#Jennifer Murdley's Toad | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tawneybel · 7 months

Text

WRITING A COHERENT REVIEW OF SKINAMARINK IS HARD.

Song of the day: “Jack-o’-Lantern-Man” by the Bravery.

Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m going out to get vaxxed, then get brunch and dinner. I’m slowly redecorating my room, so I got some posters but won’t unwrap them until tomorrow. Also bought more winter clothes. Wearing black jeans rn. The first jeans I’ve worn in years. I don’t usually like wearing pants lol.

Finally saw Skinamarink. Expectations were met. It blew me away. Like, an entire essay could be written on why I liked it so much. Watch it if you value aesthetics over plot in film. I do.

At least when it comes to horror movies. I tend to watch horror and read (murder) mystery. Not so much the other way around. Whereas mysteries are plot-driven, horror media can either rely on plot or visuals/descriptions and be enthralling.

One problem I have with a lot of films is their cinematography. It often seems to take a backseat to plot, dialogue, and score/soundtrack. Which is why I love aestheticism. Well, that and symbolism. Deeper meanings are great, too.

I adore all the fan theories Skinamarinkers (?) are coming up with. Normally, “he’s in a coma” fanons bore me. But the dad said Kevin bumped his head, then the rest of Skinamarink is basically a hundred minutes of nursery nightmares. Faces aren’t shown properly.

MAKE SURE TO WATCH WITH SUBTITLES. (Unfortunately, the director’s commentary doesn’t have those.) AND THE SHORT PROOF OF CONCEPT HECK BEFOREHAND. It’s on YouTube. If you like it, you’ll like Skinamarink. Also, it unnerved me a bit more.

Skinamarink made me feel so many things. Excitement. Nostalgia. Sympathy. Nostalgia. Fear. Well, mostly just fear when the phone got those toony eyes. There are a couple jump scares, but the movie’s more about slowly mounting dread. Plus making viewers pity the protagonists.

I feel like I’m super biased towards Skinamarink because it taps into my nostalgia. The amount of media it makes me want to reminisce about... All those “child(ren) up against a bogeyman” stories.

Those parallels between the classic cartoons and what the Voice in the Dark does to Kaylee and Kevin. The same Fisher-Price toy phone we had. Classic cartoons that were on either VHS or LaserDisc, watched in our snug basement. “The Cobweb Hotel” creeped me out so badly as a kid. At least I had my great-grandmother’s elephant figurines to watch over me. Dad’s cuckoo clock, too.

The commentary mentions there are some anachronisms, like with the toys. Skinamarink takes place in 1995, but has that orange LEGO brick separator from 2011. Which just makes it more personally relatable to me.

My family’s always been practical, using things until they break. I have a DVD player that’ll turn twenty next year. So it wouldn’t surprise me if someone else has the VHS player somewhere. The only movies I remember watching on LaserDisc were The Wizard of Oz and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But Oz is one of my all time faves and got watched a LOT. We had a bunch of obsolete or antique things and new things.

Going back to the toy phone… There was a Bruce Coville Magic Shop book that had a witch call the protagonist and her little brother on one. Jennifer Murdley’s Toad? And I’ve seen creepy art of Fisher-Price phones before.

Disclaimer: ED IS WRONG. CANADIANS NEED TO GET WEIRDER. I hope Skinamarink inspires people to make more weirdass movies.

7 notes · View notes

random-bookquotes · 2 years

Quote

“Did you used to be a person, too?” asked Skippy. “Good heavens, no!” cried Bufo. “Perish the thought. A person, indeed. Yetch. I would think you would be glad of the transformation, Master Skippy. I mean, think how much less destructive toads are than humans. We don’t pollute. We don’t have wars. We don’t cause forest fires. About all we do is eat nasty bugs.”

