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A review by xterminal
Old Turtle by Douglas Wood, Cheng-Khee Chee
1.0
Douglas Wood, Old Turtle (Pfeifer-Hamilton, 1992)
Books come to what I optimistically call my TBR list (though I know there's no way I'll be able to read them all before I die; I'd have to get through four or five a day if I live to one hundred) in many different ways, so many that much of the time I don't remember how one book or another got there; Internet recommendation, press release, library flyer, a dozen other sources. I also don't remember, given that I add two or three dozen books a day, what it is about the vast majority of the books on the list that might have attracted me back when I added them. So when it come right down to it, I have no idea why Old Turtle ended up on my list this year, unless I put it there as a combustible (my term for books I add to the list because their premises are so awful I cannot help but think it's going to get an horrendous review). For Old Turtle cannot have come to my list through any other valid means unless whatever I read that caused me to add it was entirely duplicitous; it combines my two least favorite subjects, environmentalism and religion, and presents them in such a way as to make them even more unpalatable, if possible, than normal. There is no attempt at subtlety here, much less any attempt at allegory. Wood has no use for such niceties as thoughtful word choice or poetic structure. The basic idea seems to be “just tell kids that this is good and they'll believe it.” I believe strangers with candy take the same approach, but their spiel is a bit more believable.
Normally this would be a no-brainer for a zero star review, but I'm giving it a single star because Cheng-Khee Chee's watercolors are attractive and do a better job at getting the story across than Wood's ham-fisted attempts at telling a story. *
Books come to what I optimistically call my TBR list (though I know there's no way I'll be able to read them all before I die; I'd have to get through four or five a day if I live to one hundred) in many different ways, so many that much of the time I don't remember how one book or another got there; Internet recommendation, press release, library flyer, a dozen other sources. I also don't remember, given that I add two or three dozen books a day, what it is about the vast majority of the books on the list that might have attracted me back when I added them. So when it come right down to it, I have no idea why Old Turtle ended up on my list this year, unless I put it there as a combustible (my term for books I add to the list because their premises are so awful I cannot help but think it's going to get an horrendous review). For Old Turtle cannot have come to my list through any other valid means unless whatever I read that caused me to add it was entirely duplicitous; it combines my two least favorite subjects, environmentalism and religion, and presents them in such a way as to make them even more unpalatable, if possible, than normal. There is no attempt at subtlety here, much less any attempt at allegory. Wood has no use for such niceties as thoughtful word choice or poetic structure. The basic idea seems to be “just tell kids that this is good and they'll believe it.” I believe strangers with candy take the same approach, but their spiel is a bit more believable.
Normally this would be a no-brainer for a zero star review, but I'm giving it a single star because Cheng-Khee Chee's watercolors are attractive and do a better job at getting the story across than Wood's ham-fisted attempts at telling a story. *