attackfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
attackfish) wrote2014-07-09 08:51 am
attackfish) wrote2014-07-09 08:51 am
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Doll Bones by Holy Black: as the Queen Comands
So I guess I’m on a little bit of a Holly Black kick. The local library has all of her books, and I’m lazy enough that I’m not going to go looking for another author before exhausting all of the ones I know I like first. Also, as I may have mentioned, I’m trying to read more Middle Grade books for actual career reasons, so Doll Bones, being both by Holly Black and Middle Grade, it is.
For as long as they have been friends, Poppy, Zach, and Alice have been playing the same sprawling, never ending game of pretend together, and when they aren’t playing it, they have their heads together planning it, deciding where their dolls and action figures will go next. Overseeing it all is a very old and very valuable porcelain doll that they have dubbed The Queen. It’s the Queen who decides, after Zach’s father decides it’s time for him to grow up and throws away his dolls, to take things into her own hands. hen Poppy tries to take her out of the glass cabinet she has lived in or as long as the three friends can remember, she begins to talk to Poppy in dreams. Is Poppy just dreaming, is she crazy, is she pretending, or is the Queen really talking to her? And if the Queen really is talking to Poppy, what does she want, and is she a good queen, or an evil one?
Doll Bones packs a whole lot into a small amount of space, magic, childhood, growing up, flawed and frightened parents, the change that childhood friendships, based as much on proximity and shared history as anything else, undergo as the people within them grow, parental disapproval, and disapproval of one’s parents, murder, loss, and leaving home.
I think I enjoyed this more than Holly Black’s other books. Actually, I know I did. This book is so much gentler than the Young Adult books of hers that I’m more familiar with. That’s actually... Nice for a change. It’s not that there aren’t dark things in Doll Bones, but there’s an attitude to the narrative that is, if not more idealistic, at least more optimistic. In Black’s YA books, her characters are always on the brink, before the story begins, during it, and often, still at the end. In Doll Bones, her characters are also on the brink during most of the story, but they pull away from it at the end. There is the notion there that there is more to life than the cliff’s edge and the ravine below. Most of Holly Black’s stories are about how everything is bad, and magic makes everything worse. In Doll Bones, magic gives one little girl the power to reach out, and three kids answer that call.
The point to Doll Bones is not the magic however, and the magic and world building are in fact relatively bland. It’s instead Poppy, Zach, and Alice’s parallel journeys out of childhood. This isn’t a coming of age story. It’s not an undersized YA novel about too young protagonists. It’s not about becoming an adult. It’s about becoming an adolescent, and entering that liminal place between childhood and adulthood, and knowing that soon, everything these three kids know and are will suddenly be in flux. Leaving that state of flux behind for adulthood is in some ways less scary than entering it, and Black understands this, and deals with it with affection and kindness. I found myself appreciating Black’s kindness towards her characters in Doll Bones all the more because I honestly cared about these three (four) kids, and honestly felt for them. One of the ways in which Black showcases the three protagonists’ impending adolescence is through romance. Alice has a crush on Zach, and Zach is oblivious, but Poppy isn’t, and Poppy is scared. She is more scared of her friend’s crush on her other friend than she is of the ghost who speaks to her in her dreams. Black deftly portrays that transition when the close sibling bond you’ve shared for years stops being all you’ve ever wanted and suddenly starts to look like it’s in the way of something else. Even more deftly, she brings to life Poppy’s real fear of being left behind.
I did not find Doll Bones that spooky, though I have a feeling that I would have when I was ten (then again, when I was little, Bunnicula, an adorable book about a bunny vampire that drinks vegetable juice, scared the crap out of me, so I’m not the best measure of that sort of thing). The summary above and the summary on the jacket flap were about as spooky as the book ever got, so if that doesn’t scare you (or the kid you want to give the book to), you’re good. There is one fairly scary scene it the utterly non-magical danger of a creepy man on a bus who was too interested in the girls, however.
I’m very glad (and I don’t think this is a spoiler, since this is a Holly Black novel) that Black makes it explicit that the magic was real, that the Queen really was haunted. The way Black did it was also very satisfying, (an what follows is a bit spoilery) giving us the story of a little girl who just wanted to be laid to rest with her family, and maybe, just maybe, let somebody else know what happened to her. Letting Poppy, Zach, and Alice be a part of that, letting them see magic in the world that isn’t good, and isn’t bad, it just is, might help them remember as they grow up that not all of growing up is about “giving up and growing bitter.”
