From Goodreads:Eoin Colfer describes his new book, Artemis Fowl, as "Die Hard with fairies." He's not far wrong.
Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl is the most ingenious criminal mastermind in history. With two trusty sidekicks in tow, he hatches a cunning plot to divest the fairyfolk of their pot of gold. Of course, he isn't foolish enough to believe in all that "gold at the end of the rainbow" nonsense. Rather, he knows that the only way to separate the little people from their stash is to kidnap one of them and wait for the ransom to arrive. But when the time comes to put his plan into action, he doesn't count on the appearance of the extrasmall, pointy-eared Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon (Lower Elements Police Reconnaisance) Unit--and her senior officer, Commander Root, a man (sorry, elf) who will stop at nothing to get her back.
It's pretty clear that I have a passion for reading and I've been worrying about how to share that passion with my children for years. Since my first (and thus far, only) baby is a boy, I've started to keep my eye open for books that might appeal to 8-18 year old boys since that seems to be the hardest age to find good books for. My little brother loved Harry Potter but pretty much lost interest in reading after the series ended because very little interested him after that and books sort of became lost to him. Sad.
He did mention liking Artemis Fowl when he was younger so I picked it up.
I was ridiculously and pleasantly surprised by Artemis Fowl. I was expecting a main character much more like Harry Potter in temperament so I was pretty surprised that Artemis is a rather cold, calculating, nerdy, unsentimental criminal mastermind. It says something about the author, Eoin Colfer, that despite these rather unfuzzy personality traits, I still loved Artemis and wanted him to succeed.
The story is a great combination of fairy folklore (fairies! Leprechauns! Trolls!), modern technology (command centers! Night vision goggles! tracking devices!), and general good old fashioned evil genius. I started this book with an 11 year old boy in mind and ended up losing myself in it and just enjoying it without sparing another thought for whether or not a 6th grade Wes would enjoy it.
It's definitely going on my "Boy List" and I'm excited to see if the rest of the series measures up!
2 comments:
Artemis Fowl is definitely a lot of fun and I too was surprised by the more "cold" protagonist. I've had the second book sitting on my nightstand for months but it keeps getting passed over for other books or homework. One of these days I'll dive into it.
My 9 year old son has loved the series, plowing through all of the books as fast as he could.
loved the whole series, read them outloud w/Rick and will read them w/Tanner when he gets a few years older. I need to be your friend on Goodreads. And I need to update my books on there.
Post a Comment