Review and Giveaway: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas on Sesame Street!

By Lillian Jaine
Illustrated by Joe Mathieu
Available now from Sourcebooks
Review copy

I reviewed two Peanuts books from Put Me In the Story earlier this week.  However, I also personalized a third book for my cousin Grant: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas on Sesame Street! (By the way, this book is currently on sale for $5 off.)

You can customize this book with the recipient's name, a dedication, and a hi-res photo.  After the story, there is a cookie recipe (by Cookie Monster, natch) and a custom ornament that you can cut out and hang on your tree.  You can double-check that everything is done right in the book builder engine before ordering your copy.

My comments about the quality of these books stand: The pages aren't as glossy as some, probably due to the custom printing, but they are a nice weight.  The bright colors print well.  There's plenty of white space in the name tags and dedications for longer names.  I also like that the name is used throughout the story, not just on the cover.

Click to see full-size!

Grant is a total Sesame Street fiend, so I know that he'd love this book even if it weren't personalized to him.  That's just an extra touch to make it a great gift.  I'm excited to slide this book under the tree for him.

Enter to win the Personalized Christmas Book Bundle from Put Me In The Story!
Ends Nov. 15 at 11:59 p.m. EST
Enter for a chance to win the Personalized Christmas Book Budle Giveaway, including personalized copies of:

• Santa Is Coming To My House
• ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas on Sesame Street!
• Our Little Deer by Sandra Magsamen

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Review and Giveaway: Personalized Peanuts Books

The books from Put Me In the Story allow you to create personalized books for young readers.  Two of their newest books are perfect gifts before you take your family to see The Peanuts Movie (which you can do by winning the $30 movie gift card by entering at the end of the post).  Those books are MY FIRST PEANUTS: ABC - An Alphabet Adventure and MY FIRST PEANUTS: 123 - A Counting Adventure.  Both use text and pictures by Peanuts' creator Charles Schulz.

I loved that the book builder engine let me browse through the book while I created it.  I could input who I was giving the books to, who the books were from, and include a dedication and optional hi-res photo.  MY FIRST PEANUTS: 123 - A Counting Adventure also lets you input the recipient's age.  I personalized these for my first cousins once removed Zane and Max.

The resulting book has no dust jacket, on which your mileage may very.  I liked it because the first thing I do when passing books to my younger relatives is take off the jacket so that it doesn't get ruined.  The pages aren't as glossy as some, probably due to the custom printing, but they are a nice weight.  The bright colors print well.  There's plenty of white space in the name tags and dedications for longer names.  I also like that the name is used throughout the story, not just on the cover.

MY FIRST PEANUTS: 123 - A Counting Adventure counts one through ten using iconic Peanuts scenes, and ends with a custom poster that you can cut out.

I rather like 8, to no one's surprise.

MY FIRST PEANUTS: ABC - An Alphabet Adventure illustrates each letter with alliterative sentences.  It also ends with a custom poster that can be cut out.

They even did well with q!

Both of these books make great gifts.  From now through Saturday (10/31), you can use the code SNOOPY to get $10 off of both MY FIRST PEANUTS: ABC - An Alphabet Adventure and MY FIRST PEANUTS: 123 - A Counting Adventure.  That makes each personalized book $19.99.

Win a $30 Movie Gift Card so you & your family can see The Peanuts Movie!

Winner will be notified on November 2.

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Movie Monday: The Final Girls

The instant I saw the trailer, I was hooked.  I love the entire genre of horror comedy.  The horror is gentle enough that I don't wuss out, and the comedy is generally based on a love of the material.

Plus, The Final Girls had a fantastic cast.  Malin Ackerman, Alia Shawkat, Nina Dobrev, and Taissa Farminga have all been in good stuff.  Many of the male actors were also familiar names.

A genre I loved featuring a good cast meant I bought a ticket on one of the few nights my local theater showed The Final Girls.  One good thing about living in a big city is having local theaters that can afford to show indie movies.



