Ten Second Reviews

Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties

By Arrol Gellner

Storybook Style, the rambunctious evocation of medieval Europe in American housing, was born in the early 1920s and almost forgotten by the late 1930s. It took its inspiration from the Hollywood sets that enthralled Americans of the period and that still appeal to our jaded modern eye. Half timbered and turreted, pinnacled and portcullised, these houses owed their fanciful bravura to architects and builders with theatrical flair, fine craftsmanship, and humor. In Storybook Style, architectural information enhances the stunning color pictures by Bungalow and Painted Ladies photographer Doug Keister to impart a wealth of information and enjoyment.

So this was a little off the beaten path, in the sense that it's an architectural coffee table book but I checked it out because of an interview with the creator of McMansion Hell, which I enjoy perusing quite a bit.  I'd never heard of Storybook Style, but I was immediately charmed.  

The problem with Storybook Style is that it is both expensive to keep up and not well suited to mass production, so there aren't so many examples and pictures that I would have liked.  Don't get me wrong, there's like, eight chapters, but each of them spends a lot of time on just two or three houses, and in comparison with, for example, bungalow books, which are dense with historical information and pictures, this felt much more minimal.  I do like pictures the most though, since I'm not an architectural student, so I liked that the ratio of pictures to text was so high, I just wanted more and more pictures.  More fantastical creations!

That being said, Storybook houses are pretty great, and we should have more of them.  I think I may be able to convince my husband to convert our front door into a faux-medieval style one, and from then on it's just a slippery slope to mythical creature iron sconces, cobblestone paths and a hedge maze!

The Witch Boy

By Molly Ostertag

In thirteen-year-old Aster's family, all the girls are raised to be witches, while boys grow up to be shapeshifters. Anyone who dares cross those lines is exiled. Unfortunately for Aster, he still hasn't shifted ... and he's still fascinated by witchery, no matter how forbidden it might be. When a mysterious danger threatens the other boys, Aster knows he can help -- as a witch. It will take the encouragement of a new friend, the non-magical and non-conforming Charlie, to convince Aster to try practicing his skills. And it will require even more courage to save his family... and be truly himself.

I don't know why so many of my recent books have witches and wizards in the titles, although I do like a good fantasy!  This one, eh, not worth the time.  It's a graphic novel, and geared towards (I assume) younger readers, like middle-grade, given the style, characters, and plot.  

It felt pretty simplistic to me, that Aster wants to break out of the gender-specific roles he's been assigned, only to discover that he can help, if he uses his "women's" magic, and the bad guy turns out to be (SPOILER!) a similarly situated man who was denied the right to use women's magic and turned to the dark side as a result.  Nothing too ground-breaking, although I guess it's fine to re-hash older tropes in new formats for new readers.

Honestly? Fairly forgettable for me.