penultimate, for the record. I use a boxwave brand capacitive pen, too. Makes it easier than just writing with a finger.)

And I had low expectations, because after all, the kids are only 9 and 7, it was getting long on Sunday evening, and all that. 

Silly me.

Kids fed me the greatest story idea in ages. It started with the 9 year old's offhand comment, "How about kids caught in a war zone?"

And, since I write mostly space-based science-fiction, I replied "oooh, good idea! In space."

He was all for that, being the big Star Wars fan that he is. And then the 7 year old piped up with her ideas. And we were off. 

Since this is a story I fully expect to epublish myself at some point in the future, I've decided that I'm going to blog about the process, about what ideas the kids contribute, what I've learned through the process, and what they'll be learning about writing, too. For starters, my daughter learned that being bossy about brainstorming isn't the right attitude to have. I'm still not sure I quite made an impression on her with that lesson, but it's an important one. She was taking the "you gave the last three ideas, now this section gets to be mine with only MY ideas" stance with her brother, which makes a bit of sense if fairness is your only guide. But in brainstorming, all ideas need to get some air-time, and some will bubble up and be worked into the storyline, some will be combined with others and worked into something new, and some will just fall by the wayside. It's the nature of brainstorming, but there's not a lot of fairness in brainstorming, other than every idea is considered for its own merit. 

We'll see if that lesson sticks in future brainstorming sessions. 

I'll post next about what our preliminary ideas on storyline are, the names of the characters, and some of the key conflicts. I haven't been this excited about a story in a *long* time, so at this point the biggest challenge will be keeping me from starting to write until we've done just a bit more planning so that this story doesn't suffer from the "boggy middle" and "lackluster climax" problems of some of my more recent stories.

On being a Mom and a Writer

I originally wrote this for a writer's board I participate on, but it relates so well to what I talk about on this blog that I wanted to share it here, too. The context is that another writer was complaining that she is limited in her reach right not because she's a mom. This is my reply:

I want to give a little working/writing/mom love. Being a mom is a really important job. The kids really benefit from all we do. When they are small it can be very brain-sucking work (just how many times do I have to tell Junior here that hitting his baby sister with Thomas the Tank Engine is Not Appropriate Behavior In Our House?) But on the flip side, there is IMMENSE creativity required in parenting, as any mother who has escaped the grocery store without buying the entire contents of the candy traps at the checkout desk can attest to. "How many green things can you count? Show me your toes. Show me your nose! What's that letter? What should we have for dinner? Let's sing Wheels on the Bus!" -- and now those of you who don't have children might better understand the slightly insane glint in our eyes as we exit the grocery store parking lot...

Immense creativity. I'm 100% convinced it has helped me be a better writer.

The most stunningly awesome amazing unbelievable thing that has happened? Context: I decided to start writing as a New Years Resolution in 2007 when my youngest was just 3. My now 7 year old writes the most amazing stories, they are *unreal.* She is publishable at age 7 and you just have to believe me that I'm not being overly dramatic. (The 9 year old is also interested in writing but hasn't yet mastered the ability to move the pictures from behind his forehead to the page. He's getting there.)

I haven't done anything specific with the 7 year old to develop this skill, other than immersing our family in the world of stories. We read stories constantly, we listen to audio books, we tell each other stories, she reads my stories, she is so entrenched in the world of storytelling that she naturally tells beautiful stories in her 1st grade assignments. It's honestly astonishing. And when she fills in the little worksheets to tell her classmates about her family, you know what she puts by my name, even though I actually make my career elsewhere?

Author. 

So don't for a minute doubt the time you're investing in your children while they are young. It is worth it, and there is time yet. And your creativity is sparked every day. And before long you find yourself writing the stories your children are begging you to write, because they're your biggest fans and you want to please them.

My reading round-up, YA and Middle-Grade sci-fi and fantasy

I had put some thoughts together about what I've been reading lately for another board and thought I would share them here, too.

But first, I'm curious - does anyone else use Shelfari to track their reading? I like to track what I read, and have used Shelfari in the past, but my account is out of date at the moment while I consider several things.

Many readers I know use Goodreads. Anyone have any comment on the difference between them or an opinion over which is better? In parallel, I'm contemplating a move of this blog over to the wordpress blog I've stubbed out, you know, change of scenery and all. They do not appear to have a way to connect a Shelfari widget, which is one of the reasons I've stalled. Would appreciate any thoughts on goodreads vs. shelfari or if there's something else better out there. I've seen some people using a facebook widget, but I want something I can integrate on a blog.