The Final Girls setup is simple: Max (Taissa Farminga) goes to an anniversary screening of Camp Bloodbath, the movie that made her late mother (Malin Ackerman) a scream queen.  When a fire starts in the theater, Max and her friends escape through the screen and find themselves in the movie.  Eventually, they decide that they have to make it to the end of the movie and kill Billy.

I am not sure The Final Girls was the best choice for the movie's title.  It made me expect more of a feminist message (although the movie does have feminist leanings).  What it does have is a strong emotional core.  Max's relationship with her mother's character is beautifully done.  She wants to be able to at least save this small part of her mother.

The chills are done pretty well too.  Billy's scary theme was surprisingly effective.  I felt like I would've enjoyed watching the cheesy original, since there were still several scares in the comedic take.  I found the ending extremely fitting for a movie that mocked horror tropes when it wasn't serving as a touching paean to grief.

The Final Girls is currently available as video on demand from most retailers.  It will be available to rent from Redbox starting November 3rd.

Review: Material Girls

By Elaine Dimopoulos
Available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt BFYR
Review copy

In the future, creative industries like fashion and video game design are staffed by teenagers (hired at thirteen) because everyone knows that young people know what is cool.  Marla Klein and Ivy Wilde both rose to the top of their fields, but now their teens are almost over and their afraid of becoming obsolosers.  When Marla loses her prestigious position and Ivy gets threatened by a new pop starlet, the girls start seeing the downside to their world and getting the gumption to fight back.

I found that MATERIAL GIRLS took awhile to kick into gear.  I think it was a mix of two things.  Elaine Dimopoulos built a dystopian that took a lot of set up to explain and ground the setting, and both girls start out shallow and unquestioning in order to make their journey more satisfying.  I found that the plot didn't really move until Marla and Ivy met each other.

I thought MATERIAL GIRLS was full of good ideas.  The way it mocks trends and commercialism reminds me of Scott Westerfeld's slicker SO YESTERDAY.  I liked the way the girls' revolution came about, and that all the leaders had different ideas about what they wanted to achieve and how.  I liked the messy, slightly ambiguous ending, that doesn't provide the story with unearned resolution.  As the slow start showed, the execution could use some work.

MATERIAL GIRLS is the first novel by Dimopoulos, and I think it proves she has talent.  If I were on a court picking the next big thing, I don't think I'd pass this book on to the next level.  I would, however, encourage the artist to keep submitting ideas and honing her craft.  There's a good foundation here.

Review: Tell the Story to Its End

By Simon P. Clark
Available now from St. Martin's Griffin (Macmillan)
Review copy

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” ― G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton's famous quote offers one look at the way stories interact with childhood.  TELL THE STORY TO THE END focuses on the other side.  It is not a horror novel where things jump out at the protagonist or monsters rise up out of oozing slime.  It is a horror novel that says you might not get your happy ending.

I was hooked from the title alone.  It could be a positive affirmation, but combined with the smooky and shadowy cover, it is delightfully sinister.  The book opens with Oli, a young boy, speaking with Eren, a strange creature that wants him to tell stories.  Each chapter opens with more of this ongoing conversation, then flashes back to how it came to happen.  There are stories within stories, as Oli gathers more to tell to Eren.  Perhaps the most important is Oli's own story, the one he has to seek out because all the adults in his life are lying to him.  There is something going on with his father, but no one will tell him.

The sense of creeping doom is well captured by debut author Simon P. Clark.  The opening makes it clear that things are going to come to a head, but he doesn't rest on that self evident truth.  The world of Oli's dreams starts seeping into his waking hours.  Whatever the reader believes is or isn't actually happening, it is clear that Oli has gotten himself into trouble and is only digging deeper.

TELL THE STORY TO ITS END is a lovely little horror story about a boy falling prey to the danger lurking just upstairs.  He notices more than the adults want him to, and at the same time they fail to notice enough.  As everyone tries to help Oli with his struggles moving to the countryside and missing his dad, no one suspects something more sinister lurking.  This is a tale to keep you up at night.