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Archive for the ‘Adam Blade’ Category

Adam Blade–First Hero [The Chronicles of Avantia #1] (2010)

Posted in Adam Blade, Adventure, All Songs Considered, Children's Books, Fables, Fantasy, Fears, Magic, Mates of State, Short Books, Supernatural, Threats on December 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

first herpSOUNDTRACK: MATES OF STATE-Live at the 9:30 Club, Washington DC, April 4, 2009 (2009).

mos930I enjoyed the Tiny Desk show from Mates of State quite a lot.  And this concert which is a full band (and occasionally just the husband and wife duo) was equally fun.

They play 15 songs in about an hour, some are short but there are a couple longer ones as well.    The band plays big songs with large hooks–a couple of listens and you are singing along with them.  They perform a kind of orchestrated synth pop, and while the songs are sweet-sounding, there is more to them than just hooks.

Most of this concert comes from their 2008 album Re-Arrange Us.  There’s a few tracks from  2003’s Team Boo as well.  All in all it’s a great show.  There are a bunch of songs on here that should be huge, they’re so catchy.  But Mates of State remain under the radar.  Discover them here.

[READ: November 3, 2012] First Hero

After finishing the available Beast Quest books, I learned that there was another Avantia series called The Chronicles of Avantia (four books so far).  Since Clark enjoyed the Beast Quest series so much, we decided to check this one out, too.

Well, wow is it a different beast altogether. First off, the book is much bigger.  Second, the words are more complicated and third, the action is much more violent.  This is not your second grader’s story of trudge, trudge, trudge, defeat (but not kill) the beast and then gain a prize.  Rather, our hero must avenge his father’s death before the villain literally destroys the cities of Avantia looking for the Mask of Death.

The action takes place long before the action of the Beast Quest series–so long before that they may as well not be related except for the land (although we haven’t heard of these towns either).  Even the beasts are different.

The main character in this series is a boy named Tanner.  He is the Chosen Rider of a phoenix-Beast called Firepos.  What’s interesting is that some of the story is told from Firepos’ point of view.  The main bad guy in the story is a guy named Derthsin.  Derthsin killed Tanner’s father (when Tanner was 7) and also kidnapped his mother.  There’s nothing too explicit about the death (except that Tanner witnessed it–yipes!)  The death is revisited and is certainly uncomfortable reading to a  7-year-old.   Tanner was raised by his grandmother Esme.  Esme, too, is killed by Derthsin (this one of a bit more graphic and Tanner is present) and boy was that awkward. (more…)

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Adam Blade–“Stealth the Ghost Panther” [Beast Quest: The Amulet of Avantia #24] (2012)

Posted in Adam Blade, Adventure, Children's Books, Fables, Fantasy, Fears, Magic, Short Books, Supernatural, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert on November 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MATES OF STATE-Tiny Desk Concert #163 (October 5, 2011).

Mates of State is another band that I only know of because of NPR.  I hadn’t heard them at all before this set (and another concert that they recorded for download).  I like them, although they haven’t totally blown me away.

Mates of State make delightful music.  I don’t know if there’s a better word for it–it’s poppy and upbeat without being cloying or treacly and it seems so happy.   The founders of Mates of State are a husband and wife.  They sing quite loudly and often in a high register.  Indeed, the write-up that accompanied this show says that the band is quite scaled back–that they are usually much bigger and louder and that they had a hard time in this small setting.

But it’s a very good set and a nice sample of the kind of music they play.   The set features keyboards, acoustic guitar and a trumpet.  They play two songs from their album Mountaintops, “Sway” and “Desire.”  They also play “My Only Offer” from Re-Arrange Us, their previous record.  Mates of State have released a bunch of stuff on Barsuk records, a wonderful indie label, so they get respect from me.

I was also amused when Kori Gardner commented that this was “the earliest concert they’ve ever done.”

[READ: November 3, 2012] Stealth the Ghost Panther

The final book of this arc has just come out and Clark was very excited to read it.  I’m torn about what to do if Scholastic releases the next story arc.  The books seem to come out every six months, but I don’t think I want to wait six months to read book 26 after reading book 25.  But then do I want to wait three years to read the next arc all at once?  No I do not.  Not since Clark will be ten!  I hope Scholastic picks up the pace here.

Anyhow, this six book arc ended with Stealth the Ghost Panther (the most fearsome beast yet!).  [The one thing I dislike about the series is that every next beast is “more fearsome” than the last, which somehow undermines the fearsomeness of the previous beasts, no?  Honestly, how could that be quantitatively true.  Having said that, this one is pretty scary.  The panther is scary, but worse, if it simply scratches you it turns you evil. (more…)

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Adam Blade–Beast Quest Special Edition: Spiros the Ghost Phoenix (2009)

Posted in Adam Blade, Adventure, Animaniacs, Children's Books, Fables, Fantasy, Fears, Magic, Supernatural, Threats on October 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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. (more…)

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Adam Blade–Beast Quest: The Golden Armor #7-12 (2008

Posted in Adam Blade, Adventure, Children's Books, Dan Zanes, Fables, Fantasy, Fears, Magic, Short Books, Supernatural, They Might Be Giants, Threats on September 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: OUT WITH THIS KIDS MUSIC MONTHLY PODCAST (2012).