Okay, here's the goods. In the interests of time and because I bought them from Barnes and Noble for my Nook, I'll include links there (I read most of these in ebook format) - but you know how it goes, you can get most at your local library, from Amazon, or better yet - your local bookseller. I hear Anderson's Booksellers in Naperville sells some ebooks, too. This represents, FYI, about 2 months of my reading.

I've been on a Diana Wynne Jones streak lately, and absolutely adore her books, every one of them, for the way she plays with magic, makes fun characters, and tells not big grand earth-shattering end-all battles between good and evil, but just nice stories with interesting magic.

The ones I've recently read include all of the books in the Chrestomanci series (In order, they go: A Charmed Life, The Magicians of Caprona, Witch Week, The Lives of Christopher Chant), plus a short story collection featuring the same characters (called Mixed Magics), and The Pinhoe Egg, which is set in the same universe and features the main character Eric Chant from the first Chrestomanci book (the characters overlap some throughout all four or five of those books.)

We also did the audio book of The House of Many Ways, very enjoyable voice talent, and audio of Enchanted Glass (library loans). My primary caution with her books, particularly evident in audio, is that they tend to be slow burns. They're not going to grab you by the throat, but they're lovely stories told in interesting ways with interesting magic and compelling characters. Just be patient with them and give them some time to warm up. If you can only spare time to read just one, read Howl's Moving Castle, which was not available in ebook form but is an astonishingly good book.

Next was I am Number Four, which is coming out in a movie soonish. It's an interesting sci-fi story. There's some online discussion/controversy about the book as it's written by someone then marketed through what some are calling a "scheme" - another author selling rights and supposedly paying the original author pennies. I have no idea, but it's a YA sci-fi and there's precious little of that so I read it. Nice story. Enough tension and interesting features, not too crazy on the action end. Reminded me of The Warrior Heir, but I liked the writing a little better in this book. We've started seeing trailers for the movie (main actor is the same one who played Alex Ryder in Stormbreaker) on TV so the 9 year old has asked to read it now. It's themes and content aren't too advanced, though there's a bit of kids drinking beer once and loads of kissing, but that's within our tolerances so I'm queing it up for him for his next read.

I read Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer, which is a future dystopia about the moon being hit by an asteroid and coming closer in orbit to the earth, and the massive catastrophes that result. Very interesting story, told 100% first person journal-entry style. I loved the style, and enjoyed the story. It was a much smaller story than I figured, I kept expecting some big grand event to take place, but really it's also a small, close story about a teen and her family and how they survive in crazy circumstances. It's also YA Sci-fi. I recommend this one, but warning that the story is a bit of a downer, I found it tiring to read after a bit and am glad to have moved on, mostly just because it seemed so *real.* I suppose that's a sign of the writer's skill, eh? There are other books out in the series but I'll take a break before (if) reading them. Because it's a bit of a downer and there's a small section where the mom accuses the daughter of sleeping with someone and they throw around the term "make love" about a hundred times on one page, I'd recommend holding off for most non-teens.

I just finished The Comet's Curse by Dom Tesla, a radio personality in Colorado. It's a YA sci-fi, set on an "escape ship" leaving earth after a catastrophe (by this point I'm starting to wonder if there are ANY YA sci-fi books that aren't categorized as post-apocalyptic or disaster or dystopias. Sigh) has caused everyone on earth to be afflicted by a horrible disease that will kill them after age 18. So a crew of 251 15 and 16 year olds are sent into space to escape the disease and recolonize another planet. This is the first in a series.

I didn't love the storytelling style (interleaved narrative with present-day and flashbacks, quite a lot of "telling" to the audience. It felt like it was written in a style appropriate for a younger reader, telling us things that we could intuit from the text just fine. I think it's just the writer's style, though, as the choice of 15 and 16 year old protagonists puts it smack in the center of the YA genre.) Story was just so-so. I don't highly recommend it, but I'm glad I read it because I am certain my stories are at least as good as this one! As for reading level/age - while the story features older protagonists, I think this is a fine book for younger readers because the content is kept clean (a few crushes/what-does-she-think-of-me kinds of things but that's it.) The storytelling style might also work well for a younger reader (thinking 9-13, plus those in the 14+ YA age range, of course.)

I'm now just starting to read Shipbreaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi, which is up for some awards this year. It's another future dystopia (le sigh) set in coastal Florida where the main character is a boy who helps break down huge old rusty oil tankers to get their parts. The storytelling is EXCELLENT and is a fantastic study in how to communicate a lot about an unusual environment/different world via basic dialogue and narration, without resorting to blocks of exposition. He also uses a lot of slang and unusual terms, which makes it challenging to read but also interesting to see how the terms are introduced and how you can figure out what is meant by them.

