Super cute!!!

Normally I don't say anything about the silly books I read because most of the people that care about books for young people are young people, and they don't read my blog, and if they do their parents should punish them or better yet send me nasty e-mails about exposing their impressionable niblets to gayness and language because anybody who knows anything knows that parents in America prefers blame over responsibility. Also, parents may be concerned I influence their children to use ridiculous run-on sentences.

Since I never get any of those angry messages, I figure nobody cares what I have to say about the Artemis Fowl series (cute), David Wiesner's illustrations (beautiful), or the oeuvre of Garth Nix (brilliant). But between last night and today at lunch, I read Kiki's Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono, which is just the darlinest little book I ever did read.

It's about this little witch who turns 12 or 13 or so, and she has to go off by herself and start a life in a new town, so she picks this big city. Unfortunately, she's been lazy and bored all her life so the only thing she learned how to do was ride a broom, so she sets up this business where she carries shit around for people. The rest of the book is all about her little adventures helping people out.

Half the things that transpire leave you thinking "What? That would never happen. And nobody talks like that." But then you remember it's Japanese and somehow that makes it alright. Also, Kiki is 13, right, but she really comes off more like a 10 year old. Not in a whiny way, though... just that she's not all learning about sex and death and love like young people in young people novels so often do. She's just kinda traipsing about on her broom la la la la OOPS, I dropped the stuffed cat I was supposed to deliver, I'll just give the kid my real cat instead, try not to breathe, kitty, so he doesn't know you're real. Also, if for some reason you have children, this book is totally episodic and would make a perfect nighttime read-aloud over about a week and a half. (There, I've said something useful.)

Maybe it's because in the book I read before this, a 12 year-old boy was pushed out of a 10th-story window, paralyzing him because he saw a woman fucking her twin brother and plotting the death of his father.... but the innocence of Kiki's Delivery Service was really refreshing. Now I'm at home watching the movie version (Hayao Miyazaki) which looks to be as fabulous as everything he's ever done.