Book Twenty-Seven

[ellyssian]

Book #27: The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint

Of course, the book was excellent. It is billed as teen fiction, and, much to the shock of my daughter, it is stocked with children's books (she commented on that when I had her run back upstairs to get the book so I could do some research on vervain.) I'm not sure this one lends itself any further to the teen fiction category than many of his works of urban fantasy might: that is, it is about teens, and it can be read by teens, but it is not unaccessible to adults.

Oh, and, although this one had minor impact on the dreams of the past few nights during the time I read it, there was some synchronicity. de Lint refers to vervain as "All-heal", and that made me wonder about the recently discovered groundcover in our yard, which is known as "selfheal" or "all-heal" and does happen to have purple blue flowers. Alas, they are not the same. Interestingly enough, mistletoe and valerian have also been labeled, at one time or another, as "allheal."

That's the great thing about a good book - it gets you thinking and sends you off on tangents.

Cross-posted to 50bookchallenge and me own journal

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

excellent pic & description of healall found at:

www.arthurleej.com/a-healall.html

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Two "teen" trilogies that I deeply love are Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy (the first of which is Sabriel). Lots of people have read the Pullmans, so I try to recommend Nix to EVERYONE. They're woefully underlooked.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I've read some Nix - Seventh Tower series - and thought it was pretty good - I'll have to check out the Abhorsen trilogy. I read the Pullman one fairly recently and liked it as well - it certainly aimed at stretching the boundaries of writing for children.