The Twits

The Twits

By Roald Dahl

Illustrations by Quentin Blake

Scholastic

1980

As the manager of a branch library, I get the pleasure of also being in charge of acquisitions and collection development. While keeping the library supplied with new titles, I must also make certain the classic titles are maintained. The thing about classics is they wear out, get lost, and fall apart from being loved and read to death. I recently took a sweep through one of my favorite youth authors, Roald Dahl, and took an inventory of his titles, ordering new copies of just about every title.

The Twits caught my eye on the shelf so I took it home this weekend for a quick re-read…and I am so glad I did. While this was not one of his best selling titles, it is a prime example of the genius of Dahl. His books are so humorous, shocking, absurd, inappropriate (at times) and engaging that this quick read reminded me not to forget to suggest Dahl’s books to young readers who are looking for a fun read.

Dahl figured out exactly what tickled the funny bone of boys and girls and he immerses the reader in these silly funny and gross details throughout all of his stories. In The Twits, Dahl describes the horrors of what one would find when making a close inspection of Mr. Twit’s unruly beard. There is “spinach and tomato and ketchup and fish sticks and minced chicken livers and all the other disgusting things Mr. Twit liked to eat.” Then he goes on, with the help of Blake’s classic illustrations, to detail even more grossness such as a piece of “maggoty green cheese” and “moldy old cornflakes.” Perfectly delightful reading for those in the early grades!

This was a wakeup call for me to always keep the Roald Dahl section well stocked and to guide young readers to that shelf regularly. Long live Roald Dahl books!

The Hunger Games Trilogy

The Hunger Games (trilogy) Catching Fire, and Mockingjay

By Suzanne Collins

Scholastic Press

I’ll start out with a great big WOW! This series is what YA Lit is all about for me. The books are exciting, smart, not-predictable, humorous, engaging, brutal, romantic, breathtaking, tragic and triumphant, all rolled into one.

The premise is not that far-fetched, actually. Picture a future United States that has collapsed into a world of drought, war and famine. We’ve been renamed Panem and have been divided into a Capitol and 12 districts. The leaders at the Capitol have developed a sort of a sick competition/entertainment between the districts in which a yearly competition pits two youth from each district to have a televised fight to the death, until only one of the competitors survive. The whole thing is televised with state-of-the-art cameras that can zoom into even the most remote locations.

This is not a World Wrestling Federation competition or a gladiator-style fight where they are all placed in a round arena to go at it. These battles take place in the wilderness where competitors can hide, plot, ambush and form alliances. To make it even trickier, the Capitol has the technological abilities to create artificial conditions, animals, insects and similar plagues to either help or harm the fighters. This all makes for an extraordinary plotline that is an exciting, tense and engrossing.

Congratulations to Collins for creating Katniss, an amazing and powerful female lead character. Readers will easily identify with the heroine and root for her through all three volumes of this engrossing series. Librarians…get your teens hooked on this series as soon as possible as there is a major motion picture in the works. Don’t forget to stock up on plenty of copies for your library shelves because the Hunger Games books will soon become even more popular than they are now.