A Little Piece of Childhood

I'm usually very stingy when it comes to praising books. "Too mushy. Too cliche. Too much a rip-off of that other book. IF I READ ABOUT ONE MORE GOSHDARNED LOVE TRIANGLE I WILL START BOYCOTTING YA FICTION." So what I love is when an unassuming book creeps on me, bites me on the ankle and turns out to be an excellent book.

That being said, the latest ankle-biting book I've read has gone above and beyond excellent.

 When I picked this up a few days ago, I merely gave it a cursory glance and mind-yawned at the thought of another Alex Flinn fairy-tale retelling. True, she had written A Kiss In Time, which is possibly the most adorable modern take on Sleeping Beauty out there, but she had also written Beastly, which was in and of itself, well, truly beastly. So though I've seen new Alex Flinn books published the past few years, none of them ever found themselves in my hands.

But, I am a sucker for Rapunzel, and so, for lack of another book to read, I purchased Towering.

Boy, was I in for a surprise.

The story takes a unique turn on the fairytale retelling route, as it starts out more macabre than magical. I'm talking small town up in the boonies, no cell service, long-missing kids, ghost of one the aforementioned kids crawling through the bedroom window, and your good ol' spinster old lady who lives by herself. So obviously with all this, you'd wonder how the story would ever get back to a blonde girl in a tower.

But it does. I can't say much because it'll spoil the whole story, but it is truly an amazing modern retelling. It's witty. It's mysterious. It's romantic. It's one of the few modern fairytales that teeters right on the edge of this world and another.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I saw that my Disney calendar was flipped to today's date, and today's picture just so happened to be one of my favorite scenes in Disney history:

The Hunchback of Notre Dame probably has the most underrated score of all time. Up till the 1998 Oscars, every Disney film of the 90's has been nominated for Best Score (mostly due to the talent of one Alan Menken). Then, mysteriously, HoND was released with nary a nomination its way. Out There should've been nominated for Best Song, at least. Tom Hulce's voice is angelical; I was so disappointed to learn that he had retired from the business. But anyway, this frame of Quasimodo standing on the balcony, belting his lungs out, probably ranks #2 on my favorite Disney scenes ever (1st would be Hercules belting his lungs out in front of a glorious sunset, and 3rd would obviously be the lantern scene from Tangled). 

Back to the topic of books though, I'm afraid I've only added to my to-read pile, rather than actually....reading them. I'm actually running out of places for them. Maybe I should go and find myself a nice tower.