Huntington Public Library Adult Reading Challenge

  Totally picked this book because of the cover art. I did not realize it was a children's (10-14) book, but it was surprisingly dark and edgy? It's Swedish originally, maybe the kids are just built differently over there. Either way, this was a cool read. I loved the main character. I do wish there was more world building; the descriptions in the beginning are so colorful and fast, but they drop off pretty quickly, which is a shame because the dark landscape was so fascinating.

  I loved this middle grade novel just recently translated from Japanese. The tone, the humor, the characters and the effortless interweaving of ghost story, present day and fairly tale. It inspired to me to dig deeper into the author's works and I discovered that she wrote "The Marvelous Village Veiled in Mist" which has been translated but I can't find a copy! This book inspired the animated film "Spirited Away" and excited to discover that it is being shown at Cinema Arts in a few weeks. There was something so stylish and yet grounded and funny about Kashiwaba's story and, of course, there is a wonderful cat.