Jennifer TraftonCritiques

Imaginative!
Fantastic!
Magical!
Other than these words it's mostly what-did-I-just-read kind of book to me. I guess young children, especially those with exceptional imagination and never-ending flow of creative juice will appreciate reading it. If you have a child who's more interest in building their own world than to go to school, make friends and 'fit in', you can read this book together and maybe you can go on adventures in their world to understand them better to raise them right.

Well that was fun. ?áI
"Calm discussion, an honest facing of the facts, and a firm rejection of all unnecessary adjectives and adverbs -- that's the way to get to the truth of things.""½

Cute, clever story of a sleeping giant and all the trouble he caused.

Cute story.

I grew up on fairy tales, so I love a good fairy tale, but this one just gave me nothing special. The author is a good writer and can turn a funny sentence, which was really the best thing abut the book. And I did like the idea of a giant sleeping under the island. I am interested to see what she writes next.½

Loved it from the first page, just a really funny adventure. I hope the author writes more soon!

Ten-year-old Persimonny Smudge lives on an island with a mountain in the middle of it that mysteriously rises up and down. One day she overhears a secret – that there is a giant asleep under the mountain! Persimmony sets out to persuade everyone else that the giant is there and should not be woken up. Along the way she encounters many strange people – the Leaf Eaters, the Rumblebumps and Worvil the Worrier.
This is a charming, fairy tale-like story with an engaging heroine. The writing in this book contains a lot of subtle humour which would be appreciated by adults and so this book makes a good read-aloud for ages 6 and up. For solo reading it is more suited to readers aged 10 and up.½

Life has, quite suddenly, become far more exciting for Persimmony Smudge. She was just chasing her had into the woods when she was set upon by a poisonous tortoise [uneducated readers, beware, they are nothing to laugh at] and forced to hide in a hollow log where she overhears a plot by the Leafeaters to tunnel under the king's castle and steal gold. At the castle, where she tells the king of the plot, she learns even more distressing news: the mountain at the center of the island--which rises until noon and falls until midnight, and always has, as long as anyone knows--is actually the stomach of a giant, sleeping beneath the surface. Now she has to prove that the giant exists, prevent a war and keep the rebels from waking up the giant and possibly killing them all. She's just not sure quite how to do this.

This is a novel that I have picked up several [dozen] times and put down one less than several [dozen] times. The main reason is because the plot--girl saves kingdom from unlikely doom of waking giant--wasn't sold to me by the book flap. Let's just say I was underwhelmed. And then a very good friend of mine, who happens to be a reader and a teacher, absolutely demanded that I read it. So I did.And I regret nothing.

Aside from not buying it the first time I found it. But that's beside the point.

As I finished it last night, it came to me that it felt familiar. Not in a unpleasant or cliche way, but more in the familiar just met an old friend kind of way. I stopped and had to think a few moments until I realized why it felt like this. Mount Majestic was just as sweet and simple and fantastic as The Tale of Despereaux and Howl's Moving Castle. Inasmuch, I'm stealing a phrase I used in describing Howl's. This book is filled with wholesome charm. Wholesome charm--this book makes you feel good when you read it. There's no didactic moral, no forced message, just a wonderful story of a girl going on an adventure with friends and a kingdom being saved from giants and people being people. If you learn that maybe you should take your time and maybe be a touch more courteous, there's nothing wrong with that.

Your main character here is, as the summation would imply, Persimmony. She starts the ball rolling, and even when not much is going on, she's constantly reviewing everything and revising how it should be. How she can save the world, how she could be brilliant, how this, that and the other thing could or should be different. Being someone who tends to live internally, I can appreciate how a lot of her thoughts go. [However, I'm not the daughter of a basketweaver in the forest, and I expect that daughters of accountants in suburbia don't have quite the break she might. Especially since we don't have poisonous tortoises or giving pots]. She's a bit of a dizzy dreamer, but completely endearing. Oddly enough, so is Worvil, her cohort in the trips. He's a little potato of a man whose worst fears are founded on things that might be, and lives in the uttermost terror of things that haven't even happened. But somehow, like Persimmony, you like him. Then there is King Lucas [the Loftier], Guafnoggle, Theodore, Persimmony's family, and the Leafeaters. There are too many wonderful people to communicate their importance here.

But there is a glossary in the back of the book. It is hilarious. And useful. Be sure to check it out.

The characters are charming, the creations are brilliant and the writing is so much fun that you'll want to read it aloud for no other reason than to just read it aloud. You might read it aloud to your cat [or dog, or roommate, or a friendly-looking wall], eagerly stumbling over the King's made up words or trying your hand at talking like Guafnoggle.