Bruce Coville, Jennifer Murdley's Toad

#Bruce Coville #Jennifer Murdley's Toad #transformation #toads #toad #humans

0 notes

araekniarchive · 11 months

Text

SELF-PORTRAIT AT 24

Ana Carrizo, What Was Missing

Louis de Bernieres, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Brenna Twohy, ‘ON SEEING PHOTOS OF HIS NEW GIRLFRIEND ON FACEBOOK’, from Swallowtail

Bruce Coville, Jennifer Murdley’s Toad

The Antlers, Bear

When Harry Met Sally (1989) dir. Rob Reiner

Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

Raven Leilani, Luster

Comment left on a pinterest post

Elle Emerson, Regarding the Röttgen Pietà

Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh

Dominique Christina, Stargazer

Lia Kimura, Unknown (2018)

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Florence + The Machine, South London Forever

Wislawa Szymborska, Moment of Silence

Barbara Ras, ‘You Can’t Have It All’ from Bite Every Sorrow

215 notes · View notes

creature-comfortss · 2 years

Text

On growing up with dark skin / wishing to be fairer / feeling ugly because of the colour of your skin

In the Dream House - Carmen Maria Machado // Rashnaa Mehta (2015) // Prom Queen - Beach Bunny // Not a Pretty Girl - Ani DiFranco // Howl's Moving Castle (2004) - dir. Hayao Miyazaki // Jennifer Murdley's Toad - Bruce Coville // My toxic love affair with skin lightening creams - Stephanie Yeboah // Strawberry Shortcake - Melanie Martinez // How skin whitening reveals the depth of the beauty industry’s colourism - Funmi Fetto // If I Had Your Face - Frances Cha

#web weaving #parallels #body #colorism #beauty #self image #beach bunny #howls moving castle #melanie martinez #shame #body shame #quotes #my post #ego

62 notes · View notes

mayfriend · 2 years

Note

19 be a hater pls :^D

Oh, I love being a hater, tysm <3

Idk if they're popular still, but when I was in school everyone kept on talking about Uglies by Scott Westerfield, and I figured huh, must be a pretty good book. NOPE. Go straight to (literary) jail, do not collect £200, do not pass go. I can see what he was trying to achieve with the whole 'beauty isn't important' angle, but it just came across very preachy and seemed to insist that anyone who cares more than 'normal' amount about their appearance is shallow, and doing the dance so many authors do when trying to undercut western patriarchal norms where they end up blaming women for wanting to be pretty in a society where they're point blank told that's what makes them worth something. If you want this done well (even if it's aimed at a slightly younger audience), try Jennifer Murdley's Toad by Bruce Coville.

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. Now, before you get your pitchforks out: I think she again had a pretty good basis for a story idea. Finch and Violet are well defined, original characters and the end point is the strength of the story. But getting to the end... god, this book was a drag. I'm sorry, it was. The pacing was all over the place, it felt like Niven was just making the same point about life bring both difficult and precious over and over and over again in the same way, and didn't trust her readers not to need their hands held the whole way. Also, as a pet peeve, 're-MARKEY-able' is not that clever of a pun that it needs to be thrown about every other page.

My mum bought me The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton quite a few years ago now, and I still haven't been able to make it further than the first chapter. Apparently its very good but I just can't persist through the dull beginning.

I made the critical mistake of buying Nikita Gill's poetry book, Fierce Fairytales & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul, after seeing it for dirt cheap in a charity shop. Dear GOD do I know why it was cheap now. I've recently gotten into the habit of putting my name and the year into new books I start, because I like the thought that in the future someone might see it and have a moment of connection, but legit I want to rub my name out of this one so nobody knows I owned it, however briefly. It's that bad. I vaguely knew her name (mainly through searching for content for webs), and I'd seen a few lines of her poetry online that weren't awful, so I foolishly assumed that in order to publish a book it would need to have, you know, decent fucking content. I cannot actually express in words how bad it is. I couldn't force myself through the latter half - foolishly, I persevered at first because I thought there had to be something in there worth the cost of the paper and the ink, but no. No there is not. And again!! The IDEAS aren't bad!! People are updating fairy tales all the time!! But its just so lazy. There's drawings that I'd charitably say are just above the level of a thirteen year old girl doodling during English, a poem about Cinderella (at least I think it was Cinderella, but I don't hate myself enough to go and double check) that I shit you not referred to a fidget spinner, and the most boring rhymes and brain-dead interpretations of fairy tale characters you've ever seen. It's apparent meant to be 'feminist' fairytales but, deadass, they're just. They're just about Disney characters. Don't believe me?? Exhibits A to G (because it turns out I do hate myself enough to scan for the worst bits so you can all suffer as I suffered):

