Is Three the Magic Number?

Ah... Trilogies. We shake our heads pretentiously, and yet we still eat them up. And sometimes they're not bad.

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The Ewoks! I mean, they rocked! The romance of Leia and Hans? Irresistible. My 6 year old heart adored this movie - and still does.

His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass - Ehh... As the final closer to The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife, this book took a flight into the too fantastical and philosophical. If talking cabbage heads had shown up, I wouldn't have been shocked. However, there were some sentient trees, if I recall correctly. While I loved this book, it was partially due to how hard I loved the first two.

Lois Lowry's The Messenger. This was just a silly mess, in my opinion. The Giver is like a good punch to the head. It's probably in my top 5 YA books. The Gatherer was also awesome - and part of its awesomeness was in how absolutely different the book felt from the first. But The Messenger just felt superficial. A way to fulfill a demand - either by the readers or the publishers, I don't know. I'm not faulting Lowry - The Messenger is still a great book, but it doesn't reach the caliber of The Gatherer. And as a relative of The Giver? I still ruminate over The Giver years later, but The Messenger means nothing to me.

As an aside, I hope Lois Lowry NEVER EVER gives movie rights to The Giver. Am I ecstatic to see The Hunger Games, whenever it comes out? Definitely! But The Giver is too holy and too fantastic to recreate. How would we recreate a black and white world? How would a movie show the control exerted over individuals in The Giver? (In regards to the black and white vision, Pleasantville did a lovely job of this actually...)

All this is because I've been meaning to review Pfeffer's This World We Live In, which completes her series about life after a meteor hits the moon and creates havoc, end of humanity type of havoc, on our climate system.

The photo "Thick Encyclopedias with Colorful Hardcovers" is copyright 2010 by Harla Varlan and made available under Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution. Edited by M. Morrill.