I am bummed to have literally just discovered this cool podcast.  Each month Out with the Kids plays some ten songs that are kid-friendly.  They’re not all “kids songs” but they are kid friendly.  And it’s a fun way to learn about new music that kids may like.

The blog was started by Jeff Bogle, and he does proper DJ intros and outros (fortunately no “Morning Zoo zaniness”).  The songs are often connected thematically, and he plays a diverse collection of music (for his October podcast, I’d heard of none of the artists before, which is great if all of your kids music awareness comes via Dan Zanes and They Might Be Giants (nothing nothing nothing wrong with them, I love them both) or, heaven forbid Kidz Bop.

So, check him out, and subscribe via iTunes.  What have you got to lose?

[READ: August 2012] Beast Quest 7-12

I wasn’t all that excited to continue this series.  I liked some of the things in the first books, but I was on the fence about whether to continue.  But Clark enjoyed the series, so I figured I’d continue (but hopefully not do all 72 books).  Well, I was pleasantly surprised by this next series.  Although the formula is still in place, Adam Blade played around with the ideas a little bit and made them much more interesting.  Rather than having to rescue beasts who were turned evil, this time, Tom, the 12 (!) year old hero, must go in search of pieces of the golden armor.

But a step back first.  After competing the first 6 quests, Wizard Aduro shows Tom and Elenna the beautiful golden armor that resides in a special room in King Hugo’s castle.  But when they get there they discovered  that the armor has been stolen (in the prologue we see how the  armor was stolen and we know it was Malvel’s doing).  As Book 7 takes off we learn of Tom’s new quest–to find all of the stolen pieces of the armor which are now being guarded by beasts that Malvel has created.  It was kind of fun wondering what the six pieces of armor would be.  They turn out to be a helmet, chain mail, a breast plate, leg armor, boots and gloves and each one gives Tom a special power. (more…)

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Adam Blade–Beast Quest #1-6 (2007)

Posted in Adam Blade, Adventure, Children's Books, Fables, Fantasy, Fears, Magic, Norsewind, Short Books, Supernatural, Threats, Tony Abbott on September 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NORSEWIND-“Landvaettir” (2011).

On September 2, we went to ScanFest, a festival of all things Scandinavian.  We had a wonderful time (despite the downpour).  The food was great, the stalls were selling cool wares and the entertainment was stellar (I loved the wife carrying contest–win your wife’s weight in beer!).

There were also musicians.  We were only able to see a couple, but one was Norsewind, a folk band from Berks County, PA, who play traditional Scndinavian music (and Irish pub songs).  I don’t know any of the songs they played that day, but I happened upon their reverbnation site, where you can hear 11 tracks.  And I chose this title because I have no idea what it means.

Live, the band was loud and really dynamic.  I especially enjoyed what I think was the intro to a song–three members on stage pounding the hell out of traditional drums–it was very cool.  These studio recordings are a little anemic–at least compared to their live show.  But they do display a nice range of sounds and styles and I enjoyed them very much.

[READ: August 2012] Beast Quest 1-6

When we finished Droon we wanted to move on to a new series.  Beast Quest was heavily advertised in the back of the Droon books, so we thought we’d give it a try.  Adam Blade (really?) has created a vast world in Avantia.  As of this writing, there are 72 books in the series (not including several special edition).  Yes, that is eighty-three books in total.

Sadly I just learned that Scholastic, the American publishing company of Beast Quest has only released 24 books (plus 2 special editions) in the United States.  A brief rant here.  I think Scholastic books is really wonderful.  They have released  some amazing books over the years.  I can’t even count the number of awesome series that Scholastic has picked up.  HOWEVER, Scholastic has a horrible track record of starting to release series and then ceasing in the middle.  The biggest crime has been Ulysses Moore, which they have ceased after 4 books (even though the series is up to Book 10 or 11 in their native Italy AND they are releasing the author’s newer series now.  Now we have this.  As you’ll see in the post, I’m the first to admit that the first six books in the series aren’t very good.  But now that we’re up to 20, the books and plots have gotten so much better.  And just as we’re getting really into it, the plug has been pulled?  I understand the economics of publishing and that if something isn’t selling you give up on it.  But seriously, you’re heavily advertising a series that you’re not going to finish?  How expensive can it be to produce these series of kids books?  It’s so disappointing.

End rant.

Begin review. (more…)

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