Sunday, March 15, 2015

Doll Bones // Holly Black / 244 pages

     This award winning book (Children's Book Award) for children is creepy, somewhat scary, and totally addicting.
The characters, Poppy, Alice, and Zach have been friends since first grade.  They are now on that brink of change - middle school.  They have been involved in an imaginary game involving dolls and action figures when Zach's dad throws his characters away.  Zach can't deal with this action on the part of his father, but he can't tell his friends.  It causes a lot of conflict in the story.  The reality story is a journey that they go on to bury an antique doll and this quest involves quite a bit of risk.  It is disturbing on many levels.  Is the doll really communicating?  What dangers are they meeting on the journey?  Will they run out of money?  Will it break their friendship?
     It was riveting to find out what would happen next, but as an adult, I had a lot of difficulty with the things they did like run away on a bus with very little money and no idea about what sort of crazies are out there.  I didn't like it to the point that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone younger than 10.  I think that they made one poor and dangerous decision after another and the fact that the doll gets buried instead of one of them truly shows that it is fiction.  It could definitely be worthy of discussion if kids read this book.

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