50 in '08: 26
Nov. 8th, 2008 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Title: The Gypsy Game
Authors: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Length: 217 pages
As with most people, except apparently those I ask (I'm three for three on the question now), I read lost of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's books while in elementary and middle school and probably high school as well, and have very fond memories of them. Somehow the other week it came to my attention that while I have very good memories of reading "The Egypt Game," I had never even heard of the sequel! So I snagged The Gyspy Game from the library and then waited to read it until I'd snagged The Egypt Game from the other library and reread that first to refresh my memory.... (Yes, over four hundred pages this afternoon. No, I'm not reviewing the Egypt Game because rereads don't count toward the total.)
The Gypsy Game, as far as I can tell, was written several years after The Egypt Game. It doesn't have the same innocence to it. TEG was presented very much though the eyes of its child characters, and reflected their worldview. Which, given that it had a fairly major subplot of children being abducted and murdered, was not actually all that light. TGG, on the other hand, is very much a social consciousness work, with its main characters realizing that Really Bad Things Happen on a much broader scale. Which... well, we all figure out social injustice sooner or later, but in some ways it feels like a betrayal of the original novel, taking what should be children's play and turning it into a broad salvo to Right The Wrong by the end of the book. It's not bad by any means... there's far worse children's lit out there. But its heavier themes may make it somewhat unsuitable for its intended audience and parents may have to start answering serious questions sooner than they'd expected.
Verdict: If you're reading it because you loved The Egypt Game and want to recapture that feeling, pass. If you're not reading it from literary nostalgia, give it a whirl.
Authors: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Length: 217 pages
As with most people, except apparently those I ask (I'm three for three on the question now), I read lost of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's books while in elementary and middle school and probably high school as well, and have very fond memories of them. Somehow the other week it came to my attention that while I have very good memories of reading "The Egypt Game," I had never even heard of the sequel! So I snagged The Gyspy Game from the library and then waited to read it until I'd snagged The Egypt Game from the other library and reread that first to refresh my memory.... (Yes, over four hundred pages this afternoon. No, I'm not reviewing the Egypt Game because rereads don't count toward the total.)
The Gypsy Game, as far as I can tell, was written several years after The Egypt Game. It doesn't have the same innocence to it. TEG was presented very much though the eyes of its child characters, and reflected their worldview. Which, given that it had a fairly major subplot of children being abducted and murdered, was not actually all that light. TGG, on the other hand, is very much a social consciousness work, with its main characters realizing that Really Bad Things Happen on a much broader scale. Which... well, we all figure out social injustice sooner or later, but in some ways it feels like a betrayal of the original novel, taking what should be children's play and turning it into a broad salvo to Right The Wrong by the end of the book. It's not bad by any means... there's far worse children's lit out there. But its heavier themes may make it somewhat unsuitable for its intended audience and parents may have to start answering serious questions sooner than they'd expected.
Verdict: If you're reading it because you loved The Egypt Game and want to recapture that feeling, pass. If you're not reading it from literary nostalgia, give it a whirl.
