Post-Potter Depression 2

I was going to write in the last post where I got the phrase Post-Potter Depression, but I decided to make it another post. Here's where I found the phrase. I've already tried out several of the books they list and let me tell you, some of them are great and some stink. Or maybe you have to be nine years old and less discerning to like it. But hey, the great thing about Harry Potter was that the books stretched across age groups, liked by young and old. Right after HP7 came out, my realtor (a man in his 50s) came over for us to sign some paperwork and looked pretty worn out, having been up late reading. Juvenile Fiction isn't just for tweens.

The books that I thought were "meh" or stunk, I'll briefly cover here. But the ones that were great merit their own post. For a better description of "meh", try saying it with one lip curled up and eyes slightly closed. See what I mean? Nothing great. "Peter and the Star Catchers" by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson comes across as something Disney came up with to break into the lucrative juvenile fantasy market. Along those same lines is "The Kingdom Keepers" by Ridley Pearson and "Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg" by Gail Carson Levine. Yes, the same Levine who wrote the wonderful "Ella Enchanted" and the not-as-wonderful "Fairest." I'm reading the first Fairy Dust book to my girls and they are enjoying it, but as for me? Meh. Another book is "The Alchemyst" by Michael Scott. This book is everywhere! I saw piles of these stacked up at Wal-Mart. When I read it? Meh. It just felt too forced, like it was trying too hard to be good.

Here's a series of books that had potential for greatness, but made me frustrated at the end. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman had me completely hooked. I couldn't get enough. Then I read the third book. It was the most blatant, hate-filled, anti-religious propaganda that I barely finished it. I wanted to find out what happened to the characters, but it was no fun reading Pullman's personal beef about Christianity. Man, take your issues to another forum, not a novel supposedly geared towards children! And now I find out that they're making a movie from the first book, "The Golden Compass." I'm still excited for it because that book was still great, but I wonder how they'll treat the third book.

The website I gave you in the first paragraph had lots of other great books, ones that I'll post about later. They need their own space to be praised. And there's some seriously good stuff.