unLIkE moSt MeN oF hIs TImE, hE waS pROGreSsiVE

Like... my good bitch, half of that is written in the most jarring structure, unappealing sentences and awkward wording imaginable, and the other half is Disney™. Oh, the sea-witch is ample bodied, is she? 'Jafar' the Sultan's most trusted advisor was a poor boy come from nothing, huh? Cinderella's mother l i t e r a l l y told her "have courage and be kind", hm? Those motherfuckers will sue, and I kind of hope they do in order to get this refuse off the shelves.

There are more, but I got sidetracked (I couldn't find the fidget spinner line but I swear to you it's in there) and I need to go scream into a pillow or something after reminding myself about that godawful poetry book.

#ask game #emily speaks #asks #gardenier #ty :))

3 notes · View notes

balaenabooks · 6 years

Photo

Alternative Title: The Adventures of Cinnamon Roll and Sassy Roundboy

#bruce coville #the magic shop #jennifer murdley's toad #books #booklr

12 notes · View notes

jadedanddark · 5 years

Text

Monster F*cker Reading List

I'm pretty disappointed in Tumblr right now. Not because of the whole FEMALE PRESENTING NIPPLE debacle (that's a whole other blog post). No, my issue is that Venom came out, everyone adored it for being gay and hideous and a perfect match for everything the standard monsterfucker needs to survive, but then they just sort of...left. At the moment, you have to dig deep to find any recommended reading based on liking the Venom movie. Specifying "monsterfucker reading list" gets you porn. Not all of us are looking for porn, or Venom comics for that matter, which seems to be the only other thing. THEREFORE. I'm here to help your quest the way nobody has helped me.

I have compiled a list of stuff I've already read based on several criteria that tickles the old pickle like Venom did. They are:

I am the monster

I love a monster

A monster loves me

Body horror

"What is happening to me?"

My friend(s) is a monster/are monsters

Cabal by Clive Barker (1,2,3,4,5,6)

Imajica by Clive Barker (2,3,6)

Abarat by Clive Barker* (2,3,6)

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow (1,2,3,5,6)

Baba Yaga by Toby Barlow (1,2,4,5,6)

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (1,2,3,6)

Beastly by Alex Flynn (1,4,5)

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix (5,6)

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (4,6)

Horns by Joe Hill (1,4,5)

Let the Right One In by John Lindqvist (2,3,4,6)

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (1,3,4,5,6)

Dracula by Bram Stoker (3,4,5)

I Am Not a Serial Killer* by Dan Wells(1,6)

John Dies at the End* by David Wong (1,4,5,6)

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff (1, 5,6)

Raptor Red by Robert Bakker (1,2,3,6)

Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell (1,3,4,6)

Catspaw* by Joan Vinge (1,5,6)

Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw (1,2,3,4,5,6)

The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones (2,4,5,6)

Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones (1,4,6)

Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1,2,3,4,5)

Old Man's War* by Jon Scalzi (1,2,3,4,6)

Assassin's Quest* by Robin Hobb (1,4,5,6)

Heart's Blood* by Jane Yolen (1,2,3,4,6)

The Search for Snout* by Bruce Coville (1,3,4,5,6)

Jennifer Murdley's Toad by Bruce Coville (1,4,5,6)

Items marked by an asterisk are part of a series and the monster bits don't really show up until that point but are still certainly worth your time. My definition of "monster" is really loose as well, can range from "got a weird arm" to "literally a dinosaur" to "symbiotic relationship with an alien" (WHAT'S THAT LAST ONE YOU SAY SIKE ITS A CHILDREN'S BOOK) (it's Search for Snout btw).

