Michael Teitelbaum

I watched Avatar: The Last Airbender for the first time a few years ago, and I was genuinely astonished by just how good it was. Not even "good for a kids' show." Just plain good, with no qualifiers whatsoever.

Anyway, this little book is ostensibly put together by Aang and his friends as a present for his son, but it's really mostly just a very short guide to some of the people, places, events, and cultures from the series. If you've watched the show (and have even a passing familiarity with show more the sequel), there's absolutely nothing new here, and I'm not sure it really captures the series' spark. But it is pretty, with lots of colorful illustrations and some fun little inserts, including a couple of very cool postcards from places depicted in the show. To be honest, it's probably as much a collector's item as it is a book. But it's not a bad collector's item. show less

It’s been about 5 years since I last saw Season 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, so I had to check Wikipedia for reminders and, holy crap, this 89-page book covers the entire season. It’s ridiculous.

The way events were crammed in, it felt 1) like barely any time had passed, even though it was obvious that couldn’t be the case, and 2) like Azula had the attention span of a goldfish. At the start of the book, she was after Zuko and Iroh. Then she spotted Aang and decided it’d be great show more if she could catch him and Zuko and Iroh. Her father would be so proud, and he’d totally make her his heir! By page 70, she decided that it’d be even better if she acquired the whole Earth Kingdom.

The time I spent reading this probably would have been better spent rewatching some of the show. This added absolutely nothing. I picked it up (steeply discounted, thank goodness) thinking that it would feature a whole new story starring Azula. I didn’t expect too much, just something that, in the original series, would have qualified as filler, but I didn’t even get that. Instead it was a tedious, boring, and at times confusing rehash of events straight out of the series. Even the change in POV added nothing new. Azula was depicted as a one-note character with zero depth. It was extremely disappointing.

Literally everything about this was terrible. The book used an Avatar: The Last Airbender font throughout, which made for difficult/annoying reading. Also, the author could not keep his tenses straight. Often the tense would change from one paragraph to the next, present to past and then back to present, for no reason that I could see. Here are a couple examples of it happening in the same paragraph, or even same sentence:

“Ahhh! A wall of rock rose up through the track, blocking my pinwheel blast. In a matter of seconds I’ll crash right into the rock! I jumped out of the mail cart, which smashed into bits against the rock wall.” (34)

“It was a little infuriating that Kyoshi warriors would garner such a welcome, but I will not complain just yet.” (67)

I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, and I’m really glad I didn’t get any of the other books in this series.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

A rare Pooh story where the friends leave the Hundred-Acre Wood for the adjacent Rolling Pasture when Pooh decides Christopher Robin's toy bullhorn must be the missing horn from a very real, easily irked bull. Inevitably, Piglet ends up in a bullfight.

This story seems influenced by the anything goes spirit of "The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" animated series that was airing Saturday mornings on ABC at the time. It's a fun show, but they did lots of slapstick and canon-bending stuff show more that probably make Pooh purists shudder and hug their Milne books close to their chest.

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less

Not a bad read for these wanting to know more about Water Tribe culture though it could have used more, and a definite collectible for any diehard Avatar fan.