This is sweet, sometimes scary story that kids and adults who like a little spookiness can enjoy. Really one of my very favorite Holly Black books.
Holly Black can be found online at her website, blackholly.com, or on livejournal, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
blackholly.
For as long as they have been friends, Poppy, Zach, and Alice have been playing the same sprawling, never ending game of pretend together, and when they aren’t playing it, they have their heads together planning it, deciding where their dolls and action figures will go next. Overseeing it all is a very old and very valuable porcelain doll that they have dubbed The Queen. It’s the Queen who decides, after Zach’s father decides it’s time for him to grow up and throws away his dolls, to take things into her own hands. hen Poppy tries to take her out of the glass cabinet she has lived in or as long as the three friends can remember, she begins to talk to Poppy in dreams. Is Poppy just dreaming, is she crazy, is she pretending, or is the Queen really talking to her? And if the Queen really is talking to Poppy, what does she want, and is she a good queen, or an evil one?
Doll Bones packs a whole lot into a small amount of space, magic, childhood, growing up, flawed and frightened parents, the change that childhood friendships, based as much on proximity and shared history as anything else, undergo as the people within them grow, parental disapproval, and disapproval of one’s parents, murder, loss, and leaving home.
I think I enjoyed this more than Holly Black’s other books. Actually, I know I did. This book is so much gentler than the Young Adult books of hers that I’m more familiar with. That’s actually... Nice for a change. It’s not that there aren’t dark things in Doll Bones, but there’s an attitude to the narrative that is, if not more idealistic, at least more optimistic. In Black’s YA books, her characters are always on the brink, before the story begins, during it, and often, still at the end. In Doll Bones, her characters are also on the brink during most of the story, but they pull away from it at the end. There is the notion there that there is more to life than the cliff’s edge and the ravine below. Most of Holly Black’s stories are about how everything is bad, and magic makes everything worse. In Doll Bones, magic gives one little girl the power to reach out, and three kids answer that call.
The point to Doll Bones is not the magic however, and the magic and world building are in fact relatively bland. It’s instead Poppy, Zach, and Alice’s parallel journeys out of childhood. This isn’t a coming of age story. It’s not an undersized YA novel about too young protagonists. It’s not about becoming an adult. It’s about becoming an adolescent, and entering that liminal place between childhood and adulthood, and knowing that soon, everything these three kids know and are will suddenly be in flux. Leaving that state of flux behind for adulthood is in some ways less scary than entering it, and Black understands this, and deals with it with affection and kindness. I found myself appreciating Black’s kindness towards her characters in Doll Bones all the more because I honestly cared about these three (four) kids, and honestly felt for them. One of the ways in which Black showcases the three protagonists’ impending adolescence is through romance. Alice has a crush on Zach, and Zach is oblivious, but Poppy isn’t, and Poppy is scared. She is more scared of her friend’s crush on her other friend than she is of the ghost who speaks to her in her dreams. Black deftly portrays that transition when the close sibling bond you’ve shared for years stops being all you’ve ever wanted and suddenly starts to look like it’s in the way of something else. Even more deftly, she brings to life Poppy’s real fear of being left behind.
I did not find Doll Bones that spooky, though I have a feeling that I would have when I was ten (then again, when I was little, Bunnicula, an adorable book about a bunny vampire that drinks vegetable juice, scared the crap out of me, so I’m not the best measure of that sort of thing). The summary above and the summary on the jacket flap were about as spooky as the book ever got, so if that doesn’t scare you (or the kid you want to give the book to), you’re good. There is one fairly scary scene it the utterly non-magical danger of a creepy man on a bus who was too interested in the girls, however.
I’m very glad (and I don’t think this is a spoiler, since this is a Holly Black novel) that Black makes it explicit that the magic was real, that the Queen really was haunted. The way Black did it was also very satisfying, (an what follows is a bit spoilery) giving us the story of a little girl who just wanted to be laid to rest with her family, and maybe, just maybe, let somebody else know what happened to her. Letting Poppy, Zach, and Alice be a part of that, letting them see magic in the world that isn’t good, and isn’t bad, it just is, might help them remember as they grow up that not all of growing up is about “giving up and growing bitter.”
This is sweet, sometimes scary story that kids and adults who like a little spookiness can enjoy. Really one of my very favorite Holly Black books.
Holly Black can be found online at her website, blackholly.com, or on livejournal, as
blackholly.