Lit Literature Gang

By Marlow Tracy For many of my elementary school years, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart was my absolute favorite book. It had everything: solvable puzzles, engaging narration, quirky characters, and an adventurous plotline. Recently, I gave the book a re-read to see if it actually lived up to my childhood self’s admiration. The answer is a definite yes. The Mysterious Benedict Society begins when Reynie Muldoon, an orphan with a knack for solving puzzles, finds an advertisement in the newspaper that leads him to take a series of mind-boggling tests. Upon completion, he learns that he, along with four other children, has been recruited by a man called Mr. Benedict to infiltrate the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, or L.I.V.E, an academic institute with seemingly sinister intent. He joins Sticky Washington, a runaway who remembers everything he reads, Kate Wetherall, an acrobat with a red bucket, and Constance contraire,...

By Kate A      Capturing the Devil by Kerri Maniscalco is the last book in the four-book Stalking Jack the Ripper series. I wrote a review of the third book in the series, Escaping from Houdini , in the beginning of September before this book came out, but I haven't been able to read it until recently.      This book is about a forensic scientist named Audrey Rose Wadsworth, who works with her uncle and his apprentice, Thomas Cresswell, who is also Audrey's fiancee. The book takes place in January and February of 1889, and it begins right after Audrey, her uncle, and Thomas arrived in New York City on a ship that sailed from London. Audrey and Thomas plan to get married while they are in New York, but their wedding was crashed by a woman named Ms. Whitehall, who claims to be betrothed to Thomas. They later found out that Thomas's father had arranged for him to marry Ms. Whitehall without either Audrey or Thomas knowing. Meanwhile, Audrey and Thomas...

Due to popular opinion among my classmates at the time, I expected The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster to be a "really awesome good book" as a 5th grader several years ago. I read it, understood some of it, did not love it, and forgot it. The older-style writing bored me very quickly and I had thought back then that to fully enjoy a book it had to be fifteen years or younger. Now, going back to this children's classic, I can now comprehend the genius world-building and execution of The Phantom Tollbooth . Milo is a normal boy, who is extremely bored one day when he finds a strange package addressed to him that he does not know the contents of. He finds a tollbooth that he has to put together inside as well as a small electric car. He finishes the tollbooth, steps inside, and is immediately transported to the Lands Beyond. He finds himself suddenly driving on a road, an activity that he enjoys and thus continues doing. Little does he know that he is about to make new ...

  Prisoner of cell 25 is the first book in a great series. I have recently re-read the book, so here is my review:   Summary: Michael Vey is a teenager with the power to send high voltage shocks through anything he touches. This is a secret that only his mom, and his best friend Ostin know. He accidentally reveals this secret, however, when bullies push him to far, and force him to use his power. The bullies get knocked out by this, but his crush is there and witnesses it all. When they figure out that they both have powers (she can read minds), they do research to find out what is wrong with them. They find out that an evil company did experiments on children, and is hunting them down, which sets them on a wild adventure.  Review: I have to say, reading this book again gave me so many flashbacks to sixth grade, when I first fell in love with this book. I miss reading books that I like for hours every day, and racing my friends to see who could finish a series first ...

By Marlow Tracy (no spoilers) I recently finished reading And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, which I found to have too many murders and not enough clues. Despite the questionable amount of death, I liked the writing style of the book, so I picked up another well-known novel by the same author: Murder on the Orient Express . The story begins with the famous detective Hercule Poirot, whose journey on the Orient Express takes an unfortunate turn when one of the passengers is found stabbed to death with his compartment locked from the inside. With the train stranded on a snowdrift, Poirot must work quickly to find out which of his cabin-mates is the murderer using a series of obscure clues. Before starting the novel, the concept of a story taking place on a train intrigued me. The confined setting creates character interactions that otherwise might never take place, and the lack of need for description forces the author to focus on advancing the plot and includin...

By Kate Welcome back to the Lit Literature Gang blog! As a kid, I loved reading, and I had many favorite things to read, so I thought I would share some of the books I liked when I was younger. Leave a comment if you have read any of these books or liked any other books when you were a kid. Rainbow Magic Fairy Books by Daisy Meadows       The Rainbow Magic Fairy series contains several hundred books, and they are divided into sets of seven books. Each of the sets is a different category of fairies, such as animal fairies or color fairies. I didn't get the chance to read all of the books, but I read a lot of them, and I would sometimes read an entire set in one day. All of the books are about two girls named Rachel and Kirsten, and in each one, the girls run into a problem caused by the main antagonist, Jack Frost, and a different fairy helps them solve the problem. I loved these books because it was exciting to see where Rachel and Kirsten's adventures wo...

The 19th century was one of the most paramount time periods in Western literature. Russian literature from this time period produced world-renowned classic authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, and, the center of today's review, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Book 1 of The Idiot  is a classic that I had a meaningful time reading and slowly understanding. Someone who recommended me this book told me that the thing with books of the same genre as The Idiot is that embedded within the story are such deep comments of philosophical nature and such accurate representations of society that you feel like a completely different person after finally coming to terms with what the author is actually saying.  The Idiot follows Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young, good-hearted yet slightly dull and gullible Russian prince who, at the start of the story, is returning from a Swiss clinic that the book suggests he has spent the last few years at for curing his idiocy and epilepsy. He arrive...