Crazy how many of those I've reviewed, isn't it?

Reblog or comment with your additions!

#monsterfucker #venom #symbrock #reading recommendations #body horror #monsters #booklr #cryptids #book recommendations #aliens #zombies #symbiotic relationships #vampires #eddie brock #symbiont

37 notes · View notes

fanlit · 2 years

Photo

📚 Jennifer Murdley's Toad: Perhaps the best of the Magic Shop books https://t.co/Od8a5zutKl https://t.co/Nmb3HHt2zR #SFF (from the archive)

0 notes

bookbaran · 3 years

Text

Some of my favorite books are:

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Jennifer Murdley’s Toad by Bruce Coville

The Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

The Wayside School Series by Louis Sachar

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Wonder by RJ Palacio

The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan

The Magical Misadventures of Prunella Bogthistle by Deva Fagan

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

The Value of X by Poppy Z Brite (Doc Brite)

The Marvels by Brian Selznick

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Less by Andre Sean Greer

Not all of these are the best books (though, I would argue, some of them are). These are the books that had an impact on me, the books I remember the most fondly, and the books that I want to read over and over again (though with all the other books to read in the world, who has time?).

#keeping it this short was difficult!#favorites

0 notes

thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 7 years

Text

Character Names in Eleutherophobia

Since I’ve had a few people ask me about the character names in Eleutherophobia, I figured I’d run down the whole list. These names are approximately in order of appearance in my various fics. To be clear: this is not crossover fiction. These are supposed to be nods to these characters, not the characters themselves. Bearing that in mind, in approximate order of appearance:

Day the Earth Stood Still

Essa 412: a yeerkanization of “Boy 412,” the main character of the Septimus Heap series. In my opinion, the second best treatment of the impact of war on children ever written into a modern fantasy series.

Leslie Burke: the deuteragonist of Bridge to Terabithia. The character always reminded me of a younger Rachel, so I chose to give the name to the bearer of Rachel’s death.

Anne Shirley: the main character of Anne of Green Gables, who often goes underestimated for the extent to which she is a tough, complex, socially awkward heroine written in 1908.

George Little: the younger brother of the title character of Stuart Little. Mostly named because I wanted to give David a last name that implied cowardice without being ridiculously obvious about it.

Lost World

[Steve] Carlsberg: the not-quite-antagonist of Welcome to Night Vale.

Akira

Dr. Miranda Franklin: named for Miranda of Dr. Franklin’s Island. Kind of a pun on my part: the plot of that book involves one of the main characters involuntarily turning into an anaconda.

Jennifer Murdley: titular character of Jennifer Murdley’s Toad, one of the books in Bruce Coville’s Magic Shop series who learns the very hard way to love herself.

Mrs. [Hannah] Gruen: Nancy Drew’s housekeeper.

THX 1138

Joey Costello: the deuteragonist of Tangerine, a story about two boys who have very different sets of troubles with their respective older brothers.

Dr. Pendanski: one of the incompetent counselors from Holes by Louis Sachar.

Jodi O’Shea: far and away my most pointed literary allusion. Jodi is a minor character in The Host by Stephenie Meyer, a book which I love (except for the extremely problematic ending, but I’ll get back to that). The Host is essentially a love story between a yeerk (Wanda) and a human (Ian) whose entire plot is driven by consent negotiations. It’s about Wanda and Ian wishing they could be together but knowing they never will because they can’t be without violating the right to consent of the yeerk’s host, Melanie. Melanie, meanwhile, is in love with a different guy... Who can’t be with her either without violating Wanda’s right to consent.

