I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: ANIMANIACS-“Nations of the World” (1995).

I was a little too old for Animaniacs when it was first on.  And boy am I mad I missed it then, because it is hilarious.  And, astonishingly, educational.

Check out the countries of the world as sung by Yakko.

Genius lies within.

Incidentally, this isn’t the cleanest version of the video I’ve seen, but it has closed captioning so you can see all the countries!  For a clearer picture click this link.

[READ: September 2012] Spiros the Ghost Phoenix

After reading Book 12, Clark noticed on the back cover of the book that there was a cover for a book we hadn’t read yet.  So I looked it up and it was this one, a Special Edition.  There are several Beast Quest Special Edition books just like in the Droon series.  I never quite understood the purpose of the Special Editions in Droon–they were bigger, but you had to read them in sequence or the series didn’t make sense, and if you skipped them, you missed out on a huge plot development, so it was just an odd thing to do.

So I wasn’t surprised to find out that there were Special Editions in Beast Quest  but I was surprised to find out that the Special Edition has no relation to the sequence at all.  Indeed, they work fine as introductions to the series.

As we left Book 12, Tom and Elenna are about to head into the Dark Realm.  Literally, a passage opens and they are meant to go inside.  But in this Special Edition, they’re still in Avantia.  Okay, so maybe it’s set before the second set of quests?  Except that he has the armor already. So, what, is it set after the Dark Realm series?

And then most confusing of all, at the end of the book there’s a preview chapter of….Book One: Ferno the Fire Dragon.  What?  I know this is a Scholastic decision, but it’ very confusing.  The book does open with a character list, which is kind of helpful.  Indeed, all of the later books will have this character list.

Well, whatever the case, this story doesn’t impact the running ideas in the series–he doesn’t receive any gift on his shield or any armor when it’s over, so it is kind of like a Special Quest.

The book is divided into two parts (with a to be continued after Story One).

So Malvel has kidnapped Tom’s Aunt and Uncle and according to Aduro, Tom will have to face the lost seventh Beast of Avantia to find them (again, no mention has been made before of a lost seventh Beast). Although this one was designed to protect the skies–Spiros the Phoenix and she possessed magic more powerful than Aduro.  (Although Epos is a Phoenix so aren’t the skies…oh forget it).

We also learn that before Malvel bewitched the first six beasts, he put a spell on Spiros and separated her spirit   from her body, now Spiros is a ghost and her body is controlled by her spirit, named Nawdren.  In order to find Spiros, Tom gets the assistance of all the other beasts (which is pretty cool)

There’s some very cool imagery in Story Two,with them going underwater and finding a secret cave where his Aunt and Uncle are.  There’s also a mysterious bad girl who helps Nawdren, called Sethrina.  I wonder if we’ll ever see her again in the series.  (Seth as a character keeps coming back in weird places, and this is clearly a female version of him).

I enjoyed this book quite a bit–it was filled with more action than usual and I liked that it broke from the patterns that some of the earlier books had.