Catherine Hapka

A laughably bad book with really nice illustrations.

In my review of Charlie Mackesy's The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, I wrote, "If A. A. Milne were forced to spend a year reading nothing but Hallmark cards and inspirational Facebook posts, Winnie-the-Pooh might have turned out something like this piece of junk." Well, someone at Disney must have noticed the success of that inane book and decided to churn out their own sickeningly trite version.

The most cliched Pooh plot is trotted show more out, with Pooh waking up one morning, encountering a problem, and then going around to his friends one by one until the problem goes away or is solved (usually by Christopher Robin) and a celebratory party can be had. Only now every page includes a little insipid aphorism that ties into whatever is happening on the page at the moment.

Some of the worst:
• Why sit at home and curse an empty belly when a friend might have food to share?
• Your friends are one of your greatest resources, and you are one of theirs.
• Don't let minor chores stand in the way of major accomplishments.
• Decisions, decisions . . . Life is full of them.

(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

This was bad fanfiction. Let's be honest here. I have no problems with fanfiction in general, but this had all of the hallmarks of a badly inserted character story with the exception of terrible grammar and spelling.

Faith is self-absorbed and self-righteous to an extreme. Admittedly, those characteristics are not that uncommon with Lost characters, but they do not work well when we are stuck living in one character's head with no break. She's also boring. How do you make a character who show more studies poisonous snakes and was involved in an enviromentalist assassination plot boring? Like this. This is how. Take notes.

Faith's (only) other important character trait is her naivety. I have never before seen it's like. There was every sign of there being something really fishy going on, and she completely missed everything because she was too self-absorbed to even notice. An all-expenses-paid trip to Australia by a 'research group' apparently too poor to operate in any place other than an abandoned shopping mall and with a staff that apparently consists of two people, one of insists she is just 'PR'? A boyfriend (who is a complete berk, by the way) who suddenly changes his tune on your relationship with your advisor after being spoken to by the PR lady, even going so far as to set up a meeting with him under false pretenses? Constant overhearing of discussion of a secret plan that comes up whenever you and your boyfriend argue? It's made worse by the constant refrain of "Think with your head, not your heart" that is apparently brought up every other page to be completely ignored. Is something suspicous going on? Then count on Faith to ignore it in favor of thinking about herself and her relationship with her boyfriend or her advisor.

I really didn't have high expectations for this. The start wasn't too bad. But the problem is that nothing happened. Faith is, at best, reactive, and the vast majority of the time is simply passive. Maybe it is hard to write a character that you know canonically dies--she can't do too much without messing up the show's (significantly better) plotline. But I made it through the whole book without ever figuring out why I should care even a little bit that she was dead, and that is a sign of bad writing. show less

Eeyore's gloominess works some super ninja reverse psychology on his friends so they end up seeing the bright side of doing their chores. Weird and fun.

(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 show more here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less

Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat set out to buy a Christmas tree, but thanks to his trademark curiosity George ends up crashing the pediatric ward of a local hospital and bringing holiday cheer to the sick children there.

Cathy Hapka's tale fits with George but feels a bit blander than the stuff the Reys usually turned out. At least Mary O'Keefe Young is able to ape (hee hee) Rey's art style quite well -- including the odd way he drew trucks -- and that was always the best part of show more Curious George books anyhow.

My daughter didn't find it interesting when she was six, and eighteen years later she's more inclined to wonder how dire are the illnesses that keep the children hospitalized at Christmas.

FOR REFERENCE:

Rated “Indifferent" in our old book database by Rod and Adelia. show less