Children’s – DaneCobain.com

Sophie Hamley – Five Go Down Under | Review

Title: Five Go Down Under

Author: Sophie Hamley

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 108

Rating 3.5/5

This is another entry in the Famous Five for grownups books that parody the children’s series by Enid Blyton. All of the books in the series have been pretty fun, but I also noticed that this is by a different author as the other ones I’ve read were by Bruno Vincent. Still, Hamley does just as good of a job and I have no complaints, although I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way for it either. Unless you’re from Australia, of course.

Click here to buy Five Go Down Under.

Anna Sewell – Black Beauty | Review

Title: Black Beauty

Author: Anna Sewell

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 230

Rating 3.5/5

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t exactly fall in love with this book, but that’s pretty much a personal preference thing rather than because there was anything wrong with the novel. I can actually put my finger on exactly what the problem was: I just don’t like it when stories are narrated by horses, which is why I wasn’t a particular fan of War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, either.

Still, this was the last book that I had to read in a box set of children’s classics that I own and so now that it’s done, at least I can tick it off. And actually, I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting to, and I can totally see why it’s considered a classic – even if being told a story by a horse made it difficult for me to suspend my disbelief.

I also thought it was interesting to read this from an animal rights perspective, although I’d argue that these days, we rarely “need” to use horses at all. Sewell did a great job of showing the different attitudes that different types of people have towards animals, including by showing that some people can be assholes. All in all, I guess it was pretty good.