Our First Ever Contest

 

This contest is for our young readers, ages 7 – 12.    March is the month associated with St.Patrick’s Day and with Ireland.  To win this contest you must write a one-page paper on why we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.  All entries must be turned in at Parkside Books store by March 27.  Be sure to put your name, age, and telephone number on your entry.    The Parkside Writers Group will read the entries and choose the winner.    The author, Duane Porter, is providing a copy of Molly O’Mally and the Leprechaun  for the contest winner.           Store Events in February March (Thursday Evenings) 7:00 P.M. Parkside Writers Group Call (816) 224-9082 for exact dates March 12, (Wednesday) 10:00 A.M. Morning Book Club March 21, (Friday) 9:30 A.M. Story Lady

 

Special Discount; buy 1 get 1 free

We are clearing our shelves.  While they last we will sell titles by these authors at a special discount.   This includes hardback editions as well as paperback.

V.C. Andrews

Sandra Brown

Tom Clancy

Mary Higgins Clark

Robin Cook

Sue Grafton

John Grisham

 Jonathan Kellerman

Stephen King

Dean Koontz

Robert Ludlum

Sidney Sheldon

Danielle Steele

This Month’s Spotlight

By Mat King

www.bookrocker.com

  The Neverending Story by Michael Ende  

Anyone who was sentient in the 80’s remembers the theme song from the movie… Sing with me now: “Neverending Storrrrrryyyyyyyyyy hhhahaaaahaaahaaaha”. Just a quick note, this is originally a German story so don’t let the title of “Die Unendliche Geschichte” scare you off, it’s just the German title. I never knew it was based on an actual book until I ran across it one day while strolling the aisles. I loved the movie as a kid, so…

Journey to Fantastica-Where Dreams Become Reality Unicorns, dragons, sprites, will-o’-the-wisps: the inhabitants of an enchanted world. And into this world-through the pages of an old book-ventures Bastian, a lonely boy of ten or twelve. But Fantastica is slowly decaying, its Childlike Empress dying. Only a real human being can set things right by giving the Empress a new name. Bastian takes up the challenge, and finds himself crossing the Swamps of Sadness and the Silver Mountains, meeting sorcerers and giants, bats and night-hobs, gnomes and racing snails, as he journeys bravely toward the Ivory Tower. Bastian’s quest is filled with all the wonders of myth and fairy tale. It is a fantasy adventure that will capture your heart-and recapture the magical dreams of childhood.

That’s the back cover synopsis of the story. It’s pretty factual, I have to admit based on that summary I wouldn’t have picked the book up. I would have passed over it as a fantasy story for young children. That’s not entirely wrong, as it is in fact a story with children in mind.

I have to point out that this book has me a little stumped. It uses words, ideas, and imagery that would be lost (in my opinion) on a young child.  However the overall plot line is fairly complex, and definatly intended to fire up the readers thoughts and imagination.  Yet, it’s undeniably a children’s story.

The first half of the book flows pretty well with the movie, but once the plot that was covered in the movie ended, there was still half left!

This second half of the book is a lot different than the first half. It reminds me a lot of a book I read a while back titled “A Voyage to Arcturus”. It’s very cerebral. A lot of thinking, and philosophy, all wrapped into a fictional story. A lot of it is a stretch, and you have to be able to just accept some things in order to get through the book.

One interesting thing I found is there are 26 chapters. The first letter of the first word in each chapter decends down the alphabet. (Chapter one begins with “All”, Chapter two “Because”, and so on..)

This is a pretty good story for all ages, and I could definitely see this as a story you could read to your children, but be prepared to clarify on a lot of words and ideas.  Nothing scandalous, but there are a lot of words that aren’t really part of today’s vernacular.