[SPOILER WARNING] Eventually Ian resolves this love quadrangle by putting Wanda inside a human (“Pet,” and don’t get me started on that name) who has been a controller for so long that she has forgotten how to exert her own conscious will. Wanda and Ian presumably do the horizontal tango using that host instead, AND THIS IS TREATED AS A HAPPY ENDING. Jodi O’Shea also meets the same fate as Pet: Jodi has forgotten how to feed herself or move on her own, so her own husband decides that they should just put her yeerk, Sunny, back in her head. Sunny claims that Jodi is brain-dead... But Sunny is also strongly motivated to lie. (There are also implications that Jodi’s husband becomes romantically involved with Sunny instead, a plot which is so horrifying it deserves its own blog post.) Most importantly, all the main characters are really happy that these poor hosts are vegetables. There is an entire subpopulation of humans who have become entirely dependent on their alien slave masters for survival... and this fact is treated as the solution to all the characters’ problems. It’s celebrated. And, yeah, both THX 1138 and Ghost in the Shell contain some pretty pointed commentary from me on why I find this ending to be so deeply unfortunate. [END SPOILERS]

Ghost in the Shell

Mary Lennox: the main character of The Secret Garden, the first book without pictures I ever read on my own.

Rose Rita: main character of The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring, and arguably one of the first genderqueer characters to make it into a children’s fantasy novel.

Margaret White: the antagonist of Stephen King’s novel Carrie, obsessed with preserving the innocence (and thus the dependent ignorance) of her teenage daughter.

Sophie Hatter: main character of Howl’s Moving Castle, who does in fact make her own clothes.

[Mr.] Broxholm: the titular alien from My Teacher Flunked the Planet by Bruce Coville, one of the most awesome and profound children’s sci-fi novels I have ever read.

Anita Psammead: a nod to The Five Children and It by E. Nesbitt, one of the first ever fantasy novels written for children.

Miss Zarves: the teacher from Sideways Stories from Wayside School who doesn’t exist, because she was accidentally assigned to teach on a floor that was never built.

Nikto 770: nod to the code phrase in Day the Earth Stood Still (the original movie, not my fic).

Kit Rodriguez: the deuteragonist of the Young Wizards series, known for his passion and tendency to care deeply for others.

Aristotle “Ari” [Mendoza]: main character of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.

Dante [Quintana]: main character of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.

Gabriel “G.T.” Stoop: the main character’s mentor in Hope Was Here.

Elijah Springfield: a teen detective from the Veritas Project series.

Lydia [Bennett]: supporting character from Pride and Prejudice.

Nick Adams: a recurring Ernest Hemingway character.

T.J. Avery: next door neighbor to the Logan family in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry.

Cecily Tallis: the narrator’s older sister (and unwitting victim) in Atonement by Ian McEwan.

Maybeth Tillerman: one of the main characters in Homecoming by Cynthia Voight, a book that critics like to describe as “the anti-Boxcar Children” for its unflinchingly realistic portrayal of childhood homelessness.

June Boatwright: one of the protagonist’s mentors in The Secret Life of Bees.

Caitlin Somers: a Judy Blume character from Summer Sisters.

Alex Morales: main character of The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer.

Cooper-Trebond: shortening of “Alanna Cooper of Trebond” the name of the main character of Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series.

Jesse Hauptman: the protagonist’s stepdaughter and mentee in the Mercy Thompson series.

Timmy Dugan: lesser-known real name of WWII comic book hero Dum Dum Dugan, sidekick to Nick Fury and Howling Commando as part of the Marvel universe.

Luke Castellan and Chris Rodriguez: two of the supporting characters from Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I wouldn’t say that Luke Castellan is the first meatsuit I ever fell in love with (despite him being basically a voluntary controller and also a human dumpster fire), but I would say that he made my tendency to care too much about meatsuits in general about 1000 times worse.

“Cornelius”: okay, this one is in fact a crossover—that’s meant to be Tyler Durden, main character of Chuck Palahnuick’s Fight Club. He’s a schizophrenic, lonely guy who goes to support groups for various traumas that he never actually survived (usually under the fake name Cornelius) because that’s the only way he knows how to connect to people.

Odette: the protagonist of Swan Lake and several subsequent adaptations, including Mercedes Lackey’s awesome The Black Swan.

Rod Allbright: another character from My Teacher is an Alien, because I love that series.