So far I'm really impressed, but not far enough to say more than that. I think the writing is fantastic, though, so I'm glad even though it's another intense dark seemingly depressing future story. I'm about halfway through and the story gets pretty brutal, the main character's father is a problem, drug abuse is common, and even the kids pass around a bottle of alcohol one night and talk about hangovers. The whole story has you wondering whether the main character will survive the day, much less what will happen next. It's very compelling to read. Reminds me a lot of Hunger Games, but in a way it's even more brutal because this world that the main character lives in sounds like it could happen to us, given a little less luck with the environment and more global aggregation. Because of the slang, the drug and alcohol mentions (and some passing veiled references to prostitution) - I'd stick this with YA readers only, but your mileage may vary. In any event, it's a fantastic read and I'm finding myself coming up with all kinds of excuses to go read. Like now. Time to finish this blog post so I can finish the book, enjoy!

Harry Potter 7 Part 1 - Review

3 minutes, 30 seconds. That's how long I lasted in watching Harry Potter 7 Part 1 before crying. I was crying again at 22 minutes, and again at the 34 minute mark.

First, a note on spoilers. I have to assume if you're reading this post you either haven't read the books and don't care (or you would have read them by now for crying out loud) or are seeking information about the movies. If what I say next surprises you in any way or diminishes your enjoyment of the movie because it's a spoiler, well freaking leave this post til you've seen the movie and then come back! Okay? I don't want to be twitchy about not spoiling it for anyone. This is the seventh movie of the most popular book series ever (at least in my opinion) - if you don't know what's going to happen and are going to get upset about finding it out...read this later!

Okay, now that that's sorted...

One more administrative point because someone is sure to ask -- the reason we got to see the movie tonight was we were invited to attend as guests at a corporate event. Friend of a friend kind of thing. No, there weren't extra tickets, sorry.

The 22 minute mark was Hedwig. Oh, Hedwig. :( 

The three and a half minute mark was something that isn't dramatized in the book at all, but was done beautifully. It's Hermione, obliviating her parents. Tears just slipped out as I watched her face, and then the blankness on the actors' faces, and as the pictures of her throughout the room fade away.

I cried again at about the 34 minute mark (by now I'm just guessing, because I didn't write it all down...) when the death eaters have caught up with Ron, Harry, and Hermione at the coffee shop in London, and the three decide to erase the memories of the bad guys (after some debate.) The look on Hermione's face as she casts the obliviate spell. 

Ah, this is what we watch these movies for. Torturing ourselves with the growth, the pain, the knowledge of what that one spell means for her, what she's had to give up, what they've all had to give up, what's at stake. 

Over and over, the movie rewarded me, an ardent fan whose read the books each twice, and books 1-6 somewhere north of four or five times each. The movie rewarded me with knowing more than just what was on the screen, knowing why these things mattered, how much they mattered. 

It made it so that when Bellatrix threw the knife as Dobby house-elf-disapparated the crew and there was a swirl of indistinct color, I was crying already because I knew what had happened. 

Yes, I cried on and off the whole movie. I cried when Hedwig died, when Ron's dad and George embraced upon returning to the Burrow early-on, having successfully evaded the death eaters, when we saw a replay of Dumbledore's falling scene from movie 6, when Hermione, with hands bloody after Ron was splinched in one of their narrow escapes, stands up to set the protective spells, when Ron left, when Cedric died. Oh, scratch that last - different movie. But even bringing up the memory makes me tear up a little. Cedric before he was Edward. The book makes me cry there, too.

How was the movie? This is a hard question to answer. I was engrossed, the whole time. I was extremely annoyed when I discovered I needed to pee about 40 minutes in (how many crying episodes did I miss with that four minute potty break?) I can't stop thinking about Hermione obliviating her parents. I love it when the filmmakers surprise me like that. It's on par with the scene with Slughorn in movie 6 where he tells the story about the fish that Lily gave him that just poofed one day (the day she died.) 

The movie was wonderful. It was tremendously sad. There was a lot of action. There were some really funny bits (as is typical, Fred and George get most of the best parts.) 

