SOUNDTRACK: PEPPER RABBIT-“Alison” (2011).
Pepper Rabbit had NPR’s Song of the Day on September 19th. “Alison” opens with a kind of circus organ pumping out a steady, thumping beat. The beat continues until the quieter stated chorus: “You will know my name.” The song is, as circuses are, light and bouncy with an air of the sinister floating all around it. By the second chorus, we learn that “it’s all a game to get you to learn my name.”
The vocals are done in a kind of 70’s piano pop style–a bit high-pitched, a bit echoey– and they help to obscure exactly what’s going on. But it’s the music that is so charming.
Even if it’s unclear to me what the intention of the song is (stalker or just lost love) it’s a poppy ditty that will keep your toe tapping. I’m looking forward to hearing more from them.
[READ: September 14, 2011] Into the Gauntlet
And so the series ends.
Or, actually, it doesn’t. This isn’t really a spoiler because there are more books out in the series. And I’m not going to say what happens at the end of this book, but for those of you wondering just what the heck is going on here with a Book Eleven coming out eight months after Book Ten, I’ll summarize (with no spoilers). Book Ten ends the hunt for the clues–the goal is reached. But at the end of the book, it is revealed that there’s another group, another family, who is also hunting for the Answer. They hadn’t been hunting alongside the Cahill families, they were apparently watching alongside them waiting to see what would happen before setting their plan into action. And thus…. Series Two.
Book 11 is a kind of transitional book that fills in some back story on each of the families and shows Grace’s life. I’m intrigued to read it, especially since most of the writers from the series contribute to it.
So Book Ten was written by the excellent author Margaret Peterson Haddix. And this book comes in at 326 pages (over 100 pages longer than any other book in the series). But Haddix earns her extra pages. She totally breaks with the set-up of the series so far by following not just Dan and Amy but all of the branches of the family. We actually get into the heads of all of the competitors (including Eisenhower Holt–who has feelings after all, Natalie Kabra–who is not quite as dim as she appears, and Ian Kabra–who might just be as evil as his mom). Haddix also introduces a huge surprise in the beginning of the book–a surprise that may not have been such a surprise if I’d been reading the books close together but with this much remove from the early books, I was shocked! And later on, when she doubles up on the surprise, it’s even more shocking! (more…)
I Just Read About That... 