Officer Nice: a nod to the song of the same name by Vio-Lence, one of my few non-literary allusions.

Gerald “Jerry” Cruncher: a guy who works as a porter (and remover of bodies) in of A Tale of Two Cities.

Paul Edgecombe: main character of The Green Mile, a deeply conflicted prison guard who gets cast as Pontius Pilate in a modern-day gospel retelling.

Kate Malone: narrator of Laurie Halse Anderson’s amazingly powerful novel Catalyst.

Mae Tuck: matriarch of the titular immortal clan from Tuck Everlasting.

Annie Hughes: one of the main characters from The Iron Giant.

Kirsten Larson: one of the first characters from the American Girl series, an immigrant from Sweden who struggles to acclimate to the United States.

Adah Price: one of the co-narrators of The Poisonwood Bible, a disabled polymath who loves palindromes and puzzles.

Iris Chase: a society lady and heiress from The Blind Assassin, which chronicles family dysfunction and its unique impact on women over several generations.

Dawn Schafer: part of the enormous rotating cast of protagonists from The Babysitters’ Club series, and one of my favorite characters as a kid.

Henry Case: main character of the genre-creating cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.

Parvana Weera: a tough, outgoing young woman whose struggle to keep her family safe during the American invasion of her home in Afghanistan forms the main plot of The Breadwinner.

Raven Madison: main character of Vampire Kisses, who spends a little too much time in her intense fantasy worlds and not quite enough connected to reality.

Mr. [Bob] Grey: pseudonym used by the creature also known as Pennywise the Clown and simply “It” in several of Stephen King’s novels.

Ms. [Mary] Logan: mother of the main character in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, because I love that book.

Karana Nicoleño: although Karana, the main character of Island of the Blue Dolphins, doesn’t technically have a last name, her tribe is historically referred to as the Nicoleño.

Total Recall

Vicky Austin: main character of A Ring of Endless Light, a book about coming to terms with dying—and about the many complex shades of victim blaming that can occur in light of unquantifiable tragedy.

Samuel Cornick: roommate to the eponymous Mercy Thompson of the bestselling Patricia Briggs series, a werewolf-doctor who continuously struggles to find meaning in an excessively long life and one of my favorite characters of all time.

The Thing from Another World

Seth Clearwater: a minor character in Eclipse, one of the youngest werewolves of the Quileute pack.

Captain William Nasland: one of the more obscure characters to hold the title Captain America; retconned into the role following Steve Rogers’s “death” in 1945. Acts as both a hero and a villain because he has a well-intentioned but also closed-minded idea of what Captain America should be.

Allison Chapman: main character of Sharing Sam, K.A. Applegate’s lesser-known novel about teenage basketball geeks who back their way into understanding the life, the universe, and everything.

Simon Grace: one of the main characters of the Spiderwick Chronicles.

Giselle Villard: one of the main characters from the Mystic comic book series who is awesome, tough... and more than a little power-hungry.

As far as I can tell, that’s it for the character names in Eleutherophobia. I mentioned here why Marco’s last name is Alvarez and Cassie’s is Day in my series. There are a few dozen other allusions as well (Tom and Bonnie bastardizing the “tears in the rain” speech from Blade Runner, Cassie quoting the epigraph from Home of the Brave, several nods to Remnants and Everworld and The One and Only Ivan, Marco making jokes about Lost World and Alien) and obviously all my fic titles are from classic sci-fi movies while all my song nods are The Best of 1990—2000, but as far as I know that’s it for allusions. If there are any that I missed, or that you’re still wondering about, let me know and I’ll happily clarify.

#eleutherophobia #animorphs #animorphs fic #writing #ya sf

51 notes · View notes

booklovingnut · 5 years

Text

Juliet Dove, Queen of Love by Bruce Coville

4 Nuts

When I was a kid there were four books in the Magic Shop Series. JEREMY THATCHER DRAGON HATCHER (the most well known), THE SKULL OF TRUTH (second), THE MONSTER’S RING, and JENNIFER MURDLEY’S TOAD. I read the first three over and over, particularly SKULL. They were some of my favorite books. I’d even gotten the audiobooks out of the library and listen to them as I was falling asleep.