It was just over 2 hours. They didn't bloat it with a ton of exposition, in fact there were times where the camera lingered on one of the main character's faces and we were left to fill in the massive blanks based on our knowledge of the books. I think the movies are still probably enjoyable for people who haven't read the books, but more as a visual feast than as a storyline that makes sense. But I think it's great that the filmmakers did something that I as a writer find so incredibly hard to do - they Resisted the Urge to Explain. It's worth studying how they did pack so much content (and even with so much content there's so much that's not dramatized, the bust of Rowena Ravenclaw is in Lovegood's house but nobody notices nor makes any connection to it, for example.) into just two hours and a bit (two twenty I think?)

What's missing? What's in the book but not on film? Well, part of George (Fred?)'s ear, for starters. He gets a torn ear, but it's not missing the way the book depicts. The scene with the Dursleys at the beginning is incredibly short, and Dudley doesn't get to tell Harry he doesn't think he's a waste of space. 

Hogwarts is completely missing, though that matches with the book for the most part. Neville has a delicious cameo when he stands up to the Death Eaters who stop the Hogwarts Express to tell them Harry's not there. 

Oddly, the Invisibility Cloak isn't there (or if it is it was only used during the scene when I had to take a potty break) - it's odd only because the Deathly Hallows are introduced late in the movie, the elder wand, the resurrection stone, the true cloak of invisibility. 

There's no Krum, the radio show they listen to isn't obviously Lee Johnson, they don't meet up with Dean, nor hear about the goblin and the fake sword of Griffendor (instead, this is treated at Malfoy Manor when the kids are brought before Bellatrix and Lucius, and Bellatrix goes on one of her crackpot-got-hit-with-the-crazy-stick rages about how the sword was removed from her vault. No idea if the second movie will talk about the fake sword or not. Doubtful because by this point they have used the sword to destroy the locket.)  

The movie takes us through about page 476 of the book. There's still a lot of book left, the Gringott's vault, the dragon, the battle for hogwarts, Harry dying, loads more opportunities for me to cry. But this piece did resolve well. We're left knowing it's open, but having seen closure of Dobby's death, and Ron returned. The movie ends with Voldemort taking the Elder wand from Dumbledore's grave, and it feels like the right place. 

Now, a bit about ages. We were there with two 9 year olds and an almost seven year old - who have listened to all seven books on audio, though it's been more than a year since we did. The movie ran a bit past bedtime, and Anastasia started getting fidgety after about 40 minutes. I do think, though she's mature and can handle much of what movies can throw at her in terms of action and intensity, it was a bit too intense for her. There were a pair of five or six year olds next to us and I really wondered whether they enjoyed it at all.

I think a solid understanding of the books is necessary to really appreciate the plot, since much of it speeds by you otherwise. The action sequences are phenomenal, the movies have grown up just as the characters have, everything was extremely polished, very high quality. The way they portray death eaters as moving on puffs of black smoke is so cool. There's even a car chase, though this being Harry Potter, it involves Harry and Hagrid in Sirius' flying motorcycle with sidecar and swirling death eaters.

The 9 year olds did great, they sat in front of us and were absorbed the whole time, though I did hear them explain things to each other from time to time. I think if you're going to take a younger one, make sure to go early enough in the day that you're not bumping up against bedtime like we were. I do think part of what was troubling for her, though, was that she was able to anticipate the upcoming events and was scared in advance, or didn't like the idea that the characters were going to get caught momentarily. We worked through it. 

There were a few spots that were startling that it's worth being aware of. When they first set foot in Grimmald place (there's warning because the building unpacks from the two next to it first) -- there's that Dumbledore scare charm that's startling. The bit in Godric's Hollow with the woman who has been possessed by Nagini. The snake comes back for a last try at getting Harry and Hermione and that's shocking as well. Early on the Muggle Studies teacher is killed mostly on-camera, and then there's a horrible anticipation after Voldy tells the snake that dinner's ready (and the snake snaps at the camera ultra-close.) Thankfully the darn thing is very obviously a computer image or I wouldn't be able to sit through the movie! There's a lot of dark stuff, even the retelling of the Tale of Three Brothers is dark, though beautifully done with a shadow-puppet style animation. It features a large towering figure of death, an implied knifing, and a hanging. Not your average Saturday afternoon at the movies fare for tots, get a sitter for the littlest ones, I recommend. 

But for the rest of us? The Harry Potter fans? The college kids who started reading HP when they were 10 and 11? The people who stayed up way past their bedtime, reading "one more chapter" even when dawn started creeping? The kids who didn't like to read til they picked up a HP book? The people who've devoted days and weeks of their lives to living mentally at Hogwarts, devouring the books and movies over and over?

It's immensely satisfying.

What about you? Have you seen the movie? Do you agree? What impression did you come away with?