Much…

View On WordPress

0 notes

booksformks · 5 years

Text

Book Review: Jennifer Murdley's Toad

Book Review: Jennifer Murdley’s Toad

Jennifer Murdley’s Toad by Bruce Coville, Gary A. Lippincott (Illustrations) 4 out of 5 stars on GoodReads

Jennifer wishes she could be beautiful, but feels ugly and dumpy. When she buys a talking toad at the Magic Shop, her entire life changes, and she is whisked on an adventure where she will have to choose between pursuing beauty or saving her friends.

I loved this hilarious story,…

View On WordPress

0 notes

random-bookquotes · 2 years

Quote

Fourth, remember that not everything is as it seems: the inside is not the same as the outside, endings often hold beginnings, and most mirrors are mere errors.

Bruce Coville, Jennifer Murdley's Toad

#Bruce Coville #Jennifer Murdley's Toad #mirror #ending #beginning

0 notes

araekniarchive · 2 years

Note

Helloo can I request something to do w feeling truly ugly as a woman? In the sense that u recognise you’ll never be treated as admirably by other girls and guys, and even on the days u doll up- the makeup just makes u feel like a clown preparing for its performance

Thank u always for ur efforts and ur lovely blog, hope u have a great rest of ur day :0)

Katie Makkai, Pretty

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Bruce Coville, Jennifer Murdley’s Toad

Harry Chapin, A Better Place to Be

Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil

Egal Henein, Male and Female Ugliness Through The Ages

Dexter, i like me

Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002) dir. John Kafka

Ani DiFranco, Not A Pretty Girl

Erin Thompson, ‘Age Before Beauty: Appearance and Personal Worth in Howl’s Moving Castle’, The Backseat Driver Reviews

2K notes · View notes

italkstuff · 7 years

Text

NaNo Influence #3: Bruce Coville

The first story I remember my dad reading to me, as well as the first chapter book I read by myself, was a book called Goblins in the Castle by a children’s author named Bruce Coville. Coville was my introduction into the world of chapter books, and my favorite author growing up. Goblins in the Castle is a fantasy story about a boy named William and his discovery of the secret world of goblins, and in addition to fantasy, Coville also wrote some sci-fi and, for the purposes of this list anyway, horror.

Now, it was children’s horror, so nothing actually scary, but all of his stories had sort of a spooky feel to them. Coville worked as a gravedigger for a time when he was a teenager, and a lot of his spookier stories have sort of the atmosphere of a graveyard. Even though I grew up in the era of Goosebumps, I never actually read one until last year when Jesse had me do so for a podcast episode. Coville was my go-to for spooky stories and for stories in general for a long time.

I’ve reviewed a few of Coville’s books as part of my Favorite Books series, and the thing that still really strikes me about his books is how he’s able to take a concept that is obviously meant to appeal to kids, thereby getting them to read his books, and turn it into a story that actually contains some seriousness and depth. My Teacher is An Alien, for example, turns into a four-part sci-fi epic with some good character growth and some interesting exploration of humanity. Jennifer Murdley’s Toad turns into a story about bullying and not making judgements based on appearance. In short, they do the things that sci-fi and fantasy and even horror to an extent were meant to do: look at our world through a supernatural or otherworldly lens, in order to gain a different perspective.

This was not only my introduction to chapter books, but also my introduction to the particular genre of storytelling that I still favor to this day. In addition, it was an introduction to that key balance of engaging plot, solid characterization, and deeper ideas, substance beyond the engaging premise. It wasn’t something I fully understood at the time, but it definitely made its way into my own writing when I started writing longer stories. I look back at some of my early stories and find that they are very much along the same lines, and as I got older and began to seek out more adult works, I looked for this balance in those stories as well.

#nanowrimo #creative writing #influences #bruce coville #goblins in the castle #my teacher is an alien

0 notes